[atreinke]

I have many actions, some are in projects, some are in Single Action Lists.

I ONLY put due dates on actions that have a hard due date. That way I never have an option, they must be done today unless all @*## breaks lose.

I go through my lists every morning and "flag" a few actions that I want to put extra effort into completing today for whatever reason, if there are any.

A "Today" perspective is rather easy for me. It contains only things that are "due" and actions that I flag. The orange and red items on my Today perspective have to be done, all the others can be renegotiated if something unexpected shows up. Since this list contains things that I am "doing", it is displayed in Context mode.

After that's all done I move on to my "Focused Projects" list which contains one or two projects that I want to move forward more than the others. After that - on to the Next Actions list.

I found the first time that I tried to set up a "Today" list, I populated it with many actions that I wanted to get done and very rarely finished them, and I never made it to my Next Actions List. I as time went on those actions that were on my Next Actions List were not getting done and would suddenly show up as "hot" items and then I would flag them to put them on my "Today" list. Before long my Today list was longer than my Next Actions List. It became kind of useless at that point.

Now I'm really careful about what I flag and what I put due dates on. My Today List usually never has more than 3 or 4 actions on it, if there are more then it will only be actions that are due.

Doing things this way works for me, I get what HAS to be done done, I spend a little time focused on my important projects and spend the rest of my day doing Next Actions.