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Quote:
Originally Posted by jasong View Post
I think we're approaching how to get stuff done from different angles. The time I choose to do my next action is a function of context, time available and energy, or what I like to think as “I don't feel like it”. Just because I artificially said I'd do something “today” doesn't mean I will, or even that I should. Heck, it doesn't even mean that I can.

Picking the ones flagged as “today” is as good a gating factor as any other method someone can use to pick an action, it's just not a way that makes sense for me or for how I approach my “list of agreements” (aka “projects”).
Maybe my perspective comes from the number of next actions I have. Say you have 30 projects (and I am sure many of us have many more projects), each with 10 next actions. That gives you 300 next actions. If most of those are done on a computer, each time you select a next action, you will maybe need to go through 250 next actions. That doesn't sound reasonable. Most likely what you will do is to go through all the 250 next actions once in a while (maybe every day) and build a mental representation of what you are planning to do today. All I am suggesting is to put that in the system; don't keep it in your head, and flag those next actions that you are planning to do today as "today".

If you don't put that in the system, and if you don't go through the whole list of next actions every time you select on, your head won't be able to trust the system and it will constantly keep track those next actions you want or need to do today.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jasong View Post
If you're looking at a list of “actions to do today”, and you can't do half of those actions because you don't have a cellphone to make a phone call, aren't in the grocery to buy the eggs, or aren't online to search Google, all you have is a list of To-Do items you have to mentally scroll through until you find the one action you can do today.
Most of the time, I can do most of the next actions on my list. (I almost always have an Internet connection, a cell phone, ...) There is only a tiny minority of the next actions on my list that require me to be in a special context (grocery store, at home, ...). This is why most of the time, the notion of "context" doesn't help much filtering out the next actions I can't do at a given time.

Alex