[MEP]

Good question. Generally speaking, GTD doesn't like it when we start any task we can't finish so there'd be little point to indicating how far you are in any task since the next time you touch it, it should be complete. But when you don't really know how long something will take, or if it takes a really long time that's a lot easier said than done.

I think in most circumstances, really long tasks are actually projects in disguise and normally I would advise splitting them up into smaller chunks.

But as a former full-time software developer myself, I know what it's like to sit at the terminal for eight hours and just hack. It's hard to split that up into a set of discrete tasks beforehand (or even after the fact).

Gotta be honest, I can't think of any way that GTD handles this situation other than what you're already doing. I think in order to track your percentage of completeness in any meaningful way, you'd have to use a full-blown project tracking app like MS Project or OmniPlan (I suspect that the OF2.0 integration with OmniPlan will be really useful for situations like this -- I hope so at least). It seems like overkill, but I've been sitting here thinking about it and I can't come up with any other ideas.

It would be useful in this circumstance to have a percent complete bar for tasks in OF, and I'm loathe to admit that as it goes totally outside GTD. But for coders (and others now that I think about it -- I can imagine tasks I do as an industrial designer that are similar to this) I can't think of too many other options.

Now my only question is; When you use % complete in Outlook, how often are you accurate in your estimates? I've always found the last 10% of any coding project takes the largest chunk of unanticipated time.