[jasong]

Soundsgootome, a few things in response:

* I understand your position that OF is not a GTD implementation. The truth is that a huge percentage of the people on this forum are using it specifically to implement GTD, and that the reason for starting up OF was because people wanted a better GTD application based off kGTD. Of course you're going to get a lot of "it's not GTD if you do it that way" type comments. Please don't take it personally, but do expect to get an argument if someone thinks something isn't GTD Canonical (as "Canonical" as something like GTD can get, anyway). It doesn't mean it doesn't belong in OF, just that we like justifying its inclusion.

* I'm gathering that you believe when I and others say

The calls/voicemail situation is similar. You had an action "call susan re: potluck" and you did that. When you completed it, you had another action come out from it: "wait to hear back from susan re: potluck"

that you believe we mean we'll plan out the steps of our call in advance. You say

Originally Posted by soundsgoodtome

I don't need to write down "Wait to hear back from susan"; then write down "If no reply from Susan, call again," Rinse. Repeat. That is too much busy-work.

Of course it's too much busy-work, and I don't do this in advance, I do it at the time I need to, and I do it as a reminder that I have to Do Something. My action is "Call Susan". That's it. If I Call Susan, and leave a voice mail, and my project is blocked until I hear back from Susan, then I can either

1. leave the Call Susan action unchecked (don't like that, cause I did call her!)
2. check it with some kind of “in progress” or “waiting for” status (interesting as a concept)
3. mark it as done and add a “waiting for” action (typical GTD)

I like the last one because I may not come back to this project for a month or six. When I do come back, and I see the first option, I have to recall if I called, if I need to call again, if whatever.... The second option could work if marking with such a status appropriately blocks my project and shows up as an action reminder.

OK, in fact, there's a fourth option, and the one I generally use:

4. Move the action to a waiting for context instead of a calls context and leave it unchecked. In my “system” if I see “Call Susan @waiting for” I know that means I'm waiting on a call back. If it's in there too long, I move it back to Calls.

Is this too much fiddling? Perhaps. It does generally work for me, though.

You quoted me

If you see an action of "call susan re: potluck", and it has the "in progress" mark, what does that tell me? That I called and left a voicemail and... what? She needs to call me back? I need to call her back later? Do I have to wait for Susan, or can I move ahead?

and you said in response

Originally Posted by soundsgoodtome

If you truly need to ask yourself all of those questions, I can see why pure GTD is helpful to you. When I see "in progress," I know what it means, and I know what to do next.

I take that to mean you either have a great memory, a fantastic capture and retrieval system, or you don't work on projects you might have to lay fallow for six months. I don't have the first one, and I often work on stuff that, when I return to them, I have no idea what I've done and what needs to be done. That's why I'm trying to build the second, in the form of GTD, OF and other tools. So yes, if I see “Call Susan re:potluck” and I return to that a month from now, it's very likely that I don't remember if I got a response, if I left her a message, or if she called me back and I forgot to check the box that says “this is done”.

There's not enough information in a “third state” for me to know what I should do next with that action. If it's the next day, heck, no problem. But let time and other projects invade my brain and I need some more context to take appropriate action. It's why I write stuff down. I envy you if you can pick stuff up weeks or months later!