[whpalmer4]

The flag feature is quite useful for this style of working. Go through your projects and tasks, flagging the items you want to work on today, or first, and then use the flagged view to concentrate your view on those items. In context mode, there's also a "due or flagged" action selector in the view bar which will give you the union of flagged items and due items.

If you decide you aren't going to do something today, you can just remove the flag, which is much more convenient than fiddling around with start or due dates to manage the list of stuff you want to do today. Also, if you flag a project, all the actions in that project automatically become flagged.

My personal opinion on this approach is that if you're spending a lot of time putting the list together (or maintaining it), you might be doing yourself a disservice. Allen has a few paragraphs on the subject on pp. 40-41 of Getting Things Done, labeled No More "Daily To-Do" Lists :-) His main points seem to be not spending a bunch of time rewriting the list over and over, and dilution of the effectiveness of having something on the list if you aren't making a commitment to getting it done the first time it is there. I don't think he would have a big problem with simply identifying tasks that must be completed today to make sure they were all completed before calling it a day.