[DrJJWMac]

I would agree that trying to select or prioritize for Today can be confusing. Instead, I use an Active, Due, and FolderX perspective as well as the Forecast view on my iPod. Active defines what I have in focus for the next few hours based on flagging actions from the other perspectives. Due is anything with a Due date (and unflagged). FolderX is a selected view in to a specific folder that defines my top area of responsibility to complete. In my daily startup, I look at Due, FolderX, and WaitingFor (a context) to decide what to flag, generally up to only a half dozen or so actions. I work on that Active list until complete, then repeat with another selection of active tasks.

Some guidelines that I found helpful ...

* Set Due and Start dates on a task only when they are defined external to the task. Setting Due and Start dates by when you "want" to do a task only makes them subject later to whims and fancies. Nothing important ever gets done that way.

* Use Contexts in a way that makes it sensible to set them on hold in order to filter out actions that are unreasonable to do because you are just not "there" in that context. If for example you always have a cell phone with you, then why have a cell phone context? However, you cannot always be at your home/apt/office, so they make reasonable contexts that can be "shut off".

* Make thoughtful use of parallel and sequential action groups to streamline the steps in a larger project. An Active view showing Next Steps can be far cleaner to attack that way.

HTH

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JJW