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Originally Posted by catrijn View Post
Different people are successful with different approaches to this, but I do track hobbyist things. For organization, I have top-level folders for Work, Home, and Hobbies. Each of those then has a collection of folders and single-action lists for more specific areas. For instance for games, I have a folder with a single-action list for "Games in Progress", with each entry being a title (and I try to keep this one short), and a second single-action list for "Games to Play" which is set to On Hold so I never see it unless I go looking for it, and that has a list of titles I own and would like to play someday. Rarely, a long, complicated game might get its own project, if there are specific in-game tasks that I want to remember.

But the exact structure varies depending on the hobby, and how much prompting it needs. For books, I have another single action list, and when I start a book, it gets an entry along the lines of "Read a chapter of XYZ", with no due date and set to repeat with "Start again after 5 days", or whatever interval is appropriate. If I actually do spend some time on it, that means it disappears off the list of things I needed to be reminded about for a while. For crafting hobbies, I tend to have a folder with individual projects that list at least a high-level outline of the main steps.

The other key component is that I use custom views a lot, and the hobby stuff is almost always hidden through use of Focus, or selecting certain contexts, etc. I don't see these items until I hit my Free Time perspective - usually in the evening once I've decided I've gotten enough work/responsible things done for the day. And I'm pretty ruthless about putting hobby projects on hold, more so than for anything with responsibility to other people. I try to have just a few active things in each hobby category, so that if I know what type of activity I want to do, it's a pretty simple choice. (E.g. I want to read? Here are two books I'm reading. Don't waste time staring at the shelves.) It might be overkill, but as long it's not cluttering your thoughts when you need to concentrate on more important tasks, I don't think it's a problem. I find it helpful because I have a lot of hobbies, and some of them can sit for a long time before I get back to them.
Thanks so much for the input here! It seems we have similar setups for our hobbies and how we track them. I use a single action list for "Games to Play" that seems to be getting out of hand quickly as I fall behind on the games I'm finishing versus those that are coming out. I like the concept of the Games in Progress list though. Admittedly, i'm concerned this would get out of hand fast since I have a bad habit of starting many games but not finishing them.

I also like the suggestion for how you handle perspectives and views. I think this is one of the humps I have to get over. I'm currently looking at everything from a project view but it's really intimidating and not using the system the way it was meant to be used.