[wilsonng]

I actually grew tired of putting start dates on all of my projects.

I did a reboot by setting all of my projects to "On Hold" status. This indicated to me that these projects became my Someday/Maybe project. You can also create a folder called Someday/Maybe and drag everything into that folder. Have a Someday/Maybe folder for Work, Home, etc. if you need to separate them further.

Then during my Weekly Review, I'll go through the list of projects and active a handful (three to five) projects. These become my Big Rocks of the Week to focus on for the next 7-10 days. I'll put some currently active projects back to "On Hold" and turn some Someday/Maybe projects back to "Active."

I use start dates on projects only when I know I can start then on certain days. For example, I know that the boss is coming back on March 1st. So I'll set the start date for a project on March 1st so that it becomes active and available to me.

But for most other projects that can start at any time or at my discretion, I'll just set the project to "On Hold." I can trust myself on the Weekly Review that I'll see the "On Hold" projects and determine what I can and cannot do this week based on my workload. It also helps to set proper review intervals and/or review dates for each project.