Quote:
Originally Posted by dp1
I see your point, I think. Upcoming deadlines can be viewed across contexts. This requires me to put firm deadlines on actions that might not otherwise require them. But I would still miss the action if the action were in the Office context and the chance encounter with my boss occurred before the deadline was looming. Or am I missing something?
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Yeah, that's why I suggested putting it in the Agenda : Boss context. You run into your boss in the hallway, you fish out your iPhone and check that list. You go into a meeting with your boss, you check the list on your Mac or your iPhone. Your boss calls you up, you check the list if you think he'll let you do some of the talking :-) And when you make your daily review of upcoming due items and you see "Ask boss about XYZ" is due tomorrow and you haven't seen him around, or it's the weekend, or you can't otherwise go have a FtF right now, you fire off that email or fax or telephone or whatever else you can do to make contact.
As for due dates on actions that might not otherwise need them, you would only have to put on one this action if there's some date by which you needed to ask the boss, right? I try to avoid unnecessary due dates (*) but am not averse to using them for safety net reminders (such as this) in reasonable numbers.
(*) Actually, I put them on quite a number of things where they are unnecessary so long I'm pretty sure I'm likely to finish them by the due date -- what I dislike is seeing overdue actions which weren't really truly due, as that dilutes the effectiveness of seeing the warning. I'm using them more for the side effect of the "due soon" notification. So, (even) if I'm confident I'll have actually done the task before due date, I may put on the due date as a safety net, or just as an extra reminder to be sure to get this task done if I'm not going to get everything done. I'm asking OmniFocus to nudge me about it if I haven't done anything about it after a reasonable period of time.