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flagged projects/tasks problems (4 creating Today's Actions) and A GREAT alternative Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I don't know if this alternative to creating flagged projects/tasks for creating a Today's Task List has been proposed before, so just in case here it is.

Scenario:

- You use flagged tasks to create a list for tasks to do today
- You use flagged projects to decide which projects you want to focus on this week

Challenge:
- When you flag a project, now you have a whole bunch of ghosted flags showing up on your today's task list that are not necessarily due today

Alternative:
- I spoke with Theo (support ninjas) and he suggested me something that is working like a charm.

Select the projects you want to concentrate on this week, and FOCUS on them and create a perspective for that.

When the perspective is created, make sure you go and select all of them again and update the perspective.

This allows you to "show all" again and select / unselect new projects as you watn to update this "focused projects for the week" perspective.

- Doing this allowed me only use flag for Today's task, while having another nice list of focused projects.

-This works well for me because I have a huge hierarchy of projects that I do not want to put on hold, nor moving to the top of the list because I have a lot of nested folders.

I hope this idea helps those in need of a solution like this.

Cheers,

Edward
 
I was also frustrated by having every action in a project show up if I flagged it, making my "due or flagged" perspective almost useless. What I do now is make good use of the State Date so I don't have to have a current project perspective to remember to update.

I put a future start date on all projects (and single actions) I'm not currently focusing on. The start date is always the following Friday at 3pm, unless there is a need to have a different start date (usually for single actions, such as a waiting for). Then I flag individual actions in a project and single actions that I want to complete that day (or use the due date if there is an actual due date).

I use Friday at 3pm because that is when I do my weekly review. So as I start my weekly review, ALL my project appear in my list and then I can choose what I need to focus on the following week and change the start date for all the other projects to the following Friday at 3pm. If I know a project doesn't need any action for several weeks, I will set the date accordingly for two Fridays away or four Fridays, etc.

I started doing this initially because I find the Review function confusing with it's "Review within the next month" and "Review within the last 3 Months" wording. I never could figure out if I was behind or ahead in my reviews. Now I always know because the project is off my active project list until the designated time and I know its time to do a review.

I only use the "On Hold" status for things in my someday/maybe list, which I review less frequently. I found that using "On Hold" for other projects put them too much out of sight and I would forget about them too easily.

The most frustrating part of this is setting the start date time. I wish there was a preference to set when projects/actions should start like there is a default time for the due date. But by selecting multiple projects or single actions, I can use the Inspector and set the date/time fairly quickly.
 
Hi webalstrom! Thanks for sharing your method for managing the projects/tasks you are currently focusing on.

You put together a very creative system!

I agree with you that the challenge becomes setting the start dates.

Since having a list of clear tasks to be done today and a list of current projects to focus on for the week or "the following days" is so important, I wonder how others are using the flags for things to do today in conjunction of creating a list of projects to focus on.

Of course, we can put all projects on hold and only leave the ones we will be focusing for the next few days "active", but the challenge with this is that there are other reasons to put projects on hold.

webalstrom, again, thanks you, and hopefully others could contribute with their methods.

Cheers,

Edward
 
Thanks to both posters on this thread. I look forward to tweaking my system a bit.
 
Hi Melisa, after posting and reading the forums, I was also able to further tweak my original workflow.

This is how I have it now:

On my weekly review:

1- I select all projects that I will work on this week (using the perspective I outlined at the beginning of this thread.

2- I flag the actions that I will do this week. So I renamed my "Daily" perspective with flagged tasks to be My Weekly Task, again, made up of flagged items.

3- Out of my weekly tasks, I assign a "5 minute" time duration to those that I will do today. This list became my "To Do Today" perspective.

The reason I am finding this "to do today" so nice is because, contrary to using flags for "today", If I, lets say I have a task to call a client today. That task was flagged (to do this week) and also assigned 5minutes duration, to do today. If the client is not there and I did not want to leave a message but want to call him another day during the week, I just take the 5minute time duration and the flag remains. This will allow this task to remain in my "radar" for the week, rather than falling back to a huge pool of tasks.

Hope that helps.

Edward
 
 


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