Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Organizing GTD projects with subtasks
Using GTD in Remember The Milk is very flexible, and there are a few ways to incorporate all its principles.
This week’s tip is shared by skominers, who suggests a quick method for using tasks as projects with the actions as subtasks inside. Read the full post for all the details about how to organize those quickly so your next actions are available throughout your day.
For each of my projects, I generate a master task with subtasks for each associated action. I also use the “notes” and “attachment” fields to store auxiliary information.
Then, I use tags on the subtasks to organize the project actions by location, person, and/or mental mode. A “next action” tag #next indicates which actions are at the top of the stack.
For example, project “Sort out New York travel” might have subtasks:
• Choose New York travel dates #scheduling #tablet #next
• Look up restaurants in New York #computer #tablet #next
• Book New York hotel #computer
• Book New York flights #computer
• Send dates to New York friends #computer #email
Then, I syndicate out the subtasks into GTD-style “next actions” lists.
Smart List “At Computer”, for example, will show me “Look up restaurants in New York” and any other next actions I can complete at my computer:tag:computer AND tag:next
By using multiple tags, individual actions can show up on multiple lists. (As configured, “Look up restaurants in New York” would show up in “At Computer” and “On Tablet”.)
This way, I have everything for each project in one place. But for minute-by-minute optimization/ninjitsu, I can just work off the “next actions” lists.
Higher level strats: You can build in “tickler file” functionality in both the “Projects” and next action lists by using start dates on future tasks, and adding “AND (startBefore:Tomorrow OR start:never)” to the Smart List queries.
QED.
Thanks for sharing this tip, skominers! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
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