RE: DDoS'ing Yourself with To-dos and Reminders

It’s been years since I’ve had my GTD process just so such that I could set to-dos aside in their place and feel confident that I’d find them again in the future when I needed them.

When I open my to-do app these days, I literally sigh heavily and feel my eyes get tired in the corners.

-- Barry Hess, "DDoS’ing Yourself with To-dos and Reminders"

Yep, I recognize this feeling. It creeps in from time to time and it serves as an important emotional signal that my GTD system needs a tune-up.

Here's how I deal with the problem Barry describes:

  1. The "Someday Maybe" list. It took me years to really appreciate this part of the GTD system. Most GTD practitioners should be using their "someday maybe" list more. Anything that I'm not 100% sure I actually need to do should not go into my project plans or next action lists. Sometimes, I'm just noodling on something.

    • My advice: keep the someday maybe list out of your task tracker. Check it once a week when you do a GTD review. Someday, maybe isn't a folder for "everything else" or "long term projects." It's a list of things you might want to do someday, maybe.

  2. The tickler file. The tickler file is where you put things that you need to think about on a future date or recurring schedule. If something (1) is a committed and planned next action and (2) time-sensitive, then it earns a reminder or calendar block. If it is just a thing with a timestamp? Tickler file.

    • Again: I recommend keeping this outside of your task tracker. Check it once a week in your review. At that point, you may decide that something needs to be rescheduled, ignored, or deleted rather than going on your list! A date stamp on an item is not an obligation to act.

  3. Let it go. My perhaps heterodox opinion is that sometimes you don't need to put an idea into your system. You can let cars pass you on the street without getting into every single one.

The commonality is this: you should get a chance to look at an item and make a decision before it goes on your TODO list. You should not be obligated to put things on your TODO list simply because you had an idea or because something has a date or schedule. It's universal capture, not universal eternal tracking, and certainly not universal doing.