thanks, brownstudy. again, it is very illuminating and encouraging to see how you are implementing the techniques.

i think you should become a self-motivation consultant or speaker.

-nudone (September 21, 2006, 12:37 AM)

• Difference between having long-term projects (by definition, unfinished) and having a backlog
• Difference between checklists and todo lists
• Place for maybe-one-day items?
• If we do a brain dump, some stuff would be really low priority, and it'll stay floating on a lists for a long time without being actioned. Is that a bad thing?
• Dangerous combination: the brain dump of GTD produces trillions of tasks, and the 'no priorizing' approach of GED tries to do them all (believing that the important stuff will get too clogged if the small stuff is unactioned).

-urlwolf (September 19, 2006, 05:27 AM)

• Long-term projects are represented by tasks sprinkled through your daily task diary. You probably have project-support materials in your planner or in a file on your computer. My getting into grad-school project has been on my lists for months, but it's still active and I do whatever I can on it. It has a definite end point and a definite accomplishment so I can say, "Yes, this is done."
• A backlog occurs when your email or other daily tasks pile up so that you can't process them in a day. For example, my boss asked me to help him prepare a presentation and so for two days I was unable to handle my emails and new work. This meant I had a backlog of daily waxy buildup that I had to action; within a day, I'd made decisions about the emails, scheduled tasks, etc., and the backlog had disappeared. A backlog should be temporary and no new work is added to it.
• Checklists help you carry out repetitive tasks so that you don't need to remember them. I use a checklist when I run system checks on my computer so I remember to update my antivirus, etc. You pull it out and use it as needed. Forster doesn't like to-do lists as he says they attract any old task, become amorphous, and can be never-ending because you're always adding stuff to it. That's why he advocates closed lists. This is all explained in better detail in Forster's book.
• Just create a list in the back of the planner for someday/maybe items. Forster mentions this in his book but it's not the critical piece that Allen considers it for the GTD system. YMMV.
• "If we do a brain dump, some stuff would be really low priority, and it'll stay floating on a lists for a long time without being actioned. Is that a bad thing?" Again, just use Allen's someday/maybe list. Nobody says you can't blend the two systems. Allen would say that you need to regularly review the S/M list to remind your brain it's there.
• "Dangerous combination: the brain dump of GTD produces trillions of tasks, and the 'no priorizing' approach of GED tries to do them all (believing that the important stuff will get too clogged if the small stuff is unactioned)." Then use Allen's approach of prioritizing based on context/energy/time/priority (or something like that). Neither Allen nor Forster can tell you how to tell the trivial from the important. They're sort of hoping you'll do that part  :)

I add more tasks than I actually complete in a day. That means that my tasks will be probably unmanageable at some point. Long lists like that must be pruned, otherwise the  weekly review won't be efficient.