Curious, are you using Backpack’s reminders by any chance to send you reminders?

I still use the Waiting On category, and I set the task to be due on the day that I need some kind of action on it. Then it shows up on the “Due Today” view when it becomes relevant again (this is on a Palm, not sure how it works in Entourage).

What I like about keeping them off of the regular next actions lists is that there isn’t a next action yet. I don’t want to see things cluttering up my @Home list that I can’t actually do.

I wholeheartedly agree with your “simplify” push though.

That’s a great point, Sean.

I just sometimes start to feel sort of disconnected from the “waiting on” items, and a weekly review doesn’t feel frequent enough. OTOH, you’re right on about the next actions bit.

I use my calendar as my tickler and schedule myself a time to call the contact to push on items I’m waiting for. As a Project Manager, I can’t let clients drag out a project by not completing their actions; I must manage them as well. By giving myself a next action to prod them, I keep the project on track and keep myself on track.

Also, if I have a scheduled weekly conference call with a client, I will put Waiting On items on the Agenda for that call.

Of course, items that are truly “waiting”, and I can’t do anything to impact them, still go on the waiting list. “Get tickets for Star Wars Ep. III” for instance.

I wrote an article a while ago about a change I’d made - moving all the context lists into a single list… http://pigpog.com/wiki/index.php/GTD-SingleActionsList …I found it worked quite nicely in Outlook and in Pocket Informant on the PocketPC, but probably wouldn’t have been as usable on the Palm.

I’m currently playing with doing everything in OneNote on the tablet PC. It’s no wonder I never get anything done - I spend all my time playing with my GTD system ;)

I start everything I am waiting on with ZZZ, i.e. zzzCheck proofs when ready. That way it is at the bottom of the list, so it doesn’t interfere with current to-dos, but it also is there for when I go over the whole list.

I use my tickler for this. Depending on the urgency of what I’m waiting for, I write something like “Call Greg re: map” on an index card and drop it in the file for, say, a week hence. On the appropriate morning, it just shows up and I can send ‘Greg’ a quick ping. I don’t actually use “call” literally, it’s just the quickest word that comes to mind to remind me to contact someone.

Additionally, in each context I have an @WAIT queue (thanks to the DIY Planner) where it all gets noted, and if I start to feel like a project is slowing down, I look to see if there’s anything relevant there that I can push on somebody to get things moving again.

I do something similar— I have a bunch of text files, and every night a dumb little php script runs through them and emails me any lines in them that have today’s date on them.

When I create a waiting item, I tag it with a snooze date, which shows up in my daily email when I need to be reminded to follow up. Kind of like the Outlook GTD add-in…

Next up is a version that will automatically create backpack reminders for things with a date and time…

For email “waiting for” items—

I thumb my nose at David Allen and use my InBox as an Action Items list. I used to have a separate WAITING FOR folder but that quickly became a FORGET ABOUT folder.

Two things that keep messages out of the memory hole—I BCC myself on all outgoing messages. When an incoming self-BCC requires action from someone else, I mark it with a red flag. When someone answers my message I see the red flag at the top of my “unread” list.

My Apple Mail InBox shows me at a glance:

1) Unread messages (blue dot)

2) Unread replies to WAITING FOR messages (blue dot + red flag)

3) Action items (no blue dot)

4) WAITING FOR items (no blue dot but a red flag)

I put any messages that don’t require action in the Trash or into a Reference folder. To help me be more rutheless about tossing mail of uncertain value I keep messages in the Trash 30 days before auto-deleting.

FWIW I use Mail because it lets me search attachments. Entourage does not. Maybe Spotlight will change this?

I’ve been using a hipster setup with the portrait-orientation lined index cards (as seen on the 43folders Wiki).

Since the cards are fairly small, and I sometimes have a lot of “waiting fors”, I’ve found it very helpful to have 2 separate lists. One is on a Waiting list for stuff I am expecting to get in the next few hours and will need to take a next action on: (i.e. replies to urgent voicemail). The other list is for longer-term stuff that can safely sit for days or weeks. It sits in a “Waiting for” folder tucked into the tickler file for weekly review.

I’ve only been doing this for about two weeks, but it seems to work very nicely. I have yet to find any waiting fors that don’t cleanly fit into one category or the other.

For Josh: your method sounds interesting, but I don’t recommend BCC:ing yourself — it will fill up your mail account capacity rather quickly! You can still check what you’ve sent in the Sent folder. My boss used to BCC on every message and routinely locked up her email account.

Just another 2 cents…

I find the use of stickies to be excellent, for mac users. fast to fire up the program, can save and quit and it will remember where you placed everything, easy to print out notes, change colours for your own preferences, you can double click the title of each sticky and ‘roll it up’, and of course you can save notes as rtf files if they start turning into ‘documents’

I use the tickle file for this. I have a hipster PDA and my system is entirely 3X5 index card based. Any “waiting for” item gets written on a card and tickled for an appropriate time period. When that day arrives I reasses the card (item). I decide what the next action is immediately. It may go into the Hipster as an next action (“call bob about my hammer he borrowed”). It may get tossed if it was previously done. It may get re-tickled if it needs more incubating time, or if the terms have changed a bit.

My tickler is a safe system for me. I dump it every day and I try to make my cards descriptive enough so that things won’t get lost.

And a little bit of my own 2 cents…I think that index cards work better than lists any way. You can deal with each item the card represents on an individual basis. You don’t have to recopy on multiple lists. No confusion as to what list to keep the card in. One card, one item, one physical space (hipster, tickler, “project hipster”) to keep it. So far so good with me.

I do exactly the same thing. One thing that bugged me about GTD, as a projectmanager, is you hand the responsibility to answer your email to someone else. Now, that is not a bad thing. But face it, my clients have other things to do than keep track of my emails alone. So every now and then, They need a little reminder. I set the due date on Tasks or when something really has a hard deadline, I put it on my agenda a few days before. For instance, some decisions to get a project moving again and not losing milestones or important deadlines. It helps, every now and again. But what ticks me now, is during the reviewphase (every two or three days, not weekly…) I really have to think: “Did he answer me?” “Has she called?” and think about the NA then. So now, I am moving into a phase where I am ticking off @Waiting items when they occur and immediately put on the NA.

It sure helps to simplify, but man…that’s hard!

I haven’t had success with a “waiting on” folder, or with follow-up tags in email. It’s too easy for me to ignore. This shows a weakness on my part, not a weakness in the system. I keep running home to the HipsterPDA. Anything requiring follow-up (anything I’m waiting on is a follow-up) gets put on an index card with @TODO in the upper left-hand corner. The words FOLLOW UP are in all caps on my index card to draw my attention. I sort through my @TODO items several times a day. If at the end of the day I’m still waiting, it stays in the @TODO for constant follow-up. This seems to work OK for me YMMV.

I use the hipster, and I had tried putting items in my tickler, but found that the dates I put on the items could change given events and it was too hard to sort trough the tickler file to find them.

So I’m back to a waiting for list, but I do put date targets on them. Every morning I do a quick scan of the list to see if I need to create a todo to follow up (or just do it if it takes 2 minutes or less).

I understand about your uneasiness at letting some of the responsibility go but I think that’s the beauty of the system. See what you can do…

At work, I have a Waiting For folder in my email and it used to get out of hand when I waited to do the Weekly Review. Sometimes I even forgot why I was waiting for something. Ouch! Since then I do a Power Review every night or right before I leave work and delete those Waiting For’s that have been resolved. I just use a rule of thumb to send a follow up email every 2 - 3 days reminding the person. I think there would be way too many next actions on my list if I had to explicitly place those on my lists.

I find that the waiting on (or as I put it “delegated”) category is essential, at least for lawyers. We tend to pass things along to our paralegals and secretaries that can be, at times, time sensitive. The delegated section of my to-do list lets me know what’s missing when I’m worried about deadlines.

[…] This practice has not only been helpful in establishing my trustworthiness as a business partner, but it’s also allowed me to manage my clients better. Too often I send an email or leave a voice mail with a client who doesn’t respond, or only  half-delivers on the request I made to them. By not letting my inbox become a dumping ground, I’ve been able to keep both myself and my clients on task and thus deliver better results for both of us. (The concept of  the “waiting for” has been crucial in this game.) […]