I have not found a perfect solution to this problem yet, and it is a real problem with GTD. The best I've found is this:

Each one of those ongoing projects gets to be just that, a project. The difference is, it will never be completed. You can still have a list of NAs though, and they can fit into your choice of contexts like any other NA. Obviously this will differ with any implementation of GTD - I personally use myLifeOrganized to track mine. It has wonderful recurring task options which I use extensively for this kind of maintenence. Some examples:

Goal: Keep house clean and comfortable
-Project: Keep kitchen clean
++Cleanup dishes and put in dishwasher
++Wash counters and stove
++Clean out frifge/freeze
-Project: Keep bedroom clean
++put away any clothes
++vaccuum
-Project: Laundry
...
...

I even use it for maintenance on my vehicles:

Goal: Keep vehicles maintained
-Project: Truck Maint
++Check tire pressue and oil level
++Wash truck
++Is it time for an oil change? (if so, then I setup a sub-project for this to Buy Oil, Buy Filter, Change Oil, Take used oil to gas station)
-Project: Motorcycle Maint
...
...

I have only tried this using MLO, so I can't say exactly how well it would work in other implementations, but I have to imagine you could make something up. One important change I have made is to recur tasks x days after completion, rather than on a specific day. This allows me to fall behind. For example, if I didn't wash the truck for 25 days, instead of 14, then checked it off, under the old system I would have another wash due in 4 days - obviously not what I want. That's my little opinion anyways :)

Ooooh, thanks! The ideas make a lot of sense (and that last bit about x days after completion is the cherry on top.)

Something interesting, I think, about listing these recurring tasks is you can actually see how damned much you might be fitting in to your life. Maybe you feel (if you're doing straight GTD) that you're not really achieving very much. because you're 'ticking over'. But if ticking over takes ten hours every week, you can see where your time is being bled away.

Were you doing straight GTD, then decided to put your routine into the system? If so, did you find that you changed what you were doing because of it? So, maybe you saw that you spend ten hours a week doing the dishes and decided to get a dishwasher?

In order to avoid adding a patch (I like to fully use what's there before adding anything), I consider some of these recurring tasks into hard landscape as well as projects. In other words, they go on my calendar. Gassing up my car and checking the oil/water/air/etc happens on my way home from work on Friday and I tickle it every week. I don't do NAs during that time. Home/self maintenance tasks like running the dishwasher and flossing teeth every night (daily calendar = hard landscape) or vaccuuming behind the refrigerator grill (yearly = tickler file) can fit into GTD without additional methodology.

Fitness goals fit in, too. Making tomorrow's healthy lunch and laying out workout gear every night = hard landscape. Buy a new yoga video and mat = project.

When it comes to relationship issues, I find myself dropping ticklers and projects in as they come up in my thoughts and in my journal. Birthdays go in the tickler file. Keeping a gift idea list (at various times, I've done it both on paper and in a Palm) has generated way more ideas for me than keeping it all in my head. My brother-in-law's birthday is coming up? Consulting the list shows a book about a country he traveled to recently.

Implementing GTD and writing things down has raised my relationship awareness. Right now, two of the items on my @email list are to answer emails from old high school friends. I suspect that I've had two or more similar unanswered emails in my mailbox, but before GTD they either dropped off the radar or got stuck as a low priority and never got done. Now I see that I've got some interesting people reaching out to me, and all I have to do is answer the email and schedule dinner (= hard landscape) or whatever. Keeping an Agenda list has made me realize that I have three questions to ask my mother-in-law. So when she calls about something else, I remember what I wanted to ask her. In the same call, I find out that another relative is injured. Get well flowers (= tickler file) for tomorrow, to remind me that's a timely task. As I scan my @email and @calls lists, I see that an aunt's name doesn't appear anywhere...the one whom I always hit it off with. So I might add an item to my @calls list or @home list to write her a letter or @errands list to buy her a card.

The only patch I've added here is my own journaling, which has made me aware of my desire to give back in my immediate relationships.

I don't think anything's missing from GTD. But that may be because I was implementing FlyLady before GTD, so I had the hard landscape thing starting to be under control. Not everything in GTD is an NA. It can be hard landscape or a nebulous project. A "getting fit" goal can be subdivided into a "exercise one minute more every day until I'm up to 45 mins" project, then pick a sport (next project).

One method I've found success with is to create a separate 'weekly' list, broken down by day of the week. This list gets put aside and then consulted during the weekly review, as I plan out the upcoming week, normally on Sundays. It includes all those things that need to be done x number of times per week (cycling, gym, etc.), as well as stuff that needs to happen on a particular day (market night on Thursday). As mentioned in a previous post here, a lot of this can be handled using your calendar program.

Thanks for the thoughts.

I'd somehow forgotten about calendaring ;) Nansense, you are spot on with that. Because very little of my work is timetabled, I'd not really added calendaring to my system. I think I will.

I'd like to know if you organise your recurring actions as part of a project, in any sense. I tend to have lots of outcomes, and a set of actions to get that outcome. Eg;

outcome:
Integrate BusinessNonsense+ with Wasteo'Time Professional Edition 2004
actions:
@PHONE talk to Jeff about requirements
@PHONE verify license terms with BN+ support staff
@PC write a 'tracer bullet' proving concept

Then I use that to create my next action lists, by context.

So I was imagining a similar 'indefinite project'; something like this;

outcome:
Maintain my current level of fitness
actions:
@GYM, Mon, Thu: 30 mins in gym
@HOME, Mon, Thu: wash gym kit

And then, when I generate my context lists, I get the gym trip and such on my lists.

So, when you put something on your calendar, do you somehow link it back to an explicit project or outcome or goal?

Robert; thanks for that approach.

Steve

To answer your question, Steve, I really don't have a good system for linking individual items back to a project outline now. I use iCal, Sticky Brain, and a Palm in order to have all my scheduling and contact information on both home and work computers and my Palm. I have a memo in StickyB for each project. For complex or long projects, I'll put the action items right in with my notes with a checkbox. Then during weekly review I paste them into iCal. In iCal, I give tasks a date only if they're date-related. I keep Next Actions undated and in an Unfiled Calendar in iCal, so I can turn that calendar off and not have to see the big overwhelming list all the time. But they all get synched to my Palm. (Of course, with this system, I can't use the Tasks categories on my Palm.)

Now, would I like to be able to click a link in a StickyBrain memo and go to the task in iCal? And click a task in iCal and have the project outline open up? Sure, but I have not been able to find any software that does that AND synchs to my Palm and to multiple computers AND lets me use categories (contexts). Since I'm on a Mac, Entourage would be the closest, but my Palm is a T3 and the conduit for this model is faulty.

In fact, I've become so frustrated with the inability or unwillingness of software companies to handle simple things like calendaring, outlining, and keywording without using huge, slow, buggy database files to do it, I went analog for a while and loved it. But in the end, I couldn't get over my addiction to being able to make appointments in my Palm everywhere I go and upload to one main calendar on my Mac, and I'd rather keyboard than write longhand, so I'm back to electronics.

I just put a checklist somewhere obvious. Understanding that I am trying to build a habit, I hard landscape "Kitchen checklist" and just start cranking away. I do this until I realize I am doing the items on the list A) without remembering to reference the checklist and B) without scheduling it. However, at that point, my kitchen is clean, so who cares?

Thanks again for the thoughts, guys. I'm mulling it all over.

I second the call to a checklists and tickler items. I have checklists for a lot of things. For the kitchen, there's a checklist/calendar on the fridge, dry erase, of every chore that needs to be done that week. Once a week, you rotate in other chores (I don't wash my exterior windows or change the filter on the HVAC weekly, but every few months they make it to the weekly checklist). Once done, an occasionally recurring item goes into the tickler.

Relationships can benefit from checklists as well, just make sure you hide those from view.

I discovered the same thing over the weekend! Check out pp. 178-79 in GTD. David gives an inspiring discussion of checklists. The challenge seems to be keeping them "in your face," like putting them on your computer or physical desktop, moving them to each day's tickler file, or on display on the fridge, wall calendar, whiteboard, bathroom mirror, etc.

Things to keep in mind (in my experience):
You don't want the list to get stale so that you don't even see it anymore.
Don't mix the checklist items with N/A items.
Don't make the checklist too long or too ambitious. If you put things on it that you can't realistically do, you'll lose the trust in your system, and get discouraged because you'll never get around to any NAs!