I’ve adopted something similar, but for bigger tasks. I find I have projects that I can put in groups — for example, I just moved into a new house a few months ago and still haven’t finished unpacking. I have several projects (e.g. “hang pictures”, “clean up pile in basement”, “take PC carcasses to recyclers”, etc.) which I want to complete soon, but it doesn’t really matter which one I do first. Since I’m unlikely to tackle more than one of those items in any given week, I don’t need them all cluttering up my to-do list. I keep the group of projects in a manilla folder, and make sure that when one gets completed, another one goes on the list.

I usually stick stuff like you to into seperate parts of my grand todo list, rather than file them into seperate lists. Three line breaks usually provides a good enough mental barrier. I keep my biggest, most pressing todos near the top, and the categories further down.

On the other hand, mosquito tasks can be used to break a particular project out of a procrastination rut. When I notice one of my projects stalled for a while, and I still really want to complete it, I sometimes granularize the hell out of the next action so I can see that moving the project forward really is as simple as “Get article from downstairs filing cabinet; Walk to store, buy highlighter; review article” etc.

Things like buying milk and index cards go under my @errands list (as recommended by D. Allen) under the title of “grocery store,” in this instance, with a note attached to each (we’re talking Palm environment here) with a list of those 2 items. That way I can grab everything I need there in one swoop.

I would think GTDers would put their blessing on the other groupings you suggest as well. But like you said, who cares if it isn’t within the GTD context anyway as long as it works efficiently.

I tend to use mosquito tasks like Marc does: as a way of accomplishing something on a project I really don’t want to work on. I’m far more likely to “empty kitchen trash” or “wash dirty cups” than I am to look at anything with the intimidating name of “semiweekly chores.”

I think the key for my GTD implementation is to break things into tasks small enough to not trigger a gnawing worry in my gut when I look at them, because that gnawing worry will keep me from doing the task. For instance, I have a list called “pay bills” where I add any bills that have come recently, because paying bills generally doesn’t stress me much. But if I’m worrying about a particular bill, I’ll pull it out of the list and make it a miniproject, with steps like “find phone number of PWP customer service.” Of course, the hard part is calling that number!

The better you get at GTD the more the challenges to the system mount! I’ve found Life Balance quite useful in this area, as it allows me to assign priorities to things based on overall goals - I know, creeping Coveyism - so that some of my ‘smaller’ tasks are relegated to the bottom of an @HOME list (which LB allows me to link to @garage, @kitchen, @back yard etc). This does, at least, get some order in there and I can also use a recurring function in LB. The problem with such a system, though, is that it is so dependent on having all these variables attended to that one mistake makes the whole thing collapse. Still …

[…] Ganging your mosquito tasks [43 Folders]  Comment on this post Related: Great kGTD tipsRelated: Getting To Done: Long Live Paper!Related: Eliminate unneeded daily tasks […]

I use basecamp to group my tasks with a similar manner.

I have several TODO lists to bunch certain tasks together:

to list some:

• MBA
• articles to write
• portfolio
• my secret project
• project organization (organize my files folders etc)
• personal (from buy some flowers to darling to order some chiness food for night)
• clients
• my other secret project

I’ve been using this approach for more than 3-4 months and I can say that it boosted my productivity.

It’s hard to focus on things unless you prioritize and categorize them somehow.

Cheers,

Hey

I was just wondering. We are great at making to-do lists, prioritizing them, classifying them into mosquito tasks, long-term, short-term and the like. When do we actually do whats on the lists? Our fetish with to-do lists is more than the actual task and the doing

Thanx Rajhesh

I’ll field this question.

I’ll paraphrase somewhat from Getting Things Done, and add a dash of my own experience: Many of us have lives filled with seemingly endless tasks, and when you want to get something done, it’s hard to figure out what to do next. Then, instead of actually doing something, you spend more time thinking about what you need to do, trying to organize information (often for the second or fourth or fiftieth time), and basically wasting a lot of energy that could be used more efficiently. The idea of making to-do lists is to separate the tasks of gathering information, organizing and prioritizing it, and doing it, so that you can be more efficient at each.

Does that make sense?