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Tracking things got done

Hi All,

I'm curious to know how much effort others put in to not only tracking things that need to be done, but also things that have been completed.

I ask because I've been experimenting with a couple of different tools for implementing GTD, most particularly GTD_TiddlyWiki, and I've found that while tracking things that need to be done is reasonably straight forward, keeping a record of things that I have done is a little more involved.

Because of this, I've started work on building a GTD application in Microsoft Access, which should make that side of the process easier, among other things (it's nowhere near finished, but if anyone happens to be interested in seeing it when it's at a stage to be distributed, please let me know via feedback through the link below - I'll keep a list of emails from anyone who expresses an interest).

So, I'm curious to know if others go to any effort to keep a track of completed "things". Personally, I do this as a matter of course, as I have a terrible memory, which is what drives me to look for better ways to be organized (and what prompted me to find out more about GTD).

But what do others do? Discard information relating to done things? Keep a note of them somewhere? Something else?

Much warmth,

planetthoughtful
---
"Lost in thought"
http://www.planetthoughtful.org

tomrokey's picture

I keep a running work...

I keep a running work journal including my next actions in an Excel spreadsheet. The format is very similar to that of Evernote. I use one column for status --NA, Waiting, Someday, ..... I can run a quick search to round up all of my NA and I also highlight those items so that they are more visible on my screen.

When I complete a NA I just change the Status to "DONE" and remove the highlight. Thats it. its documented. I can search for all things "DONE", an exercise I do occasionally to review where I am spending my energies, and compare that list to my longer term goals. I seem to spend more time than I would like on "Urgent" but menial tasks than I would like so I think that tracking things done is worthwile.

Tom

 
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