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Creative reminder checklists

David Allen says that there are seven types of things that need to be kept track of:

  • projects
  • project support material
  • calendar
  • next actions
  • waiting for
  • reference
  • someday/maybe ideas

But then at the end of Chapter 7 of GTD, he suggests how useful it is to maintain plenty of checklists of creative reminders. So what are these? They don't fit into any of the above categories, and he doesn't say how or where there should be organised.

TOPICS: Ask 43f, GTD
augmentedfourth's picture

Seven things to track

It's also not important to think about each of those 7 things as discrete things that must be tracked separately, as long as you make sure there's a place for each in your system.

For instance, my Waiting-For is actually just an @waiting context in my next action lists. Also, my Someday/Maybe is just a subset of my project lists (I just put "SOMEDAY:" at the beginning of the title and don't associate any actions). I handle the "creative reminders" similarly.

I also keep project support material and reference stuff all filed in the same place, though the material for in-progress projects is positioned for easier access.

So it doesn't have to be so complicated. I know I'd freak out if I felt like I had to be constantly monitoring 7-8 different information locations.

 
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