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Newbie question - actions 'by' a certain date?

I just finished reading GTD and I've already blocked off 2 days to get started, but something's still bothering me: what about actions that need to get done by (but not necessarily ON) a certain date? An example is a paper that needs to be written: assume that all the research has been done, and the task of writing the paper remains. Let's say it will take approximately 12 hours to write, and it's due next Thursday.

How do I capture this? If I put a calendar item in for Thursday, it could be that I miss the deadline since I didn't allocate enough time. If I put it in my actions list, then I'm not guaranteed to get to it by the deadline.

(Or have I missed some fundamental piece of this process?)

GOD's picture

Thanks for the tips. ...

aberrant wrote:
Thanks for the tips. Since I haven't implemented the system yet, I can't really tell which way will work. However, this isn't a college paper - it's something that I'm already expert in, and therefore all the research has been completed. It's just a matter of sitting down to write it, and I'm still trying to figure out how to capture "next actions" that are greater than 2 minutes long, but have a deadline. I didn't see anything in the book addressing this.

I do my task management on my Pocket PC which lets me assign start and due dates. The start date keeps it from showing up until it is important to me, which helps to keep me uncluttered, and the due date just gives me an idea of when I need to complete the task by.

The David's "four-criteria model for choosing actions in the moment" (49 & 192) includes priority as one of the criteria (in addition to context, time available, and energy available), and I just consider this a way of prioritizing.

Here are some possibly relevant threads:

Due dates on tasks - http://board.43folders.com/showthread.php?t=370
Deciding on context - http://board.43folders.com/showthread.php?t=247

 
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