Re: GTD, Projects, and Next Actions in org-mode

[Tim O'Callaghan <timo@dspsrv.com>]

On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 04:36:51PM -0400, Jason F. McBrayer wrote:
> 
> I thought I'd ask to see how other people who are using org for
> Getting Things Done are handling projects and their relationship to
> Next Actions.  I've tried out several approaches, and while I can rule
> out a few as no good, there are some with enough plusses and minuses
> to keep me from being really happy with any of them.
> 
> My first go was to have a top-level category for projects, with a
> headline for each project under that.  This worked for keeping track
> of my list of projects, but it didn't give me any way to tell what
> project a Next Action was associated with.
> 
> My next attempt was to mix together projects and next actions, with
> next actions coming hierarchically under the project they were
> associated with.  Projects have a tag unique to that project, but
> distinct from the tags I am using for contexts (contexts start with @,
> projects with nothing).  This works, but the only way to get a list of
> projects is to either look manually through the file, or get the list
> of tags and ignore the ones that are contexts.
> 
> I've tried two others:  one is to make PROJECT an org-todo-keyword.
> This makes it very easy to get a list of projects, with the negative
> side effect that projects can show up in context lists if they are
> tagged with a context so that their Next Actions can inherit it (e.g.,
> home improvements are all tagged @Home).  This would work fine if I
> didn't use tag inheritance, or was conscientious about not putting
> contexts in projects.  The other thing I've tried is to make "Project"
> a tag.  This obviously works only if one is not using tag
> inheritance --- if you're not, then it's easy to get a list of
> projects, but if you are, you'll get all your next actions, too.
> 
> What are other people doing to keep track of their projects?  Is
> having projects listable all that important?
> 

At the moment my current project 'template' is:

* Project name                                             :proj:projectcontext:
  Project outcomes/visualization/rationale
  file:link to project reference files/directories
  file:link to project source files/directories

*** [DONE|X|10|15|30|45] next action                       :Next Action context:
***** [DONE|10|15|30|45] sub action                        :Next Action context:


Where :proj: means its a project description context. [DONE....] is
the next action type. This is either DONE, X (untimed),
10... estimated next action time.

Still its still very hard to manage lots and lots of projects.

Tim.