Stuck at 10
My GTD application Tracks has a little red badge at the top left of each page displaying how many uncompleted actions are in the list, and over the past few weeks, I’ve been keeping an eye on that number. Of course, everyone is likely to differ in the number of things that they have on their list; not only because people are differently busy, but also because everyone has a different level of granularity for the tasks they enter.
It’s probably a failing on my part, but my granularity is quite chunky. This is partly because some of my tasks are difficult to break down into smaller pieces. For example, I’m putting together a poster for a scientific meeting at the moment. Now, I could divide it up further into chunks like ‘write text’ and ‘insert figures’, but that would be a bit artificial. I just have to get on and do it, but it’s going to take more than the mythical half a day.
Possibly because of this chunkiness (or because I’m a total lightweight—-who knows?), my magic red badge tends to vary between about 10 and 20 (this number doesn’t include emails I have to deal with). I strongly suspect that the upper limit isn’t down to my ninja-like efficiency in keeping the number of tasks low, but my reluctance—-when under a lot of pressure—-to add anything else to the list. The lower limit is more of a puzzle. Whatever I do, I can’t seem to get it down below 10. Once or twice the number has tantalizingly flipped down to 8 or 9, but then I instantly get some other task to deal with, and back up it goes.
It’s like some kind of physical GTD constant for me.
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JonH: Whoa! 100! It seems I am a lightweight.
Alan: Weird, isn't it.
John: Drop me an email at butshesagirl at this domain and let me know what versions of Ruby, Rails and other gems you are using, whether you are using Apache or WEBrick, and any errors you get, and I'll see if I can help.----- Well, I can only dream of 10. I've been using tracks for a little while now and my tasks hover around the 100 mark. But... some of mine really aren't proper 'next actions' yet since I migrated a bunch of them from another list. Over half of them currently are in my free time context, and some 30 odd in 'someday maybe'. Strangest for me is that even though I have more free time than just about anybody I know (due to a soon-to-end period of unemployment), things almost never come off the free time list. A lot of the day gets taken up with things that even I don't put into Tracks I suppose. cheers,
Jon
by JonH @ 03/03/2005 11:04 pm • Permalink •
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Mine hovers between 10 and 20 - I tend to put fairly meaty things on there (apart from calls, which I don't have many to do).
But it doesn't seem to get much below 10, ever, like yours. Weird.
by Alan @ 04/03/2005 8:03 am • Permalink •
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I cant even seem to get Tracks going ....im obviously missing something here!
I followed all directions for Debian GNU Linux on the wiki, but to no avail. Would really like to get this app running on my webserver.
by John @ 05/03/2005 3:03 pm • Permalink •
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I have a life solution to the problem; I never make lists, I just live a vaguely disorganised life, and have done for the best part of 60 years. I did used to try, but once I'd written it down, I no longer needed to remember it anymore, and that always seems to include the fact that I ad written it down .... somewhere!
by Jonathan Briggs @ 05/03/2005 7:03 pm • Permalink •
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