Discussion Forum > Contexts and Long Lists
I think that Mark Forster's replies on the old thread are good ones.
So with email, you can write "Email" to process all the emails at once, but if there is one email that will take too long to do at the time, you can write that email down as a separate item.
If there is a routine task that is easy to do, and you like to do, you can put just the routine down. But, if it is a task that is difficult, or one you are resisting, you can break it down as you wish.
The long list does get harder to maintain the longer it is, so one can have dynamic lists to shorten the long list. So let's say, with a catch-all list, you brainstorm and have 10 items which you are not likely to do, perhaps only one of them - one could take them off the long list, and make a collection, and put them aside on another list, and then use it to make the decision easier on which one to do.
Let's say you are at a computer - you could scan the list for items that can be done on a computer, and work from the list. Or at the time you are at the computer, before starting, you could rewrite the items, and put them on a separate list, and work from that. So, you are creating a context list in real time during the work process. You can do it as needed, instead of during the processing mode when processing the items.
So the long list can change during the work process to facilitate the flow, and doesn't have to be logically consistent. One could put tasks under projects, as in an outliner, but those tasks can get lost under the project. If one is doing the project in a time block, then it might make more sense to keep all the tasks together. However, if one is doing a next action at any time, then it might make more sense to put on the long list.
So with email, you can write "Email" to process all the emails at once, but if there is one email that will take too long to do at the time, you can write that email down as a separate item.
If there is a routine task that is easy to do, and you like to do, you can put just the routine down. But, if it is a task that is difficult, or one you are resisting, you can break it down as you wish.
The long list does get harder to maintain the longer it is, so one can have dynamic lists to shorten the long list. So let's say, with a catch-all list, you brainstorm and have 10 items which you are not likely to do, perhaps only one of them - one could take them off the long list, and make a collection, and put them aside on another list, and then use it to make the decision easier on which one to do.
Let's say you are at a computer - you could scan the list for items that can be done on a computer, and work from the list. Or at the time you are at the computer, before starting, you could rewrite the items, and put them on a separate list, and work from that. So, you are creating a context list in real time during the work process. You can do it as needed, instead of during the processing mode when processing the items.
So the long list can change during the work process to facilitate the flow, and doesn't have to be logically consistent. One could put tasks under projects, as in an outliner, but those tasks can get lost under the project. If one is doing the project in a time block, then it might make more sense to keep all the tasks together. However, if one is doing a next action at any time, then it might make more sense to put on the long list.
June 3, 2024 at 15:41 |
Mark H.
Mark H.
Separate thread because a. It’s an old thread b. My points are sort of tangential to the rest of the discussion (and probably rather half-baked)
>What's the value in such a list? Well, it certainly isn't without value, but I'd be hard pressed to >argue that it is simpler in toto than either the GTD or No List approaches mentioned above, and >I'd also be hard pressed to argue for its use over just "no system at all". At this level of resolution, >you might as well just as yourself, what type of work do I want to do right now? And then move on >to your specific lists. That's in fact exactly how GTD works, in that you first ask yourself the type >of work you can do, and then go to the context associated with that type of work so that you can >begin taking action off of the next action list for that context.
Isn’t part of the reason for having context-like entries on long lists precisely to allow for handling situations similarly to GTDs contexts, projects, and so on when appropriate? That is to say, an additional layer of granularity rather than a universal rule.
>But a "list of lists" used to decide what lists you're going to look at next just adds more systems
>and overhead that doesn't seem necessary at all. You can easily decide whether your going to
>work off of some list or the other, there's no need to have a list of your lists to decide what type of
>work you want to do.
Doesn’t this assume that there’s no benefit to be gained from scanning a purely context long list intuitively, rather than just picking the obvious list. While you could just pick the list in an intuitive manner, that might reduce benefits based on juxtaposition, serendipity, and the like.
>I suspect that the vast majority of people find a long list valuable precisely because they can put
>things into that list *instead* of putting them in some other list, not because it's an additional
>added list for them to work on top of lists they are already expected to maintain.
Are lists as expensive to maintain and create as this would imply? It might be true for paper, but it should be easy enough to use sub lists in outliners (effectively treating the lists as part of the main list under the heading of the context task)