I’ve got certain work tasks that have to be performed every weekday. For example, “take backup tapes offsite”. How do you deal with that with Tracks or even just GTD in general? This is a task that I may not do personally, but I have to ensure it is done by somebody everyday.

As a next task it almost makes sense to have this as a NA everyday but maybe there’s a better recommendation.

Thanks.

That’s a tricky one. If it’s a daily task, it’s a bit of a pain to have to enter it every day. I would like to sort out recurring tasks eventually, so that would probably help, but I’m still not sure whether this kind of thing should be in the system or not. What do other people do?

For recurring reminders, I tend to use the reminders feature of Backpack, but it’s a very fuzzy line between the kinds of things I put in Backpack and the things I add as next actions. What do other people think?

I would very much like the recurring task feature. From recurring events like ‘create an ecard for birthday of nephew’ once a year to ‘send meeting minutes’ for a stearing board meeting once every month.

Of course you can debate it these kind of actions belong in GTD, but I think if you combine recurring tasks with the Tickler, there recurring task will only be visible when needed.  That way you only see the real next actions (regardless of them being recurring)

Alternatively you can use another tool to manage recurring task (or reminders) but I’d prefer one tool for all actions

Reinier

I actually use a separate tool for the recurring stuff:  http://www.joesgoals.com/  It’s not especially GTDish, but it works.  I just set my Firefox homepages to be my Tracks page and JoesGoals, and that sort of forms the dashboard for my day.

OK,
- B

bradheintz - 25 January 2007 04:28 PM

I actually use a separate tool for the recurring stuff:  http://www.joesgoals.com/  It’s not especially GTDish, but it works.  I just set my Firefox homepages to be my Tracks page and JoesGoals, and that sort of forms the dashboard for my day.

I do something extremely similar, including using JoesGoals.  I also use Tab Mix Plus under Firefox and “protect” and “lock” the tabs for JoesGoals and Tracks both, so they can’t be closed or navigated away from!  JG actually can be viewed as within the GTD scope if you consider it to be a calendar.  (I also use Google Calendar for non-daily or time-scheduled calendar items, and again, my calendar—or rather, my Google Personal Page on which my calendar widgets sits—is protected and locked.  As is Gmail!)