Create a Tomorrow List to combine "Do it tomorrow" with GTD
The two time management methodologies that I have found make sense to me are GTD and Mark Forster's Do it Tomorrow. I have been using GTDNext since IQtell went belly up and I find it invaluable but I have been trying to incorporate the DIT methodology with tricks (tags, etc) without much success.
I assume it would not be very difficult to create a Tomorrow list, similar to the Today list. At midnight, generate any scheduled task on that list the day before the task is due. Before that, move the previous Tomorrow tasks to the Today list.
This will allow the planning of the next day at the end of the working day. Currently I need to do my planning first thing in the morning instead of jumping directly into work (I tend to be sidetracked by this morning planning). Planning the previous day also gives me more peace of mind (one of the most important benefit of GTD) as my subconscious would not constantly be telling me that a disruptive - and long forgotten - scheduled task may pop-up on the Today List the next morning.
JPerez
shared this idea
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JPerez
commented
Hi James. I have been working with your suggestion for some time now and found it a good solution for my requirement. In the beginning, I was using scheduled tasks only for repetitive activities (fill my timesheets on Fridays for example), but now I use them not only for tomorrows activities but also to push away tasks to a more convenient point in time (to the weekend for weekend-type tasks, for example). In my view, unless you want to do something more sophisticated, you can close the ticket. Thanks again for your excellent solution.
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JPerez
commented
Hi James.
Thanks for the prompt reply. I'm happy that you have it in your radar and may do something about it. With regards to the workaround, a Tomorrow view is not the biggest problem. At the end of the day I plan the next day by moving the task I want to do into Today. In the morning I move them back from Past Day's actions to Today in the sequence I want to do them. No big deal.
My main issue is with scheduled tasks. I know I can see what is coming in the scheduled list, but since the actions have not been created yet, I cannot work on them (apply tags, add details, etc). One option is to schedule the actions in advance with titles like "Do X tomorrow" or "Pay Y in 5 days" but it is cumbersome. One thing that I really like of scheduled actions is that the schedule date is added to the action description. If I schedule in advance the date will be when the action is generated and not when I need to do it.
Maybe you can consider a more generic improvement to help with this: an optional parameter in the scheduled action for "Create action n days in advance" (Default 0). Then generate the actions on the ( event date - n ) date.
That way it will be possible to work on the action before the event date arrives and the date added to the description will be the right one.