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Processing Non-Actionable Reference Material

PRO

ryandemler 03/08/2017 03:26

Platform:All

I like to freely dump information into my Inbox in the spirit of David Allen. I don't like to think, just dump (collect) and the Process later.

Because of this, many non-actionable (reference) items end up in my inbox.

How do you recommend Processing such items without having to copy and paste to another another filing program? (If I tag them in Doit, they still remain as items in Next or Someday. This doesn't feel right. Am I missing something?

David Allen calls these occurrences "reference material" and I would love a seamless way to file them within DoIt. Such examples are: Maybe it is a quote I like and want to remember, or just an inspirational idea, or a revelation about family values. How do I process these as efficiently as possible? I don't use Evernote or the like. I like to dump everything into my GTD and work outward.

I am a Things defector (largely because you have cross-platform + online access) and they use Green Boxes for Areas. I found these to be very useful places to dump non-actionable items quickly from my Inbox that I could later reference.

How do you recommend processing such non-actionable, reference material as efficiently as possible from my Iphone (hopefully without leaving your app, or discarding the info?)

Thanks!

Best,
Ryan

agoodwin21 post on 03/08/2017 18:05#1

PRO

I would move it to WAITING FOR and not assign a due date. This would allow you to create tasks with due dates for those tasks that you are truly waiting for others to get back to you and consider the tasks without due dates as reference. But it would be cleaner if the developers created a reference focus.
ryandemler post on 03/09/2017 03:46#2

PRO

@agoodwin21

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Yes, I suppose there are ways to create 'dead' items that can be referred upon solely as tagged/searchable, but then doesn't it render the unfortunately chosen feature useless (e.g. Waiting For)? Is the best-practice solution to "tag" items and then immediately complete? Maybe. This is a big component of GTD and I am surprised this robust app doesn't address (yet) in its guide.

There are threads on this site to aforementioned need as "Areas" (some dating all the way back to 2014).

Are there plans to formally address in 2017? Or perhaps there is already a solution I am unaware of?

Thanks.
Kassy post on 03/10/2017 12:23#3

Doit.im

Hi,

Thank you very much for your question!

We would recommend you add inactive projects and its tasks with start time set as Someday so that you may not see the reference materials in Someday tasks but can still see them or search to find them in those projects.

For example, there are some information that I may refer to afterwards. So I created two inactive projects named "Reference: Time Management", "Reference: Cuisine". And add Someday tasks under them. Thus, generally, I would not see these tasks, but when I need to check the references, I can quickly find them by opening the two inactive projects or searching keywords.

I hope that could help you！
Any problems or suggestions, please feel free to tell us.
Kassy post on 03/10/2017 12:39#4

Doit.im

@ryandemler
As for the Area feature, it's not yet in our system. Though adding a new feature is easy to do, we have to remember we are making a product that we hope our users would love to use. If it's just a pileup of features, then it would soon become too complicated for people to love it.
Since we haven't had big updates during the past year, we've now planned to improve every platform of Doit.im. We are focused first on the improvement of the existing features to make them easier to use but still keep them concise enough. As for features that might make the app more complex like Area, we've been thinking of other better ways.

If you have any ideas, on the existing features, or on other needs, please remember to tell us.
Thank you very much!