Something interesting happened to me yesterday, using my GTD app. On Sundays, I like to do an Update and catch up on all the tasks I need to accomplish. For the first time in my app's storied history, the incomplete tasks took up more space than two pages would allow.

I've never thought about how to handle this, as I've always had success in completing the tasks as I've reached them. Not so now. (To be fair, I've been giving a massive pile of tasks to accomplish, the likes of which I've never seen. That I'm way behind isn't a problem, per se, it's just I haven't had the occasion to finish them all yet.)

As I was sitting there, in my chair, I thought I'd need to come up with a better way to handle the tasks, some way to get around the limitations of the app. That's when I realized I was messing with something that was working as intended. It's obvious that, in a moment of weakness, I wanted to change the system, just because it wasn't working the way I wanted at the time. The way to take tasks out of the queue is to accomplish something; I wanted them to just go away.

I think this is the first time I've realized how annoying this thing can be. Here I am, trying to be more organized, trying to hack away at the evils of scheduling, and the one thing that helps me most betrays me. That's how I thought, anyhow. I never thought something that was built to ease my mind could be such a bother.

And so, I'm finding that I need a new level of sophistication, more nuance. I could go, as the app's intended, line-by-line and complete what I can complete, or I can figure out a bunch of new codes to add special context-sensitive meaning. And then I could just pitch my notebook altogether, since it would lose all meaning if I didn't put in tasks that need doing, with no other avenue of accomplishment other than to do them, wait, or don't do them.

I have over 40 lines, now. Until I get something done, that is, and I'll be down to 39. That's how it's supposed to be. That's how the app works.

status: published
lastmod: '2006-11-13T05:50:52.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
cms: wordpress
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