January 2006 is my target month for change, with many arcs of effort reaching the same point of fruition. Music releases, a Max/MSP toolbox, some noisy hardware fun, Daevlmakr re-launch, 2Second(fuse)v2. For projects like these, sequence is important but timing is all set to the same value: as soon as it can be done.
I’ve implemented a very stripped down GTD variant in Tinderbox to keep my daily tasks focused and rolling, without the overhead of tracking due dates and priorities:
MasterLists contains complete, step-by-step breakdowns of the actions necessary to move from start to finish, along with notes and ideas on alternate plans.
The individual day notes in the ToDay container give me a constant indicator of what I need to do right now from MasterLists. They’re also a daily place for non-project ToDo items to stay in front of my eyes. If I don’t finish my tasks today, I simply cut and paste the lot into tomorrow.
Option-J creates a triangular delta, which looks enough like an upward arrow to tell me the action is dependent on the one above it, but not distinct enough to warrant placement as an individual action. Option-V creates a nice tick mark (which may have thought it was a square root before I had my way with it) to give an OCD “this one’s done” tingle.
There’s no automation, no sexy contextual coloring or aggregations… just hands-on involvement with the low-level daily tasks involved in linear accomplishment of larger goals. I wouldn’t manage a multi-threaded project with different dates and priorities for deliverables with this, but for immediate purposes it works wonderfully.
