GTD® Trusted System

Tinderbox Tasks
1

I’d be really interested to hear from anyone who is using Tinderbox as part of their Getting Things Done (GTD) trusted system.

Here’s hoping…

2

I think some variant of this is a very common Tinderbox task.

In recent years, I’ve strayed from strict GTD, and my task lists have tended to be focused on specific projects. I’ve got a big one, for example, for Tinderbox itself, with containers to keep track of issues (specific, observable tasks), todos (some of which are themselves large projects), and releases..

Another keeps track of loose ends of my next hypertext fiction – characters, snippets of dialogue, settings, a preliminary plot outline.

One very common trick in GTD tasks is to automate conversion of tasks and projects. A task is a single thing to do, like “buy cream”; a project is a bundle of related tasks, like “plan and cook dinner for the Historical Society.” Tasks have a way of turning into projects.

In Tinderbox terms, a project is a container that holds tasks. The Task prototype might have a rule

    if ($ChildCount>0) { $Prototype="Project"}

while the Project prototype might revert to being a mere task if all the subtasks have been finished

 if ($ChildCount==0) {$Prototype="Task"}
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3

After some experiments, I learned that GDT is not the best system for me. GDT is great at lower level: cleaning your head. It is weaker at the bigger picture: strategizing your bigger projects. Agile is much more effective at strategizing life at a larger level; as well as cleaning tasks at the minute level. Agile shows you the big picture as well as the small details.

I use Tinderbox, in not-so-clever manner, with little agents and schemas, for planning my year (projects broken down into timelines); months and weeks: and finally manage the mundane everyday tasks using a modified version of this Kanban. The Kanban is more or less a GDT system.