TOPIC: Pending activities without delegation a. follow-up

Hello,

I am not sure how to handle pending activities which are not delegated to somebody else, managed by myself and are not finished yet in TR. To describe the problem here is just a short example:

- Action: Update my notebook warranty status at Lenovo by email
- Action status: ASAP

Well, I did send the email. But now the whole issue is pending, i.e. I have to wait for a confirmation email from Lenovo.

How shall I manage this action state in Thinking Rock? This action is only half way done by myself, so I cannot set the state to "done" because I have to wait for the confirmation mail. I think that creating a second action (e.g. 'Waiting for confirmation email?') is not the right way.

What I am missing first is something like the 'follow-up' date which can be used when I delegate an action to somebody else. But this functionality won't work with my example: I did it by myself. But the action is not completed, I need the follow-up field to be reminded to this action in e.g. a week to look for the confirmation email or the new warranty state.

As a workaround I could delegate the action to myself. Now, with this trick, I could use the follow-up field. Would this be the right method?

The second thing I am missing is a sort of checkbox that this action is pending at the moment, i.e. that I am currently dealing with it. This could be an alternative to the follow-up field, i.e. I could imagine an action filter where all actions are listed which I am working on but which are not finished yet. Of course one can image actions which are more complex and would take two or more days to finish. If I start with such a complex action it should be possible to mark it in TR with respect to this new state.

Thanks for any hints how to handle these two issues in TR!

Thorsten

Why you don't set the action as delegated to Lenovo and enter a follow-up date? If you have any tabs in your ReviewActions screen based on action date, this delegated action will then appear at the right time.

For the definition of action date, see the following article:
http://www.trgtd.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76:actiondate&catid=40:tutcat&Itemid=85

Also don't forget that you don't need to create a delegate for Lenovo, if it is a on-off, you can enter a free text in the delegate field.

Thanks, I see. In sending Lenovo the email I _did_ already delegate the action. Ok!

What do you think regarding my second question? I would like to mark actions that I am currently working on. With this sort of e.g. checkbox I could create an action view where I see all actions which are currently in process AND are not finished yet. One could image that an action could take several days to be finished, especially if some actions are done simultaneously.

At the moment I see no difference in my view 'actions to be done till today = overdue actions' between the actions which I began e.g. yesterday and the actions which are still waiting to be processed by myself. I would like to separate those actions in different views i.e. to eleminate the actions which are already started from this 'overdue' view.

I hope I could explain what I am missing!

Thorsten

Not an ideal solution but you could set a new value in the criterion Energy or Priority which will mean in-progress and filter on that.

Or put something at the beginning of the action description like 'IP' (for In Progress) and search on that...

Would it be possible to enhance TR with a status menue which means that an activity is currently in progress? I think that using the entries 'energy' or 'priority' is not a good solution for this. You admit that using those fields is not an ideal solution, too. And changing the title for an action is not acceptable for this.

Or is this what I want a contradiction of the GTD concepts? (BTW If I remember correctly there does not exist any 'priority' in GTD concepts.)

Thorsten

The workaround is the quickest way to have a solution. Changing the data model and many screens to add a field will not be done for a while.

FYI, Priority, Energy and Time are part of the GTD concepts but David Allen emphasis that filtering by Context should be first.