My TaxonomiCal Complex

I spent some time this morning reorganising my to-do lists by context. I read David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) in March and back then I didn't have enough work to justify a complicated filing system because I was in between jobs.

But my list got cluttered and unwieldy very quickly and I got more and more frustrated. I had appointments sharing the same group as tasks as they were lumped under "Work" and "Personal", so I sat down and split 'em named 'em and ordered 'em. I wish I can stick in a little divider so that I can separate the appointments, tasks, and reference calendars; oh how I long for Leopard.

Under appointments, I have Class, Work appointments, and Personal appointments. Every event I have to be at can be slotted, forcibly or not, into one of the above calendars. The purpose of my Appointments group of calendars is that they tell me when I have to be where.

Under tasks, I have @town, @desk, @computer, @library, @home, and @office. When I am in the office, I can simply untick @home and @town, and my to-do list magically whittles itself down to tasks I can actually do right there, right then. Why worry about sunning my mattress when I'm in the office? If I have fifiteen minutes to spare in front of a computer, I can check out my @computer list to see if I can do a bit of backlog googling.

Then there are my reference calendars that helps me keep track of stuff. There is Birthdays, KIV, Mailtags (I may scrap this one 'cos I can't access Apple Mail in office), and On call. These are informational calendars that give the larger picture so I can plan my tiny NextActions tasks. For example, I may have "Run the 10km PAssion run on 8 July" in my KIV calendar, which will remind me to stick in "Sign up for PAssion run online" in my @computer task (v. impt), and start planning progressively longer and speedier runs in the lead-up to the race in my Personal appointments calendar.

I feel so accomplished — and I haven't even done anything yet! :)