Week 5 Entry - Chapter 7

            An important idea that I took away from chapter 7 was giving items hard edges.  This goes hand in hand with setting up the right baskets, because you can have the basic baskets but the items themselves need to be well defined to be placed into the appropriate basket.  If an item is placed in the wrong basket, it will just take up more mental energy.  I particularly like how Allen organizes certain actions by context (e.g. location), because these items will be lumped in a way to maximize efficiency.  I would not have to think about the items placed in the “At Home” category until I was at that location, and focus on the tasks outside of that frame in the meantime.  He mentions that switching between tasks while trying to get into the rhythm of the new task will take more energy than cranking out these items when in the designated context (144).  These are mainly for “as-soon-as-possible” actions, because again we need to clearly define our bigger tasks with more than one action as projects. 

            I thought the physical tickler file using folders made sense yet made the process seem even more intimidating.  In order for it to work, I have to update it everyday to be reminded of item I placed there in the past.  However, I could postpone these items again to another date if the present is not an appropriate time.  This reminds me of the problem with the daily-to-do list, when I would postpone the items for the current day to the next day.  I could be confusing the intention of the tickler file, because those items in the tickler system would not hold as much at-the-moment importance.  The tickler system appears to only allow a 2-month time frame, but what about items further in the future?
            Allen points out that checklists can be made for anything, and the checklist that I thought was clever was the “Travel Checklist (everything to take on or do before a trip)” (179).  That is because these can serve as templates.  I always make a list before traveling of the things I need, and a lot of the items are the same each time.  However, I always throw the checklist away once I’m done with it for that trip.  Instead, I could keep a master checklist that contains all the common bare essentials that I need to remember to bring.