The Searchable Tickler File 2005

One of the things which is recommended in Getting Things Done is the creation of a "tickler file". A key GTD principle is having a system you can trust to hold all your loose ends or "open loops". By putting things into your system, you can let go of holding them in your head (Discardia!) and have more ability to relax and focus. The tickler file is used to remind you of things you need to think about at a certain point in the future.

The tickler file for physical stuff is a set of 43 folders - 01 through 31 and the 12 months of the year (m01 etc) - into which you stick stuff that must be remembered at a certain time in the future but which does not necessarily represent an actual commitment on your calendar. If you're like me, you don't actually have a lot of physical papers which need to be tickled, but you may have some email, electronic documents and ideas which do.

Rather than set up the actual 43 folders to take up more space then needed in my office, I tend to write on my electronic calendar (iCal) something like "review notes in the XYZ folder to prepare for meeting in 2 days". I file the papers in their eventual home and create a pointer for myself to remind me that there's unfinished business filed away there.

This has been making my calendar a bit busy in layout (since I enter the note as an event, but with 000 at the beginning of the text to flag it as a chunk of time loosely reserved for a task, rather than a specific appointment). Now that isn't necessarily bad - it does reflect my expected busy-ness for a given day - but it's inappropriate for tasks that will take less than 30 minutes. I'm going to try listing these shorter tasks in a tickler event that's just associated with the day and see how that works.

But what about emailed stuff? I could file it and point to it from a note, but that's really time consuming. Why not make a virtual 43 folders and put them inside a folder called Tickler? When I'm reviewing incoming mail and say "ah, I need to call her and she says she'll be back in the office on the 18th", I can just drag it into folder 18 and forget about it until the morning of the 18th when I look at folder 18.

Now here's where I could get sneaky. This structure means I can email new reminders directly to my tickler file through the clever use of subject headings and filters. Suppose I just thought of something I'm going to need to remember to do Wednesday at work. Rather than have it keep popping into my brain all weekend, I can just send a reminder to myself by emailing it with the subject line "tickle12: call Bob about wigits". My filter sees the "tickle12:" and puts it in folder 12. On the 12th, I look at folder 12 and there it is.

The beauty of all this is that I don't have to put the reminder somewhere that I have to think about it or look about it before the time at which I'll act on it.

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[As of early 2006, I am no longer marking flexible events ("work on revised documentation for beta test of foo") on the calendar except milestones ("started integrated beta test?"). Instead I am using KGTD and at some point I'll get the prioritized list from there syncing in my iCal to-do list.]