Sorry for the late responses all — I hope this is helpful….

You remind yourself to do system backups?

Mark: I do automated incremental nightly Psyncx backups, then do a twice-monthly cloning of my disk image using SuperDuper.

Thanks for posting that, Merlin. Just wondering why you’re using “+” as the suffix for “waiting on” instead of “-”?

Señor: Hm. Maybe I have that wrong. I thought that was the correct way to demarcate future (non-actionable) contexts. Seems to be working so far.

I’m mainly interested in how you freed yourself from Entourage. I’m so deeply invested in it I can’t imagine breaking free. And yet I yearn, I yearn…

Communicatrix: It was astoundingly easy I must say. Omni Outliner + iCal + kGTD does (or affords) everything I needed Entourage for.

The thing I was thinking I’d really miss is attaching files, but OO actually does that better letting you control-drag files into any OO line for an instant alias. Ditto for pasting in URLs.

iCal and kGTD aren’t quite up to speed with ENT on alarms —- esp. for recurring events — but I can deal. Just means I have to be a little more aware of when to get a haircut and sweep the floor. :)

I’ve been going back and forth on the Next Actions summary option and it looks like you are using it. Is it working for you?

Karen: Yes, it’s been working great. I treat it like a kanban—I do dashes to knock down every item in the NA area, then Sync, take a break while it’s running, and come back for more.

I do think that kGTD — VERY much unlike Entourage — benefits from making true GTD-style projects. By this I mean very atomic 2-5 item areas for everything. I’ve found that if I use the more Entrouragey habit of treating projects as Spheres of Life, kGTD doesn’t work as well. You really need to track all the projects separately in order to bubble up all the true next actions.

Would you be willing to briefly expound on your usage of “future” contexts (including future “waitingfor”)?

Brendon: Sure thing.

• agenda - items I need to discuss with people anytime; if it’s really important and pressing, it gets its own task
• cogitate - things I just need to let percolate; kinda like a someday maybe, but more just to say “I think I have to do something about this sometime but I need to let my brain turn on it for a while”
• later-maybe - Lots of stuff including future actions and “nice to haves”; reviewed weekly and usually promoted or removed or moved to the big “Someday-Maybe” (really unactionable) graveyard
• opportunities - Cool offers, future work, “hey, be on my radio show some time,” etc. This is my version of a “sales lead”
• waiting-on - any item for which I need something from someone else and can’t currently do much but wait. Cf: “Schedule” which is an actionable context for setting a time to meet with someone. (That turned out to be a smart change to make for me)