Please excuse a relative newbie to all, but as useful as I've found some GTD rituals (inbox review!), some of the metaorganizational stuff is hard to wrap my head around. I've been using regular To Do lists -- a weekly one and a daily one -- and with that, the big things can fall through the cracks. With GTD, it's the little things that I can't figure out how to integrate.

For example, today I need to do a few things. One is pick up the mail at my mailbox service, something that must be done 2-3 times per week. Another is to write 500 words for the book I'm writing, something I need to do every day. Another is to read some pages from a friend's novel so I can give her my feedback. Another is to pick up a copy of a magazine with an article that pertains generally to my profession but is more just something I find interesting and want to check out before it vanishes from the newstand.

It seems like most of my work is daily or weekly incremental, recurring tasks, but they don't necessarily pertain to a "project." I need to get my comments on my friend's novel to her pretty soon, or she'll feel neglected, but I'm not sure what project that pertains to. What project does picking up the mail belong to? As for the book, it often seems like composing a list of all the component parts required to finish it would take nearly as long as writing the book itself. I feel totally discouraged by even the idea of doing that!

I don't have a lot of contexts, since I mostly work at home and on my own. So far, to do lists have been an easier way to figure out what to do when I have a spare 30 minutes than trying to implement a full GTD system, but since I've found the inbox review so helpful, I'm still hanging around the idea of GTD, trying to figure out if it fits me.