Using the Unprocessed Tasks List

Your Unprocessed Tasks list contains the electronically entered tasks you have not yet processed. These are the tasks you added in the Scratchpad, items you triaged from your inbox, and unprocessed email in your actionable email folder. This is everybody’s favorite collection point because it is so easy to collect to and process later.

Clicking the Unprocessed Tasks link on Trog Bsr shows a list of all the tasks that don’t have at least one context and at least one date. Until you enter both a context and a date, these tasks will continue to appear in the Unprocessed Tasks list. (Exception: Someday/Maybe and meeting agenda contexts count as both dates and contexts if your Trog Bar options are set that way.) When you click that button, you will be looking at your electronic collection point.

Collecting to the Unprocessed Tasks list is simple. Just enter the task name, a description, an idea, or even just random notes, and press Ctrl+Enter. This adds the task to the list. Notice that every time you do that, the number on the “Unprocessed Tasks” button goes up by one, keeping count of your unprocessed tasks. It will wait there for you to process it.

Processing the list is fast and easy. Simply click on the “Unprocessed Tasks” button on Trog Bar. Your task view will change to show all of your unprocessed tasks with the newest ones first. Follow the Processing Flow Chart to process these items. You are really only doing three things:

• Deciding what the project and next steps are (if you haven’t already done so).
• Scheduling the task for later.
• Assigning contexts for this particular step.

With a name, context, and date, the item is processed. As with all processing, make sure that you have your weekly calendar open as you schedule things. You always want to be able to see your upcoming schedule and be able to block out time for large tasks.