Projects

According to GTD, a Project is a desired outcome, or an objective that takes several steps to achieve. A project usually requires planning and completing actions over the course of several days or weeks. This page explains the Everdo’s approach to working with projects.

A project in Everdo can contain zero or more actions

After creating a project, you can either create new actions under that project, or drag-and-drop existing actions from the Next or Inbox list.

You can manually order project actions and move actions into Waiting or Scheduled lists if necessary.

Project actions appear in the aggregated Next Actions list

The Next Actions list combines all actionable tasks from your active projects, as well as the standalone actions. This allows you to pick your work from a single list, as opposed to having to switch between different projects.

Parallel vs sequential projects

In a sequential project, only the top-most action gets added to the Next Actions list. In a parallel project, all next actions of the project will appear in the Next Actions list.

For example, suppose we have the following projects and actions.

Project A (sequential)
- Action A1
- Action A2

Project B (parallel)
- Action B1
- Action B2

In this case, the Next Actions list will look as follows.

Next
- Action A1
- Action B1
- Action B2

Projects vs checklists

A handy feature of Everdo is checklists. A checklist is created by writing bullet items starting with the - symbol in the item’s description. For example, this will render as a checklist in an item’s description.

- step 1
- step 2

Sometimes it’s unclear whether to use a project or a checklist to represent a sequence of actions. A useful rule is to prefer checklists when you are dealing with a sequence of steps that are expected to be completed in one go. On the other hand, if the steps can be spread out across days, as well as different contexts, then a project will probably work better.

A checklist is a useful tool to specify

• criteria for completion of bigger goal
• a specific set of steps that should be followed to complete a single action correctly

Using checklists where appropriate allows you to cut down on the number of projects, thus reducing the effort required to review the system.

Converting an Action Into a Project

In the desktop Everdo app, you can easily convert an action with a checklist in a Project.

To convert an action with a checklist into a project with sub-actions, follow these steps.

1. Drag and drop the action into the Projects navigation item in the Navigation Area on the left.
2. Click the Actions button on the newly created project to open it.
3. Hover the cursor over the checklist and select Convert to actions in the menu that appears in the top right corner of the checklist.

As a result, a set of project actions will be created - one for each checklist item. The original checklist can then be removed from the project, if necessary.

Notes

• Actions dynamically inherit tags from their current project. Actions can also have their own tags in addition.
• Projects can be scheduled to start on a certain date, but they cannot be made repeating.
• Projects can be cloned by using the Ctrl+Drag gesture in the desktop app, or by using the Clone option in the item-level context menu.