Review frequencies & roughly how many tasks?!

Ship69

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Hello

I need to check I am doing GTD roughly correctly.

To recap the basics, as I understand it we are suppose to have the following core lists of tasks:
- "Someday-Maybe" list - all reviewed every week - (e.g. 150-300 tasks?)
- "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list - all reviewed at the start/end of each day - (e.g. 15-45 tasks?)
- "Do Today" - reviewed several times per day - (e.g. 5-15 tasks?)

i.e.
The "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list is created during the Weekly Review of everything including the Someday-Maybe stuff.

And the "Do Today" list is created during the Daily Review of "Next Actions/Do ASAP" stuff, yes?

And of course, in order to make the "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list more manageable it is supposed to be broken down into Contexts, yes?

Meanwhile we also have:
- Inbox - all moved out ideally every day (personally about 2/3rd of my tasks go straight onto my lists)
- A list of Projects that are live (i.e. within the "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list)
- A Tickler List (Personally I use a list of task with a Start Date in the future)
- A Waiting For list (which personally conflate with my Tickler list)

Does that sound correct?

Including Someday-Maybes, I seem to habe about 300 to 400 tasks on system in total.

Cheers

J
 

Oogiem

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To recap the basics, as I understand it we are suppose to have the following core lists of tasks:
- "Someday-Maybe" list - all reviewed every week - (e.g. 150-300 tasks?)
- "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list - all reviewed at the start/end of each day - (e.g. 15-45 tasks?)
- "Do Today" - reviewed several times per day - (e.g. 5-15 tasks?)
....
Meanwhile we also have:
- Inbox - all moved out ideally every day (personally about 2/3rd of my tasks go straight onto my lists)
- A list of Projects that are live (i.e. within the "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list)
- A Tickler List (Personally I use a list of task with a Start Date in the future)
- A Waiting For list (which personally conflate with my Tickler list)

Does that sound correct?
Not to me. Close but not quite how I interpret it.

Someday Maybe is a list of anything and everything that you want to potentially do sometime in the future or want to think of but don't want to deal with right now. The frequency with which you review those things varies. If you list is small then yes, reviewing every week might make sense. If your list is huge then no. While I review the close in someday/maybe stuff weekly, there is a lot I only review 4 times a year and some that I only review once a year. My Someday/Maybe lists currently contain over 1000 different projects and some of those realistically are multiple projects.

My Next actions lists which are organized by contexts are reviewed each time I switch contexts. I review the weather and which contexts are appropriate each day but don't read every context's list if I know I can't go into that context that day. (No reason to read the list of stuff to do in town if the road is snowed in and we can't get out the driveway for example) My next action lists currently contain over 1600 actions of which over 350 are currently available (not in projects waiting a start date or not blocked until something else is done)

Inbox is not singular. I have multiple inboxes, paper, e-mail, other electronic ones and yes I do try to clear them out most days but in practice that is currently only happening about 30% of the time. Long story but I know it's a temporary issue due to some deadlines.

Project list is automatic in my list tool as I generally have very few items that are not attached to a project so that is how I organize them.

Tickler is 2 places one for paper stuff not needed until some point in the future and one for projects that can't start or actions that can't begin until some point in the future.

Waiting for is things I'm waiting on other people to complete so I do keep that separate from my own personal tickler.
 

mcogilvie

Registered
Hello

I need to check I am doing GTD roughly correctly.

To recap the basics, as I understand it we are suppose to have the following core lists of tasks:
- "Someday-Maybe" list - all reviewed every week - (e.g. 150-300 tasks?)
- "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list - all reviewed at the start/end of each day - (e.g. 15-45 tasks?)
- "Do Today" - reviewed several times per day - (e.g. 5-15 tasks?)

i.e.
The "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list is created during the Weekly Review of everything including the Someday-Maybe stuff.

And the "Do Today" list is created during the Daily Review of "Next Actions/Do ASAP" stuff, yes?

And of course, in order to make the "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list more manageable it is supposed to be broken down into Contexts, yes?

Meanwhile we also have:
- Inbox - all moved out ideally every day (personally about 2/3rd of my tasks go straight onto my lists)
- A list of Projects that are live (i.e. within the "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list)
- A Tickler List (Personally I use a list of task with a Start Date in the future)
- A Waiting For list (which personally conflate with my Tickler list)

Does that sound correct?

Including Someday-Maybes, I seem to habe about 300 to 400 tasks on system in total.

Cheers

J

I think you are handling things a bit differently from by-the-book GTD. That's not bad if it works for you. I have over 100 next actions at any moment, and I think that's more typical than your 15-45. I am looking at them throughout the day, not just at the beginning and end. I sometimes have next actions that are "Due today" but I do not have a "Do today" list. What happens if you fail to complete the list? I do flag items for heightened awareness, but still generally look at entire next action lists when choosing what to do next. I think most people have someday/maybe lists of projects, but from your description it seems like your list may be mostly deferred actions. So your workflow looks like you may be restricting what you are seeing as next actions you could do at any given time in any given context. From what you have said, I would say that you might do better with less planning, more options and more doing, but it's hard to say for sure from here. I would try opening up the system to a higher potential throughput and see what happens.
 

Gardener

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- "Someday-Maybe" list - all reviewed every week - (e.g. 150-300 tasks?)

I don't think that the book demands that you review ALL of these every week. I could be wrong--in any case, I absolutely don't.

OmniFocus allows me to set the review frequency for each project, so I follow that for my personal system.

My work system has diverged from GTD to the point that discussing it may not be relevant, but I'll discuss it anyway--in that system, one of the criteria for being on Someday/Maybe (or "backlog" to me) is that the item is probably not subject to suddenly becoming important without notice.

"Next Actions/Do ASAP" list - all reviewed at the start/end of each day - (e.g. 15-45 tasks?)

This double daily review doesn't sound right to me either. All of these contradictions with my understanding are making me wonder if I should re-read the newer book.

I suppose it depends on whether your tool warns you about stuff that's imminently due--if it doesn't, you would want some way to ensure that you catch those things. Again, OmniFocus can do that, so I'll be warned about those things without having to review everything.

Now, I generally DO go through my next actions for my personal list on a daily basis, but that's partly because I have so very few. If I had more, I wouldn't, or at least I wouldn't look at the ones for contexts that won't become available that day. And I wouldn't re-review at the end of the day.

- "Do Today" - reviewed several times per day - (e.g. 5-15 tasks?)

And the "Do Today" list is created during the Daily Review of "Next Actions/Do ASAP" stuff, yes?

I don't have a "Do Today" list in my GTD system at all. In my work system, I have a Kanban board with current tasks, but that's probably drifting too far from GTD. In my personal system, I keep my next actions very small, and that's the list that I use daily. I don't know that I'd call it "review," though--I'd call it "use," for picking a new task when another one is complete.

And of course, in order to make the "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list more manageable it is supposed to be broken down into Contexts, yes?

Yes.

Meanwhile we also have:
- Inbox - all moved out ideally every day (personally about 2/3rd of my tasks go straight onto my lists)
- A list of Projects that are live (i.e. within the "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list)
- A Tickler List (Personally I use a list of task with a Start Date in the future)
- A Waiting For list (which personally conflate with my Tickler list)

Inbox(es), yes. Projects, yes, and I can choose to view only those that are live. I wouldn't call it a Tickler "list" so much as "ticklers"--actions that announce themselves when a certain date comes along. And in my system, Waiting For is a context.

I think(?) that you've said that you have trouble with a lot of reading. Your method of working your system seems to involve a lot of reading--substantially more than mine, and I read very quickly. So somewhat contrary to the previous post, I might suggest having fewer things visible in your daily lists, rather than more.
 

bcmyers2112

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@Ship69, you've mentioned having dyslexia. I recently heard a story on NPR about dyslexia and I think I have a better appreciation now for what it is and how it impacts one's ability to read. It certainly makes your aversion to long lists understandable.

I would suggest the question isn't whether you're doing GTD right but whether you're doing GTD in a way that is right for you. Based on your numerous posts it sounds like GTD has been a struggle for you at least in part due to your dyslexia. If that's the case I'd suggest working with someone who has expertise in dyslexia if you're not doing so already. Perhaps you could ask that professional to take a look at the GTD book and help you identify ways you can adapt it to your needs.

I understand that dyslexia isn't a barrier to having a successful life (a friend of mine is dyslexic and is doing pretty well), but I would imagine it presents challenges that require coping skills. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd be hesitant to give you suggestions about how to implement GTD given that my knowledge of dyslexia is superficial at best.

If you're finding GTD mostly helpful and you're just looking for a tweak, you can obviously ignore my advice. In any event, I hope you find what you're looking for.
 

Ship69

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Sounds good to me. Is there any specific issue that you are experiencing that prompted you to post?

Yes, I find reading (reviewing) all of my up to 45 "Next Action" tasks even once a day to be a pain, let alone rereading it multiple times per day (which from memory David Allen suggests I think).

For this reason I find I am often not fully completing my Daily Review. (Side question: How long are you folks spending on each daily review?)

A bigger problem is my Weekly Review because I have about 200-300 items in that list. The only way I can cope with so many items is to put them into some sort of hierarchy by subject area, as this enables my visually biased brain to guess & quickly recognise what is what by the shapes of the hierarchy.

Unfortunately almost no GTD systems seem to rely on mindmaps, in fact very few even allow you to create an Outline. I tried going flat (using Nirvana) but I keep finding I need a hierarchy - particularly for larger projects needing layers of sub-project.

One very nice thing about Nirvana is that it has a non-GTD action status of "Later". This allows you quickly to move stuff off your Next Actions list but without losing it in a sea of Someday-Maybe items.

@mcogilvie - Are you really reading all 100 Next Actions multiple times per day in order to work out what to do next? If so are they sorted in some way, (beyond context) or are you literally reading the whole lot on each scan. And if so how long does it take you to scan all 100 Next Actions?

On of my problems is knowing when to change context. So I suppose we are forced to ready all the Next Actions in order to work this out, no?

GENERAL REQUEST: In your responses please could you distinguish between A) what you believe The Book/DA is recommending from B) what you yourself actually do.
 
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Gardener

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If I wanted to minimize reading time, I would:

- Go through all of my Someday/Maybes and set a review frequency. I think that this is a divergence from standard GTD.

If you're using a piece of software that supports it, you might be able to set them project by project. If not, then establish lists named, say:

Weekly Review Someday/Maybe
Monthly Review Someday/Maybe
Quarterly Review Someday/Maybe

An item should only go on Weekly if it's REALLY important that you not miss it, or if you're so on the verge of doing it that it was a close call whether it was Someday/Maybe or Active.

- Minimize Active projects to the very, very smallest number possible. Just because you COULD be working on it in parallel doesn't mean that you SHOULD. If reading is slow, then every Active project has a cost, since they have to be read more often. That means that your practices should differ from those of people for whom reading is not a similar cost.

I would suggest that the Active list be so short that there's a fair chance that you will actually run out of work before the next review--because if you do run out, you can always just go to the Weekly Review Someday/Maybe list and pull out more work.

I've never been clear on the standard GTD position on what should be active and what should be Someday/Maybe.

- I actually hadn't heard of actively reviewing the Next Actions at the beginning of the day, as opposed to just scanning them to find something to do. And I see no need to review them at the end of the day. And, again, I think that Active should be as short as possible.

- All of this means that you're more likely to miss something with a hard deadline, because you aren't scanning things as often. So that suggests to me that you could figure out your own method for self-ticklers, quite possibly a method different from any of those described in GTD.
 

treelike

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GENERAL REQUEST: In your responses please could you distinguish between A) what you believe The Book/DA is recommending from B) what you yourself actually do.

I pretend to myself that I review my SDMB every week but it's probably more likely every month. Also, I don't always get all the way through and am experimenting with alternating reviews with it sorted A-Z then Z-A or else that woodstove idea might hardly ever get looked at. I tried splitting the SDMB list into different review frequencies but it didn't work for me.

Sometimes I do a daily review of my NA list, sometimes I just work off that list and sometimes I just look at a context I have which basically means do it today or ASAP. The latter is probably A Bad Thing but at least it deals with anything urgent that I might miss if it was buried in the rest of the list.

Also, I'd like to add that not all reviews are equal. Sometimes I'll do a WR and feel great about it all, new ideas to move things forward, satisfaction about what I have acheived and on another week it'll just be "meh". I suppose it depends on my brain performance, general health, mood, weather, state of caffeination, etc
 

Ship69

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LESSON: Complete each process!
One of my big lessons is that it is important to actually complete each process. e.g. It's important to review ALL of you "Next Actions" regularly, in order to not miss important stuff (Although exactly how often we are supposed to do it I now can't recall!)

Likewise the Weekly Review MUST cover all your items on you Next Actions list (which are presumably divided into Contexts lists) and also cover all of you Someday-Maybe items.

If you don't do this then you will miss out important stuff and you will start to not trust your systems.

"DO TODAY" LIST
Can anyone tell me how many tasks we should in theory be putting our "Do Today" lists and how that should relate to our Next Actions list (including Contexts lists). Wait, does David Allen even HAVE way of flagging things as "Do Today"?


To me my "Next Actions" list really means stuff I would be happy to tackle this week (i.e. before my next Weekly Review) and anything else goes into my Someday-Maybe list (unless it is put into the future/archived/deleted etc).

J
 

Oogiem

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(Although exactly how often we are supposed to do it I now can't recall!)....

"DO TODAY" LIST
Can anyone tell me how many tasks we should in theory be putting our "Do Today" lists and how that should relate to our Next Actions list (including Contexts lists). Wait, does David Allen even HAVE way of flagging things as "Do Today"?
To answer the first question, it all goes back to the statement in the books that you need to review things as often as necessary to keep them off your mind. That's why you get so many different answers. One person may need to review all their current active action lists daily while another may only review them in detail weekly. If you look at the GTD Connect stuff on Someday/Maybe there is a lot of freedom in the documents. It describes separating Someday/Maybe lists if needed so that they get reviewed at different timeframes, or separating them by AOFs if that makes more sense to you.

As to the DO TODAY lists, I've never seen that in any of the books or materials as a separate list. If it has to be done today then it belongs on the calendar. But may people find that pulling out a few things to be worked on each day works for them. I find that if I have a project or a multi-step long action that needs work I do far better to just reduce the other items or make a calendar entry for time to concentrate on that task. I don't pull a separate list as such unless there really is a hard deadline for the action.
 

Ship69

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To get clear, when I talk about creating a "Do Today" list, I really mean highlight (in my case apply a star) to the few items I am choosing to focus on today.
 

mcogilvie

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@mcogilvie - Are you really reading all 100 Next Actions multiple times per day in order to work out what to do next? If so are they sorted in some way, (beyond context) or are you literally reading the whole lot on each scan. And if so how long does it take you to scan all 100 Next Actions?

On of my problems is knowing when to change context. So I suppose we are forced to ready all the Next Actions in order to work this out, no?

Read is too strong a word, although I am a fast reader. I scan my lists throughout the day, looking for things I want or need to do. My longest list right now is Anywhere, followed by Home, with Work a distant third. When I am at work, I generally look at both Anywhere and Work, and at home I look at Anywhere and Home. It usually takes me less than 15 seconds to find something to do. If I can't find something, then something in my list is repelling me, and that bears further investigation.

Like most GTD'ers, I have used different methods for sorting lists when the software supports it. Like most, I haven't found any holy grail that makes the system work much better under all circumstances.

As to changing contexts, I have a natural rhythm to most of my days and a fair amount of freedom in where I do my work so that is not a problem for me. I have also worked to make sure that Anywhere is the largest list.
 

Oogiem

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To get clear, when I talk about creating a "Do Today" list, I really mean highlight (in my case apply a star) to the few items I am choosing to focus on today.
In that case I never do that except in extraordinary circumstances, like major injuries or disasters that require that sort of triage. like a dead sheep that mandates that I deal with federal reporting rules and tissue sample collection within a certain number of hours. Or a neighbor that had a heart attack and required me to flag the critical things for that day so I got them done but had time to focus on the neighbor's needs too.
 

treelike

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Had another couple of thoughts about it.....

Yes, I find reading (reviewing) all of my up to 45 "Next Action" tasks even once a day to be a pain, let alone rereading it multiple times per day (which from memory David Allen suggests I think).
Maybe it would help to review next actions grouped by project because you like things in a hierarchy.
A bigger problem is my Weekly Review because I have about 200-300 items in that list. The only way I can cope with so many items is to put them into some sort of hierarchy by subject area, as this enables my visually biased brain to guess & quickly recognise what is what by the shapes of the hierarchy.
Similarly, maybe you could group projects by Area of Focus when doing the weekly review. I remember this being suggested on the forum in the past.
Unfortunately almost no GTD systems seem to rely on mindmaps, in fact very few even allow you to create an Outline. I tried going flat (using Nirvana) but I keep finding I need a hierarchy - particularly for larger projects needing layers of sub-project.
What about ditching digital and going all paper? Paper is probably the best medium for diplaying things visually and might be a good way to achieve the hierarchy you need. Of course, you lose the digital advantages of speed in sorting/finding/moving but it might be worth it for increased speed of reviewing and getting things clearer in your head.
 

TesTeq

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Read is too strong a word, although I am a fast reader. I scan my lists throughout the day, looking for things I want or need to do. My longest list right now is Anywhere, followed by Home, with Work a distant third. When I am at work, I generally look at both Anywhere and Work, and at home I look at Anywhere and Home. It usually takes me less than 15 seconds to find something to do. If I can't find something, then something in my list is repelling me, and that bears further investigation.
I strongly agree. Next Action lists should contain the widgets to crank ie. the pure obviousness. In my opinion if scanning the NA list takes more than 1 second per item then the homework (Processing and Weekly Review) was not done properly.
 

severance1970

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To recap the basics, as I understand it we are suppose to have the following core lists of tasks:
- "Someday-Maybe" list - all reviewed every week - (e.g. 150-300 tasks?)
- "Next Actions/Do ASAP" list - all reviewed at the start/end of each day - (e.g. 15-45 tasks?)
- "Do Today" - reviewed several times per day - (e.g. 5-15 tasks?)
Someday-Maybe organization is more of an art than a science. I keep a general SM list, which is distinct from my reference lists nested in the same category within a note belonging to a "task," which is actually a subcategory. That sounds more convoluted than it actually is, so let me be more specific.

I have a Someday-Maybe list in Reminders. Anything that I feel compelled to review weekly is marked with a priority of High. Then I have a list entry for a respective category: like Books, Events, Learning, Music, etc.; these are assigned a priority of Low. Within each of the latter items is a note that contains the full reference list for that category. So a microcosm of the list might look like:
  • Install Promptline for Vim
  • Read Sculpting in Time
  • Upgrade to Office 365
  • Books [contains note with list of books]
  • Music [contains note with list of songs, albums, artists]
  • Events [contains note with list time-insensitive places to go, performances to attend, etc.]
I might review any or all of these reference lists during a Weekly Review, but it's strictly discretionary—whenever I feel compelled to review them. The priority assignments let me sort the Someday-Maybe list, so all the weekly reviewed items appear above the reference lists.

I my mind there's a distinct difference between the four books that I want to read next (without necessarily knowing the order) and the other 63 books that aren't imminently relevant. So each of those four books goes on the weekly list; the rest go in the Books reference list. This arrangement allows me to see only a few dozen items rather than hundreds.

As for Next Actions versus Do Today, I'd rather put the latter on my calendar, since I find it semantically illogical to have "do as soon as possible" and "do even sooner" categories. I always look at my calendar and work it off before looking at my action lists—unless context prohibits it. I deviate from DA's "hard landscape" recommendation for calendar entries, only because I work in sales, where transactions have short cycle times. When I'm working on a quotation, there's rarely a strict date requirement, but success in sales often depends on getting information to prospects faster than the competition. So quotes I need to send clients and those I need to receive from manufacturers go on the calendar rather than Projects, @Computer and Waiting For. The sales process is its own ecosystem rather than part of my general lists.
 
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