20,000 ft Areas of focus etc

[blair_one]

I read about the runway, 10,000 ft etc to describe your most urgent priorities and tie things together vertically.

What do other people do with these categories of goal, dreams, visions, missions etc., that can be viewed using the Airport metaphor?

I tried to make a list of areas of focus I have and create any projects and next actions from the list for example.

Thanks in advance.

 

[cornell]

> What do other people do with these categories of goal, dreams, visions, missions etc.

The thought is that these should be driving your projects, which in turn drive (a good chunk of) your actions. It helps focus, which means saying yes or no to opportunities, i.e., how you spend your time.

That said, if you want a bottom-up approach, you can look for emergent ones based on your system: Examine all actions and projects and create groups that cover all the categories. Most people find ones show up like career, relationships, health, etc.

 

[blair_one]

So these are more lists of areas, missions, goals etc, and they don't turn into actual projects until they get to the lower level of processing and then onto NA lists.

 

[kewms]

So these are more lists of areas, missions, goals etc, and they don't turn into actual projects until they get to the lower level of processing and then onto NA lists.

Yes, that's correct.

One of the fundamental ideas of GTD is that actual tangible actions (NAs) are the only way to actually accomplish anything. Goals, projects, and all the rest are just paper until you put resources behind them. (Drucker pointed out that this is true at the corporate level as well as the individual level, but that's a different conversation.)

Katherine

 

[Brent]

Fortuitously, I've just been working on this.

In Keith Ferrazzi's amazing book Never Eat Alone, he writes about his Three-Year Plans. Now, I don't like Plans. I associate them with communist Five-Year Plans and long meetings and rigidity.

But these plans were wonderfully lightweight, as he described them. So I tried them.

I scribbled down several areas of my life that I want to change over the next few years -- writing, programming, drawing, etc. I then took a fresh piece of paper, titled it "Writer," and scribbled down what I'd like my life to be like, from a writing perspective, in three years. I directed those scribbles into specifics. How many stories do I want written by then? 10? 50? And what kind?

That became a great feed for my Projects. That Plan is now part of my weekly review, and is something I just think about a lot.

These Plans help me prioritize my Projects. The Projects that support these Plans are more important to me than, say, repairing the dryer vent.