Areas of Focus: Do you allow them to overlap, or keep them separate?

[dashik]

Many GTD apps these days allow you to define areas of focus and responsibility. You can then assign a project or action to a certain area (or more rarely, multiple areas) and then "filter" your projects and actions by that area only.

My question comes from trying to define some of my own areas, which I find, depending on how I interpret GTD at the 20,000 ft level, could either result in mutually exclusive areas, or areas which overlap (usually it's easier to come up with the latter than the former for me). I generally find that having mutually exclusive areas are beneficial for apps that support hierarchy or outline-based views, whereas overlapping areas require more of a tag-based system.

For example, I've come up with some of the following areas of focus:

• Health and Fitness
• Learning
• Organization
• Fun and Recreation
• Family and Friends

Pretty standard-looking, if you ask me. But then I'll encounter a project like "Take online beginner's guitar-playing course" (part of a larger 30,000 foot goal of "Learn how to play the guitar"), which could support both the areas of "Fun and Recreation" as well as "Learning". If the list manager I use, however, only supports assigning one area to a project, I'll struggle with choosing which area to assign the project to.

How do you interpret GTD's areas? Can a single project or action support multiple areas of focus? Or do you keep an area strictly as a "role" or "hat" or area of responsibility that are more-or-less mutually exclusive (and if so, how would you suggest defining stricter boundaries for my example above)?

 

[notmuch]

Like so many questions in this forum, the answer here is heavily dependent on your GTD tool. Generally speaking, this is what has worked for me. I find tags to be a poor solution for AoF. You may gain multi-AoF capability, but usually at the expense of more clicks and keystrokes, and more visual clutter. I say use the mutually exclusive field; pick one and go. Work your system. Review your lists. Accept the inevitable ambiguities and imperfections of you GTD system.

 

[Folke]

I prefer my areas to be mutually exclusive. I prefer them to be a "role" or "hat", a quasi job title, if you will, i.e. a "responsibility", not a "type of thing" or "category" or "benefit etc".

Frankly, for example, I would go nuts if I had to live with the five areas you mentioned, dashik. Those things are more like "aspects" or "benefits" than responsibilities, and they could certainly overlap.

My own example: In my private sphere of AoRs I have:
- "Family Ambassador" (AMB), representing my family socially, legally, commercially etc in their relationships with schools, employers, neighbors etc.
- "Family Material Assets Manager" (MTR), looking after the family's belongings - everything from cars and buildings, to bank accounts and phone subscriptions, and cleaning and repairing things.
- "Just a Man" (MAN), looking after my own selfish needs and pleasures, e.g. health, beer, friends, books etc and also looking after my own personal obligations and interests versus the other family members, e.g. teaching the kids useful stuff.

I have a few AoRs in the Non-Profit sphere, almost "professional" type work that I don't get paid for, and I have half a dozen business AoRs, each corresponding roughly to one business area.

With this system there could definitely be things that could belong in more than one AoR, but I do it as I would have done it if I had had that many individual people to delegate to (with those job titles). I have to pick one, and I have to be reasonably consistent. Who would I assign this task to? I will normally assign it to the "person" ("role") who has the strongest motive to get the job done well. Example (a theoretical example): If I were to help a neighbor hang a painting, would that be an AMB thing (ambassador, because it involves an external relationship) or an MTR thing (material assets, because it involves my hammer and some "material" work with assets etc). Without any doubt at all in my mind I would give that job to the Ambassador, because it is he who wants to have good relationships. He will do a good job, or at least prioritize it correctly among other external affairs. The Material Assets guy is just responsible for looking after my own family's assets, and definitely would not give this his best effort (not even our painting).

 

[dashik]

Interesting insight, Folke! The "roles" perspective certainly does make a lot of sense, especially the part about delegating a certain task to a certain "person".

I guess what hangs me up the most is that even David Allen seems to suggest some "categories" as "areas of focus" in Getting Things Done and Making It All Work. For example, in Making It All Work, he writes:

Once you reach twenty thousand feet, the relevant question to ask yourself is: What do I need to maintain?

This level functions as an abstraction of reality, a tightly focused series of ten to fifteen categories in areas that you are particularly responsible for, interested in, or pay special attention to, just to keep your ship afloat and sailing steadily.

[…] In your life, overall, you probably have seven to ten areas into which you could logically group your interests and activities. Typical categories here include your relationships, your household, parenting, finances, self-expression, career, service, and health.

I think this is probably the main reason why many people tend to have these broad, potentially overlapping "categories" for areas of focus. But then again, while DA doesn't explicitly mention anything about overlapping or separate areas in his books, he also probably just meant to keep areas of focus as more a trigger list, and didn't anticipate GTD app developers to implement it as explicit groupings.

With this system there could definitely be things that could belong in more than one AoR, but I do it as I would have done it if I had had that many individual people to delegate to (with those job titles). I have to pick one, and I have to be reasonably consistent. Who would I assign this task to? I will normally assign it to the "person" ("role") who has the strongest motive to get the job done well.

I think this is a key question to consider when keeping the areas of focus separate. I'll definitely try using it on mine. Thanks!

 

[Gardener]

I don't sort my projects by Area of Focus. In fact, I keep my active project list so pared down that I don't sort it by anything. So overlap isn't an issue.

Now, the end result of that is that I don't pay enough attention to Area of Focus--or whatever I might call that general concept, because that actual phrase doens't work for me. If and when I do, I anticipate that I will just do so by casual lists, and that those lists absolutely will have a ton of overlap, in the sense that the same projects will be on multiple lists.

A hurriedly assembled example, definitely not including all likely areas of focus:

Creativity:
Perfect tunic pattern.
Outline novel
Get set up for Ruby on Rails programming
Design winter vegetable garden
Write crop planning program
Sign up for writing seminar

Learning:
Get set up for Ruby on Rails programming
Sign up for writing seminar

Being a Girl:
Perfect tunic pattern.
Get back to perfume blogging

Career and Other Public Ambitions:
Outline novel
Get set up for Ruby on Rails programming
Sign up for writing seminar

Health:
Design winter vegetable garden

Joy:
Design winter vegetable garden
Get back to perfume blogging

 

[Folke]

One big advantage (for me) of keeping my stuff organized by AoR (in the sense of "role") is it makes reviewing a LOT more intuitive and easy.

I take this a step further beyond just projects. I even gather all "single actions" to an "AoR misc project" (using the app's project feature to create umbrellas for actions that do not belong to projects). This is a convenient way to keep them together.

I really, REALLY like to be able to view (and REVIEW) my stuff through the eyes of my different responsibilities ( "personalities", "roles"). An easy way to accomplish this, if your app does not provide appropriate functionality for it out-of-the-box, is to prefix all project names (including the "misc project") with an AoR mnemonic (such as P-MTR; personal sphere, material assets manager). Then you can easily find all of those and review them all in one go. (Or you can do one whole "sphere" at a time.)

With any half-decent app you never have to put any additional work into labeling the individual tasks with an AoR. The worst case is that you sometímes may have to assign the task to a project (which is already set up as belonging to a given AoR). But oftentimes, when you create new tasks while reviewing a particular project, any new tasks created at that time will automatically be filed under the project you are looking at.

 

[Oogiem]

How do you interpret GTD's areas? Can a single project or action support multiple areas of focus? Or do you keep an area strictly as a "role" or "hat" or area of responsibility that are more-or-less mutually exclusive (and if so, how would you suggest defining stricter boundaries for my example above)?

For the past 6 years I've been running my GTD system on Omnifocus and I had specific folders for each Area of Focus and put project in them. But my AOFs overlap a lot. I just recently, in the last couple of months, moved all my projects out into a single monolithic projects folder. I created a separate list of my areas of focus. That has worked well with 1 glaring exception, I just this last weekly review pulled all the projects related to finishing my Masters degree into a single folder just so Ic an look at the bigger picture of that AOF more easily. For the rest my folder system was breaking down because too many projects overlap multiple AOFs.

I tried to assign them as if I was assigning projects like a manager to different people but it was not easy for me to figure out that structure. Take something as simple as a project to decide the mating plan for the sheep for this year. It could go to the farm manager role, as that's who is going to implement it. But it's also part of learning because I am using more EBVs this year and defining my own performance index. It's also part of my programming and LambTracker role because I am writing queries and implementing features to assist in the decisions. And it's part of community because I am looking at what types of sheep a couple of local folks might want so breeding for that. Plus it's larger in the sense that I also need to take into account the entire North American population of Black Welsh Mountain sheep, decide if I have any critically rare or endangered bloodlines and formulate a plan to propogate those. And then there is the whole added wrinkle of our USDA research which is focused on sheep reproduction, so I have to coordinate with the main researcher on what are the characteristics he needs in the research ewes for this years' experiments. So a single project spans 5 or 6 main AOFs.

The only reasons I now sort projects by AOFs is if there is a clear need, the Masters Degree is one but I'm finding I like the monolithic group of projects better than subdivisions.

If you do decide to go for really strict separate AOF definitions then IMO you will end up with 30-40 of them.

 

[Folke]

I tried to assign them as if I was assigning projects like a manager to different people ...
...
It could go to the farm manager role, as that's who is going to implement it. But it's also part of learning ... also part of my programming and LambTracker role.

Hmm. Is that perhaps what the problem is? Farm manager definitely sounds like a role that could be delegated to a certain person, but what about learning? That's hardly a role that any one person could be responsible for. It is an aspect or facet of virtually every role. And LambTracker (if I have understood your earlier posts correctly) is a software tool, i.e. a context, not a role. Who would be using that tool? Perhaps the farm manager? That sounds like a role. As for programming, do you see this as a generic "IT department" kind of role - someone who is responsible for keeping all the other roles adequately equipped? Or is this, too, like learning, just a facet of what any role could contain?

If you do decide to go for really strict separate AOF definitions then IMO you will end up with 30-40 of them.

I have about 10 or 12.

 

[conar]

I use my Areas of Focus list as a checklist to triger new projects / someday items / goals / vision.

I am not convinced that mutually exclusive areas are possible. There is too many things that can fit in differents categories. The only level of segregation that I use is Work vs. Non-Work items. And here too it can overlap (e.g. to complete my work, I might need to develop new skills. Should these activities go under Work or Career or Personal Development, ...?

there could definitely be things that could belong in more than one AoR, but I do it as I would have done it if I had had that many individual people to delegate to (with those job titles).

It doesn't work for me. I would be struggling too often, trying to decide which area it best belongs to.

So I don't see a benefit in organizing my projects by areas of focus. I just separate Work projects from Non-Work projects.

 

[bcmyers2112]

I keep my AOFs as a simple, flat list. I review them about every three months, but sometimes more frequently if I feel I need to. I don't bother linking them to projects or actions, or vice versa. I just use them to help me gauge if certain parts of my life are on track or not.

I'm perfectly comfortable with a project fitting into one or more AOFs, or having an AOF with no projects or actions at a given moment. I understand my approach is a lot less rigorous than what some others have described but it works well for me. It gives me what I feel is an appropriate level of control without creating a system more burdensome than I am willing to update and use.

 

[Folke]

I don't bother linking them to projects or actions, or vice versa ... an appropriate level of control without creating a system more burdensome than I am willing to update and use.

It is funny. We all want simplicity, and I think we can agree to that. But it varies tremendously what each of us thinks is the easier way. To quite some extent it depends on what kind of tool we have already chosen to use, but that choice of tool was itself a reflection of what kind of simplicity we were looking for.

For example, this "linking" that you mention would probably indeed be a horrendous burden if you use a tool such as Wunderlist, which some people choose for its "simplicity" of not even having any "linking features" at all to potentially confuse you. That's fine.

But for those who have chosen a tool with built-in hierarchies (e.g. Omnifocus, GTDNext, MLO, Todoist, Doit and others) the linking is quite transparent and automatic - when you review a project and add tasks to it they automatically end up belonging to that same project, and the project itself has already been assigned to some overarching Goal or Folder or List or whatever the developer has chosen to call these upper levels (that could be interpreted as areas etc for those who like). That's "simplicity" in another form. It saves you the trouble during reviews etc of having to chase around for actions that belong together, that serve a similar purpose.

We can get two entirely different kinds of simplicity to match two entirely different ideas about what it is that needs to be simple. But we all call our choice "the simplest".

 

[bcmyers2112]

We can get two entirely different kinds of simplicity to match two entirely different ideas about what it is that needs to be simple. But we all call our choice "the simplest".

I don't know if my system is the "simplest" or the anything-est. It simply works well for me. The OP asked for input on how others use AOFs and I thought I'd share my way.

 

[Oogiem]

Hmm. Is that perhaps what the problem is? Farm manager definitely sounds like a role that could be delegated to a certain person, but what about learning? That's hardly a role that any one person could be responsible for.

Lifelong learner is a role, so is wife, housekeeper, shepherd, wool packer, spinner, knitter, weaver, quilter, seamstress, orchardist, shopkeeper, treasurer, registrar, secretary, personal financial manager, bookkeeper, landlord, cook, community activist, tractor driver, java programmer, webmaster, wordpress programmer, database designer, novel writer, reference librarian, genetics mathematician, matchmaker, sales rep, systems engineer, cowgirl, wine bottler, SEO specialist, technical writer, reproduction researcher, ultrasound tech, vet tech and those are just the things I can think of offhand but is no where near complete. Projects can span many of those roles and cannot be confined to a single one.

 

[Folke]

Lifelong learner is a role

I disagree. We can define things as we want, of course, but it is definitely not a role in the sense that it is something that would be given to ONE single person in an organization to do. Instead, learning is something that the sales manager, the salespersons, the product managers, production manager, purchasers, quality assurance manager etc would ALL have to do. It is a part of EVERY role. In that sense, even if you choose to call it "role", it is a very different kind of role than farm manager, orchard manager or whatever roles you might have in a case such as yours.

In the long list you gave above, most "roles" seem to be roles in the stricter and narrower sense that I am referring to, though (e.g. shepherd, landlord and most others). It is mainly (perhaps only) learning that sticks out as different. The roles you mention are very detailed, though.

Projects can span many of those roles and cannot be confined to a single one.

Well, yes and no, but I would say no. Of course a project can require different people with different skills etc, but (unless we are trying to calculate manhours per resource type etc) I think it is enough to define who OWNS the project - who is responsible for keeping up its momentum overall. A huge sales project might be owned by the sales manager, even though most of the work is done by entire different people in other departments (engineering, production, finance etc). It is not the purpose here (not for me, anyway) to detail that.

I have defined much fewer roles for myself, more like "sector manager" roles, and the project gets classified by who runs it, not by all the ones who participate in it.

 

[Oogiem]

Roles or AOFs are things I want to maintain per the GTD book. I don't have anyone else to manage but me so they are all me. I always think about who will do the work not who oversees it as there aren't any people who oversee my projects other than me. Those areas will never really be done hence they are not really projects. I can't have a project of shepherdess, I can have a project of move the sheep to fresh grass. I've never been a manger and I don't think that way. I have also always been a generalist so skills and jobs span what in many organizations would be separate people or groups. I spent most of my working life in Advanced Concepts, a skunkworks type group, so we did it all not fettered by whose "job" it was.

 

[Folke]

Then I can understand that AoRs are not for you. We are all just one person. But some of us think it is helpful to think of it in terms of what we DRIVE in our capacity as a businessperson or what we DRIVE in our capacity as a household partner etc, whereas others do not. It is probably by the book, whichever way we do it. Cheers.

 

[Oogiem]

Then I can understand that AoRs are not for you.

Quite the contrary, I think areas of focus are critical but that you cannot separate projects into neat cubbyholes that are only within a single area of focus because they all overlap a lot.

Maybe another example: An area of focus might be Maintain my health, and that might mean cooking healthy food, which might have projects of planting a garden for fresh veges, (part of a gardener AOF) or locating a local CSA to subscribe to, (part of supporting local businesses as part of valued member of my community AOF) or developing hunting skills so you can eat more wild caught meat, (part of learning new skills AOF) or going on a fishing trip (which might also be part of an Enjoy life AOF )and sanity saving as that might be a vacation for you or dealing with the mating plan for the sheep (part of the geneticist AOF) because that will result in lambs that grow faster so you can get your meat quicker. See what I mean? The projects and areas of focus all overlap.

 

[Folke]

I think areas of focus are critical but that you cannot separate projects into neat cubbyholes that are only within a single area of focus because they all overlap a lot.

See what I mean? The projects and areas of focus all overlap.

I see what you mean. And I am not saying you are wrong. I can see that aspect, too. And apparently it has some value for you to do it that way. What do you actually use it for?

I am probably looking at it from a different angle than you, perhaps because I want something different out of it? I have about a dozen AoRs. They do not overlap. This is because I have deliberately defined them so that they won't. And this is because I want to use them for something that I find useful, where overlap would be an annoyance. When I review lists of tasks and projects I want to deal with them in a way that makes sense to me and my gut and my whole sense of inspiration and responsibility. It does not make any sense to my gut to even try to review a list for completeness etc if it is organized alphabetically or randomly or by context. When I review the list I want to go one "purpose" at a time, i.e. one role or single project within that role at a time. This is because that is how my inspiration and imagination works. I cannot see what is missing or could be done differently if I do not see the related things together. See?

Many of the examples you mentioned in your last post sound like something that I had actually thought of, but as a different kind of thing, that I have never tried to implement. I would probably have labeled those long term goals (30k - 50k), e.g. maintain my health, develop hunting skills etc, or proficiency in some language. Those kinds of "benefits" could obviously overlap a lot. Talking a walk with a French customer could improve my health (exercise) and improve my understanding of French, as well as serve a more concrete and immediate purpose within a particular project or business area. It would of course be possible to keep track of the longer-term (secondary) purposes, and maybe even use this classification to guide decisions to some extent, but I never really quite saw how to implement it in an energy-efficient way in an app. Is that what you do? How?

 

[Gardener]

But for those who have chosen a tool with built-in hierarchies (e.g. Omnifocus, GTDNext, MLO, Todoist, Doit and others) the linking is quite transparent and automatic - when you review a project and add tasks to it they automatically end up belonging to that same project, and the project itself has already been assigned to some overarching Goal or Folder or List or whatever the developer has chosen to call these upper levels (that could be interpreted as areas etc for those who like).

It's simple IF you link the project to a single Area of Focus. If you don't, then it's not simple at all. I use OmniFocus, and I don't sort my projects by Areas of Focus.

Your mental model for Areas of Focus seems to be based on "who" is responsible for getting something done. I see it as being a tool that helps me decide what I want to get done. In that model, "Learning" is, for me, a perfectly logical area of focus.

Learning isn't about getting something specific done, it's about ensuring that I keep myself learning, in general. WHAT I learn is then often related to a different area of focus.

I notice that you switched from "AoF" to "AoR". I'm definitely talking about "Area of Focus." The model is not a boss (me) who is assigning a staff member (me) to do something. The model is more like a coach (me) who is discussing with a client (me) what would best support that client's goals at this time, and ensuring a balance of projects that work toward higher-level, as well as immediate, goals.

 

[Gardener]

It would of course be possible to keep track of the longer-term (secondary) purposes, and maybe even use this classification to guide decisions to some extent, but I never really quite saw how to implement it in an energy-efficient way in an app. Is that what you do? How?

I realize you're asking Oogiem, but I'm thinking about your question anyway.

I don't know if "energy-efficient" would be a major goal here. I see the Area of Focus concept as something that I'd evaluate slowly, once in a while, rather than in a snappy daily sort of way.

I say "I'd" because I don't do it, but after all this discussion, maybe I will. What I have in mind is a list of high-level goals that I have for myself, under which I'd list my projects--and, as discussed, one project is likely to be in more than one list.

In fact--and this may be one of the uses--if a project ISN'T in more than one list, that project may not be pulling its weight. I'm not talking about some inflexible rule like "every project must support at least three Areas of Focus." But if a project supports just Sewing and another one supports Sewing, Learning, and Creativity, and I'm not sure which one is more appealing, I may as well go for the one that supports more areas.

Similarly, if I realize that there's nothing supporting a particular area of focus, that's something to think about. Maybe I just accept the fact that I don't have time for that area right now. Maybe I realize that it's not relevant any more. Or maybe I need to add something that supports it, and possibly Someday something to make room for that addition.

So, again, I don't see Areas of Focus as "who does what I've decided to do?" but "what shall I decide to do, and why?"