Areas of Focus

[sdann]

I've searched, but cannot seem to find a post or a thread that was eye-opening to me re the areas of focus. I should have recorded it at the time I saw it, but thought I could come back to it at any time. Now I can't find it.

Can someone please define "areas of focus" in relationship to "goals & objectives" and "projects". I'm mapping my HOFs and am confused on exactly how I can link the areas of focus between the other two horizons.

 

[MarinaMartin]

Areas of focus is a list of categories that you should regularly re-read and use to brainstorm new goals or projects. The point is to make sure an area of your life that's important to you isn't overlooked - say, you're so busy working on your business that you neglect your personal relationships for a year.

Here's my list, if that helps:

Business customer service
Business finances
Business growth
Business research & development
Business sales
Cats
Personal finances
Personal happiness
Personal health
Personal intellectual growth
Personal relationships
Personal spirituality
Personal surroundings

Areas of focus are simply "areas that are important to me." Your goals would fall under different areas of focus, and your projects are specific tasks toward achieving those goals. Does that make sense?

 

[ChristinaSkaskiw]

The distinction of projects from areas of focus

As David explains it, areas of focus sits above projects, at the 20,000 ft level, and can be managed as a checklist to review, not necessarily every week, maybe monthly, quarterly or yearly. The checklist can help you identify areas that need more attention and you would formulate a project within the area of focus to achieve a specific desired outcome. For example, if I've been a bit of a recluse lately I might consider my focus area "friends" and decide I want to arrange a hill walking weekend in the Lake District (a project). It kind of helps keeping your life balanced. The areas of focus should cover your life with no gaps, so to speak.

Above areas of focus are larger goals and objectives at 30,000. To me, being a computer person, it's a mis-match of types to have open-ended stuff like areas of focus in between two levels of goals, but when I think of the larger goals as choices that would impact my areas of focus, it makes sense.

I have generic things on my list, such as health, finance, and family, and then my key hobbies and interests. Mind you, I don't always have projects in every area, especially not the hobby ones.

There's a short article and a teleseminar on GTD Connect, and you can also simply search for "areas of focus" or "horizons of focus".

Hope that's helpful.

Christina

 

[Brent]

A Project is "Write article."

An Area of Focus is "Become a published author."

You can think of an Area of Focus as a big container for many projects, all relating to a broad goal in your life.

 

[Oogiem]

Can someone please define "areas of focus" in relationship to "goals & objectives" and "projects".

Im interested in this too. I combine visions and life purpose as one level. I have a personal statement of purpose that is really the life portion or 50K level that I review on the solstices and equinoxes. I also have well defined goals for the sheep flock and for the farm as a whole some of which are multiple decades long. That is where I sort of combine the 40K and 30K sections into one. The time lines of what the various levels are do not work well for me because I have projects that will take decades or even more than one lifetime.

Below that are the areas of responsibility. For me they are the logical divisions under which projects happen.

My own areas of focus are
Family & Friends
Health
Household (house cleaning type stuff)
Sheep (Specific to the animals themselves)
Poultry (ditto)
Horses (ditto)
Wool (all fleece, roving and yarn stuff)
Hay Barn (projects surrounding hay and winter feeidng including winter corrals)
Red Barn (poultry infrastructure is here)
Shop (being built so has several projects with it)
Sewing
Weaving
Spinning
Knitting and Naalbinding
Quilting
Scrapbooks
Main House
Guest House
I also have areas for each major land division like Main Pasture, West side pasture, Guest House garden, etc. that are part of our overall farm planning document.

An example of all the levels I am using would be:

A statement in my personal purpose is that "I develop & implement sustainable systems to breed rare & endangered livestock & plant species, breeds & bloodlines." That's the 50K or life level

A goal below that is "We maintain at least 4 distinct bloodlines in a sustainable breeding program in our flock. We are using a modified form of the Conservation Breeding Guidelines by ALBC." This is both my 40K and 30K level because the timeframes are long.

That ties into the Sheep category of focus which is the 20K level and then projects under that are things like

"Decide on matings for 2009 lambs to reduce inbreeding in the Gwen line while preserving their lovely wool quality." This is one of the current projects in Sheep.

The next action for that project is to "Calculate inbreeding coefficients on lambs out of Gwenllian, Gwenlliant, Gwenifer, Gwenda et al if mated to Heilyn, Hamish or Jared". It's listed in the context of @computer with a deadline of fall before we sort ewes into breeding groups.

Does that help?

 

[ChristinaSkaskiw]

Those were really good examples, Oogiem! I don't know that I would call "become a published author" an area of focus (as Brent suggested) as that is clearly something that can be achieved. I'd call that a 30.000 ft objective. As an area of focus I'd have "creative writing".

My 2 cents

C

 

[Rainer Burmeister]

Above areas of focus are larger goals and objectives at 30,000. To me, being a computer person, it's a mis-match of types to have open-ended stuff like areas of focus in between two levels of goals, but when I think of the larger goals as choices that would impact my areas of focus, it makes sense.

Have to admit that having those open-ended areas of focus at the 20,000 feet level never made any sense to me and still doesn't. That's why I used the 20,000 feet level for my current responsibilities and real projects (pm projects).

Those open-ended areas of focus where I work at my attitude goals I keep outside of my gtd system, especially by journaling and discussions with certain persons I know. The results of this self-motivational work gets fed into my gtd system on various levels.

E.g., when I want to change my attitude regarding a certain part of my job, I first need to find out what I don't want and what I want, find a usable motive (what do I want to change about that part of my job?), decide to go into that new direction and build an intention, i.e. a new attitude regarding that part of my job that bugs me. What ever it is that is the consequence of the new intention gets written into my gtd system, maybe a certain action or a new project or whatever.

Rainer

 

[mwinn]

Interview with David Allen at precisionchange.com

In the last few days I just listened to Duff McDuffee's 3-part interview with David over at www.precisionchange.com (Episodes 8, 9 & 10). Episode 10 had what I thought was a GREAT explanation of the ways the projects, areas of focus & goals fit together. It is near the beginning of that segment but I was driving so I don't have notes on what exactly they said... but I thought it was very helpful. Check it out, and maybe someone else can summarize it for us here?

 

[Brent]

Have to admit that having those open-ended areas of focus at the 20,000 feet level never made any sense to me and still doesn't. That's why I used the 20,000 feet level for my current responsibilities and real projects (pm projects).

Why do you do your job? Why did you accept your current responsibilities?

What turns you on, excites you, inspires you? How often do you get to do those things? Could you be doing them more often?

Integrating the 20,000-foot view helps you to do those things more. It provides you with a perspective on those real projects, and their larger worth.

 

[moises]

Areas of Focus, according to pages 205-6 of the GTD book are roles, job descriptions, or areas of responsibility.

Generic examples from the book:

Professional: staff development, marketing, facilities management, asset management.

Personal: parent, spouse, health, community service, home management, financial management, creative expression.

My areas of focus are:

Personal: academia, father, financial freedom, fitness, health, home, husband, renewal, son.

Work: finance, human resources, information technology, inventory control, manufacturing management, office, property management, purchasing, and sales.

My system is a digital, hierarchical list. In plain English: it's an outline. I use Areas of Focus as the top level of the outline.

The level beneath the area of focus is the project. The level beneath the project is the action.

For example:

Area of Focus: Manufacturing Management
Project: Both label printers running
Next Action: call Barbara to find out if cutter-stacker shipped

Area of Focus: Academia
Project: Fall 2008 course prepared
Next Action: photocopy plagiarism reporting form

Any time that I enter an action into my trusted system, I put it under an area of focus.

I found it a useful exercise to create these areas of focus. If you use your system regularly, you will quickly find out if the areas you have created work for you. If you keep creating projects that have no clear area of focus, you need to revise your list of areas.

I don't use LifeBalance, but I believe that what they call Top Level Items correspond to areas of focus.

One possible objection to my use of areas of focus is that there can be some ambiguity and lack of clarity regarding their borders. For example, I am taking a week's vacation in August. I will do this with my wife and my son. Is the vacation about my own Renewal, is it about being a good Husband to my wife, or is it about being a good Father to my son? It's all of these. In my description of each area I have noted that vacations go in renewal, but there will always be some fuzziness. In actual practice, I haven't found this to be a problem. Since my list is digital, I just do a digital search for "vacation" to find the relevant action.

From a broader perspective, I find it useful to see all my Purchasing projects together in one place, all my Sales projects in another, and all my Home projects another. It's an excellent way to organize my actions and projects. It is important to note that areas of focus are independent of contexts. I might have a next action to buy a mousetrap. Its context is "Errands" while its area of focus is "Home." I might have another next action to review the GTD book's discussion of file folders. Its context would be "Home" while its area of focus would be "Office."

It takes but a second to put each action in an area. It also clearly demonstrates that many areas of focus do not have a whole lot going on while other areas are bursting at the seams.

 

[sdann]

These posts are helping me very much. Some questions though, should one link areas of focus to your goals and objectives and, if so, how? Can one area of focus relate back to several goals/objectives? Or do the HOFs have to work like pyramids?

 

[kewms]

These posts are helping me very much. Some questions though, should one link areas of focus to your goals and objectives and, if so, how? Can one area of focus relate back to several goals/objectives? Or do the HOFs have to work like pyramids?

Areas of focus are implicitly linked to goals and objectives. If your goals and your areas of focus don't match, then one or the other needs to change. Whether to make an explicit link is up to you.

Katherine

 

[Borisoff]

These posts are helping me very much. Some questions though, should one link areas of focus to your goals and objectives and, if so, how? Can one area of focus relate back to several goals/objectives? Or do the HOFs have to work like pyramids?

I'd second a lot of what was said here. Areas of Focus (as long as other higher horizons of focus) are not actionable items, they are triggers for action items. Look through these trigger lists to fill your Project list with new projects. An area of focus could also trigger goals and objectives; but goals and objectives could trigger a new area of focus as well. All of that is interconnected. And yes, one area of focus could trigger or relate to several of goals. Why not? That interconnection adds motivation to your actions.

 

[sdann]

I'm finding that the more I accomplish, the more I want to and am able to achieve. However, I think the one part that is limiting me right now is having a clear vision of my updated horizons of focus. Therefore, I'm working on that this weekend. I am so grateful for any help or suggestions.

I've said it before, but these posts are helping me. Since the horizons are defined by thousand feet, I am somehow envisioning the whole HOF format in a pyramid shape, one horizon linking to the one below. However, perhaps I'm being too unimaginative in my interpretation. Do some of you ever link your goals (30k)directly to your projects (10k)? Or, should I connect them through the Areas of focus (20k)? Can I link a project to both an Area of Focus and a goal?

 

[kewms]

I've said it before, but these posts are helping me. Since the horizons are defined by thousand feet, I am somehow envisioning the whole HOF format in a pyramid shape, one horizon linking to the one below. However, perhaps I'm being too unimaginative in my interpretation. Do some of you ever link your goals (30k)directly to your projects (10k)? Or, should I connect them through the Areas of focus (20k)? Can I link a project to both an Area of Focus and a goal?

I don't maintain explicit links between goals and projects, or between projects and actions for that matter. Certainly you *could* maintain any level of links that you find helpful and that your system supports, but I've found that it adds too much overhead without really helping much.

Katherine

 

[sdann]

I don't maintain explicit links between goals and projects, or between projects and actions for that matter. Certainly you *could* maintain any level of links that you find helpful and that your system supports, but I've found that it adds too much overhead without really helping much.

Phew. I really appreciate this. Some on this forum have described how they mapped out some of their HOFs, but I'm finding that task daunting, as probably evidenced by these questions. Maybe my main goal should be to just update my HOFs and not make a mountain out of a molehill. I've been very proud of myself in developing my simple system without overkill on new technology, because I know I could make a full-time job out of that. Now I've found I'm trying to apply a complex system to to my HOFs. I need to scale back.

 

[Borisoff]

Phew. I really appreciate this. Some on this forum have described how they mapped out some of their HOFs, but I'm finding that task daunting, as probably evidenced by these questions. Maybe my main goal should be to just update my HOFs and not make a mountain out of a molehill. I've been very proud of myself in developing my simple system without overkill on new technology, because I know I could make a full-time job out of that. Now I've found I'm trying to apply a complex system to to my HOFs. I need to scale back.

I like your idea of simplicity. I would even guess that HOFs are not put in stone and should be questioned at least each year and then be replaced with new ones; HOFs are a set of questions that help you achieve the balance and fill your life with new ideas and projects. The HOFs questions could be found in David's book.

 

[kewms]

I read a quote from Eisenhower recently: "Plans are useless. Planning is indispensable."

I think it's really helpful to spend some time on a regular basis thinking about what's important to you, how your current activities mesh with those values, and how to bring the two into line. If you're a business owner, having a plan helps keep you grounded in what your business is actually trying to achieve.

But at least for me, the whole point of that thinking is to internalize my goals so that I *don't* need a system with tight links. In a tightly structured system, the kinds of questions you've been posting come up over and over again. Life is fuzzy; a system that can't accommodate ambiguity is, IMO, doomed.

Katherine

 

[jpm]

Areas of Focus as a vertical dimension

Above areas of focus are larger goals and objectives at 30,000. To me, being a computer person, it's a mis-match of types to have open-ended stuff like areas of focus in between two levels of goals, but when I think of the larger goals as choices that would impact my areas of focus, it makes sense.

20,000 ft is tricky like that. Areas of Focus are kind of a type (or dimensional) mis-match. The altitudes are mostly about perspective (time) with 10,000 ft being a few weeks or months, and Goals (30,000 ft) being 1-2 years, and Vision (40,000 ft) being 3-5 years.

At 20,000 ft are Areas of Focus, which include things like short term goal (quarterly objectives), as well as roles, responsibilities, etc. The quarterly objective fits in nicely with the time dimension at 20,000 ft, but the more global concept of Areas of Focus (which is usually applied as a vertical rather than a horizontal division) can really apply at any Horizon. One can certainly have goals (30,000 ft) or vision (40,000 ft) in multiple areas of focus: e.g. Health, Relationships, Career Wealth, etc.

I think David put these at 20,000 feet because this is often the most appropriate place to put them. While some focus areas likely won't change over your life (health), others might, particularly those that relate to your job; in fact those can easily change within the span of a year and therefore it makes sense to put them at 20,000 feet where they'll be reviewed appropriately frequently.

Because of this I tend to think of 20,000 ft as my quarterly objectives and "Areas of Focus" as a separate vertical dimension.

As far as technical implementaiton this is pretty simple for me. I use the GTD Add-in for outlook which does a reasonably good job of linking Actions to Projects and I've added a custom field for "Area of Focus" which I only apply at the project level. I only keep 20,000 ft. projects in outlook. Longer term objectives, goals, etc. are kept outside of outlook in Mind Manager.

 

[sdann]

I spent the weekend working on my horizons of focus. Once I decided to not interconnect all the levels and to just work on them as they are defined, I finished them off rather quickler. I also relistened to the Horizons of Focus teleseminar, in which David said that the areas of focus can be used as a checklist to see that you are touching upon all your responsibilities and roles.

It is interesting to see how quickly I wanted a neat compact system, when I should've been more relaxed and abstract about it. I know my horizons all work together; there just aren't any lines connecting one to the other. The only higher horizons that I see being linked together in the future are goals & objectives with projects. That will need to be done during my next hof session.

I feel more relaxed just having it all identified.