Hardly have any projects - help

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lptabs

Guest
I keep reading all of your posts and a lot of you say you have pages and pages of projects. Currently on my project list I have three things listed (not including what is on my someday/maybe list). Am I doing something wrong or am I just an incredibly boring person?

I am an assistant preschool teacher for three hours a day, I have two children and a husband, a house, and a business that I'm trying to get off the ground. Where are all of my projects? Am I looking at a project in the wrong way?
 
C

ChrisSweetland

Guest
Hello Linda !!! and happy Friday !

Ask yourself the following question:

What would I like to accomplish in the following areas of responsibility: preschool teacher, mother, wife, house and CEO of a new business?

Then start writing !!!!

Projects such as:

1. Enhance the preschool teacher's efforts to teach;
2. Become the best assistant preschool teacher in the district;
3. Discuss how I might better assist the preschool teacher;
4. Plan my next family vacation;
5. Plan my family's finances;
6. Create a reading list;
7. How would I like to spend my childrens' free time encouraging them and educating them?
8. How can I create some quiet time for me and my husband?
9. How do I develop a website for my new home based business?

The list could be endless !! The idea is to get all of those ideas (could be projects) out of your head and on paper. Then you can systematically plan the projects that surround you !!!

Godspeed with your new business !!
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Too few projects?

I think the key is to understand the DA definition of a project: any desired result requiring more than one next action step. Lots of things are projects, and I respond best to them when they are kept small and precise. An upcoming birthday is a project, painting the back door is a project. Some of the value of the definition is moving this stuff from simple todo's (which they aren't) into steps we can do in scraps of time.

Sometimes we don't have obvious discretionary time for big periods of the day, and that's ok. But naming a result as a project brings options to us, as in "Do I have time to pick up the paint at the hardware store on the way home?" and "If I don't bake the cake today, I won't have time to ice it tomorrow morning." We are having a dinner party for 10 on Sunday- it's a calendar event, but it's also a project, with next action steps (invitations, think about menu, make shopping list, give people directions to house).

Some projects are bigger and more important, of course. But anybody who thinks "End world hunger" is a project is delusional. I had a project "Review finances" on my list until I realized it wasn't a project for me; it represented a whole group of projects, with different desired results and different timescales.

Hope this helps,
Mike
 
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Anonymous

Guest
Projects

You have lots of projects!

Another way to flesh them out is to back into it. Look through your next action list and ask, "is this NA part of a larger effort I'm trying to accomplish?" If so, you have a project!

You'll get better at this and learn to identify as they emerge. Its always a challenge though.
 
L

lptabs

Guest
Thank you for the suggestions. I have another question though, shouldn't each project have a next action associated with it that is on your next actions list? So if you have 50 projects you would have 50 next action steps in order to move those projects forward. I don't know how you all do it! I have so much to do in a day that I don't have time for my project next actions. Between doing stuff with and for the kids, household chores and errands, working on my business - wow, do you guys sleep? That is why I have so much on my someday/maybe list, I know I just can't get to it this week or next week so I have to get it off the list.

Do you all work on all of your projects each week?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
lptabs said:
Shouldn't each project have a next action associated with it that is on your next actions list? So if you have 50 projects you would have 50 next action steps in order to move those projects forward. I don't know how you all do it! ....
Do you all work on all of your projects each week?
Click to expand...

No, of course not. My next actions stay on m lists to get done, as soon as I can. Sometimes, the passage of time changes things and the next action is no longer the next action, or the project becomes irrelevant. That's ok. If something were time-critical, it would be on my calendar in some form.
A lot of projects have appointments as the next thing to do, and I don't put them on next actions because appointments aren't discretionary, they're fixed, hard landscape. Some weeks I move several projects significantly ahead, some weeks (like this week) I have to devote most of my discretionary time at work to one single responsibility, while still attending meetings, teaching classes, et cetera. That's the way my life is.
This is where the weekly review is crucial for me, in anticipating what needs to be done soon, and avoiding panic. I feel I'm actually not very good at doing all this GtD stuff, but it really works extremely well for me.

Mike
 
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Anonymous

Guest
We dont do it all! We just know what "all" is.

Remember, you can only feel good about what you're doing if you're clear on what you're not doing.
 
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