Newbie GTD breakdown

[Gardener]

Taking the above calculation into account I still do not believe that more than 200 personal Next Actions is a realistic approach to life. In my opinion it is just wishful thinking.

But if a person's goals are truly that complicated, surely they'd have an even greater need to have a system to manage those goals than someone with a simpler set of life goals?

It seems to me that we usually discuss what I'd call a "few projects - many next actions per time" mindset. A relatively small number of projects, each of which can go through several next actions in a short period of time. So a relatively small number of projects means a relatively small number of Next Actions.

But here we're talking about a "many projects - few next actions per time" workload. There's nothing to say that a person with a very large number of projects, each of which requires a very long time for each next action, can't use GTD.

An example: Imagine that I want to breed a tomato with particular characteristics. I want it to be orange, medium-sized, firm, low acid, resistant to SomethingVirus, suitable for chilly climates, and indeterminate.

I have access to seeds for a couple of dozen different open-pollinated patent-free tomatoes, each of which has one or more of the characteristics that I want. I will cross those tomatoes until I get a single tomato with all of the characteristics that I want - or until i give up.

I will have to make many, many crosses to get what I want. Each cross, from choosing the parents to evauating the characteristics of the chlidren, will take a _full three years_, because with a cross of a true-breeding plant, the second year is an F1 hybrid and the differing characteristics only show up in the third year, so that's when you can really _start_.

(If I'm wrong about F1 hybrids, feel free to tell me, but I don't think that it changes the example. It would just take the cycle time to two years instead of three.)

So the project, "Evaluate the progeny of the cross of Tomato A with Tomato B", has a quite small number of next actions that may take no more than a few minutes of actual labor, but will stretch across three years before you even start on the interesting part.

And I'm not going to _just_ cross two tomatoes and wait around three years for the result. I'm going to cross dozens and dozens of pairs of tomatoes. And I might also be working with peppers. And zinnias. And so on.

So if I'm breeding plants, even at a hobby level, I not only could, but _will_ have dozens or hundreds of projects, each of which go through only a few Next Actions per year.

It sounds like this is Oogiem's situation, except that hers is much, much more complicated, because she's working in _many_ areas of long-term and short-term and mid-term projects.

So someone could tell me that in my scenario, I should get a plant breeding database and take the complexity out of GTD. This might change two hundred "Cross A with B" actions to a single "Print 2009 cross list and perform crosses" action. But I don't think that this is so easy with Oogiem's workload, becuase I don't think that her workload has the same patterns of many near-identical actions.

So hundreds of projects, each with a next action that may not happen until months or years from now? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Gardener

 

[kewms]

Yes. But we are comparing someone's personal system with a farm maintenance system (apples and oranges, don't you think?)

Not if the person owns the farm.

Katherine

 

[TesTeq]

Overload the Someday/Maybe list only!

But here we're talking about a "many projects - few next actions per time" workload. There's nothing to say that a person with a very large number of projects, each of which requires a very long time for each next action, can't use GTD.

OK. But decision what projects should be done now is made outside the GTD system but using the perspective built according to the GTD guidelines.

In my opinion if any list has to be overloaded - let it be the Someday/Maybe list.

 

[TesTeq]

Number of actions during your life.

Not if the person owns the farm.

Or a company. Or is CEO. But in this case many tasks should be delegated. There is a limit on a number of actions that you can do yourself during a week/month/year/life.

 

[Gardener]

In my opinion if any list has to be overloaded - let it be the Someday/Maybe list.

But what if the projects are _not_ Someday/Maybe?

My interpretation of Someday/Maybe is a project that only might get done, and I don't know when it will get done if it does get done.

So "learn to make a souffle" is probably Someday/Maybe.

But "Do income taxes" is not Someday/Maybe, even if it's May and you won't be worried about your income taxes for several months. It's _distant_, but there's nothing Someday or Maybe about it. It will be done, and it will be done at a fairly specific time.

The same can be true for the "many projects, few actions per time" scenario.

If a tomato plant that's the result of a cross is growing, then the "Harvest ripe tomato from plant 213 for seed harvest" is also not Someday or Maybe.

Yes, you may have entered that as the Next Action on the day that you planted Plant 213 in late May, and you may not perform that Next Action until late July when the plant is bearing. So that project is progressing at a rate of one Next Action in two months.

And once the seeds are harvested, you won't plant them until March of year, so that the rate goes down to one Next Action in eight months.

That project is slow. But it's not Someday and it's not Maybe. It's active. It's not Maybe any more than "Do income taxes" is Maybe.

Sure, there's a limit to how much you can do in a year. But it doesn't fundamentally matter whether your year's workload is five projects for which you accomplish a thousand actions each, or five hundred projects for which you accomplish ten actions each.

Sure, for the second you have to streamline project management, and for the first you have to streamline action management. Your system will look different. And, sure, most people work in the "few projects/many tasks per project" mode. But that doesn't mean that that's the only mode that's possible.

Gardener

 

[kewms]

If a tomato plant that's the result of a cross is growing, then the "Harvest ripe tomato from plant 213 for seed harvest" is also not Someday or Maybe.

But it's not immediately doable, either. You can't harvest tomatoes that don't exist yet. Seems to me that actions like these are why Tickler files were invented.

Katherine

 

[Oogiem]

So hundreds of projects, each with a next action that may not happen until months or years from now? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

EXACTLY! And your plant breeding example is pretty accurate except the time frame is actually longer than even 3 years for a single season species. You may not know that you got the right characteristics for several generations after the initial crosses. Livestock is longer, I started with a specific breeding plan over 10 years ago, I am now just getting to the point a few animals each year meet the original goals.

And yes, I have a really hard time saying a given project is a someday/ maybe when it is actually active and being worked on even if slowly.

 

[Oogiem]

Yes. But we are comparing someone's personal system with a farm maintenance system (apples and oranges, don't you think?)

Not really, first off work and life are all one. I don't separate my GTD systems. I live at my work and own the farm.

The point was it's not at all unreasonable to have many projects that are active and many next actions.

 

[kewms]

Or a company. Or is CEO. But in this case many tasks should be delegated. There is a limit on a number of actions that you can do yourself during a week/month/year/life.

Right. But small business owners (including farmers) don't necessarily have lots of people to delegate to. There are lots of benefits to *not* having employees, especially when your revenue stream is somewhat unpredictable.

Even when help is available for a specific project, the business owner may still need to do substantial work and/or supervise the helper pretty closely.

Katherine

 

[Gardener]

But it's not immediately doable, either. You can't harvest tomatoes that don't exist yet. Seems to me that actions like these are why Tickler files were invented.

Sure, yep. In my case, I use OmniFocus, so the Tickler is built in - I put a Start Date on the next action of a project and the project goes underwater until that Start Date is reached.

But I still don't think of that project as being Someday/Maybe. It's a commitment, and it's a commitment with a specific date, so it's neither Someday or Maybe.

Maybe I'm using the term too literally, but I just wouldn't be comfortable putting the project in a category with that name. It wouldn't be sitting in my "Current" OmniFocus folder, because that folder is for projects that I'm likely to work on in the next week or two. But I wouldn't demote it all the way down to the speculative "maybe" projects either.

Gardener

 

[Gardener]

EXACTLY! And your plant breeding example is pretty accurate except the time frame is actually longer than even 3 years for a single season species. You may not know that you got the right characteristics for several generations after the initial crosses.

Yep, I knew that in theory if not in detail. My vague understanding is that for crosses of true-breeding plants, the third year is the first year that you get _any_ differentiation of characteristics, but none of what you're looking at is even remotely assured to breed true, so you're practically at the beginning of the process, not the end. This is why I've never really done a breeding project - I'm too impatient.

It is puzzling to figure out how the very, very long-term, few-actions projects fit into a paper system. You don't want to look at a hundred actions that won't be appropriate until May, in October. On the other hand, again, they're neither Someday or Maybe.

In an electronic system it's easy enough to hide them until a date crops up - so easy that I don't really need to even think about how many projects I have. In a paper system, it seems that it would be messier.

But veering wildly around to one of the original things to start this discussion, I assumed that the 1300 pieces of paper that were referred to weren't 1300 strictly defined "next actions", but were instead 1300 actions, next or not, or raw thoughts, that might summarize into far, far fewer projects.

Gardener

 

[sdann]

Perhaps it's a matter of semantics, but isn't Someday a committment, whereas Maybe isn't. A someday/maybe list could therefore consist of both. (To distinguish one can have several s/m list and integrate those with the tickler, as suggested by Katherine.)

 

[TesTeq]

Ok. I do not plan to have a farm.

The point was it's not at all unreasonable to have many projects that are active and many next actions.

Ok. I do prefer less Projects and Next Actions. It is unreasonable for me to have more than 99 Next Actions. I prefer simple life (I like Leo Babauta's book "Power of Less") so I do not plan to have a farm.

But if you are able and want to manage hundreds of Next Actions I can only express my great respect and wish you very successful outcomes in all of your projects.

 

[mmurray]

Mac related comments

dforrest -

Watch out for Notes in Leopard Mail. Before starting to use OmniFocus I implemented GTD entirely in Mail which was fun but it kept getting stuffed up
with Notes disappearing and To-Do lists becoming ordinary lists. Something seemed to get messed up on the IMAP server I am using. There are lots of similar reports on Apple's support pages so its not just me.

Omnifocus has an iPod Touch / iPhone client which can sync with the mac version via MobileMe or directly over wifi. Excellent for checking errands or collecting thoughts while out and about. I've also done a mini review using just the iPhone client. It's surprisingly useful. I don't bother with ToDo's in iCal at all now just keeping Next Actions entirely in Omnifocus. The combination of them isn't cheap but you can get demos and try them.

Michael