I'd like to get responses on how various people handle this --
I've been doing GTD for years (some years better than others). The bcc yourself @waiting for rule in Outlook is worth the price paid for the book and has made me more productive than most people i work with! And I think because of GTD I have fairly good reputation for getting things done! However, I have a new boss in the last year who has made me question how much one person is expected to get done. I believe I can use GTD to actually push back and show time constraints on the workload, but it's raised some questions for me on the system, and I'm curious how others do it.
I know the calendar is supposed to be for actual appointments with specific times, or tasks that must be completed on that day. However, I'm going to give you two made-up scenarios to see how others might handle these.
First scenario (a personal project): you are hosting a baby shower for a friend. You've decided that the invitations need to be mailed on Monday, June 11th. You've done all of your other Next Actions -- buying the invites, getting the invite list, getting stamps, etc. You've estimated that it's going to take 2 hours to print the inside of the invite cards, print out the labels, stuff the envelopes, stamp and seal. Yes, any of those items could have been a smaller Next Action, but you've decided it's just easiest for you to sit down, spend 2 hours and do it all at once. sp at this point you have it as a Next Action @Home "Assemble invites - 2 hours". It's Friday, June 1, and you are doing your weekly review. You look at your calendar, and you see you have Wednesday night free to do the invites (although you don't think you want to do it at night), and you also have Saturday and Sunday afternoon free. Plus, depending upon whether it's raining or not, you will want to mow your lawn one of those afternoons. The invites have to go out that Monday. How would you handle that in your system?
Second scenario (Work-related): similar to above. Also, your organization is such that if you don't protect some actual "work" time on your calendar, many days it will get filled up with meetings (assume you can't just turn them down, either). You have a project that you've done as much of the "advance" items that you can -- get information from others, collect research, materials, etc. But now you have to just sit down and write the report, create the powerpoint, or draft the strategy, etc. You figure it'll take about 4 hours -- you could do it in 2 chunks, but any smaller chunks and you lose momentum, etc. You look at your calendar, and you've got several open spots of 2 hour slots on your calendar in the next 2 weeks right now. How do you handle this situation?
This is important for me now for 2 reasons. Literally too much work to fit in the space. Plus, I think that if I can actually use my calendar to drop in the actual work chunks for true "projects" (not GTD "projects") I can utilize that with my boss to discuss priorities and work load.
Thanks for any insight or suggestions you have.
I've been doing GTD for years (some years better than others). The bcc yourself @waiting for rule in Outlook is worth the price paid for the book and has made me more productive than most people i work with! And I think because of GTD I have fairly good reputation for getting things done! However, I have a new boss in the last year who has made me question how much one person is expected to get done. I believe I can use GTD to actually push back and show time constraints on the workload, but it's raised some questions for me on the system, and I'm curious how others do it.
I know the calendar is supposed to be for actual appointments with specific times, or tasks that must be completed on that day. However, I'm going to give you two made-up scenarios to see how others might handle these.
First scenario (a personal project): you are hosting a baby shower for a friend. You've decided that the invitations need to be mailed on Monday, June 11th. You've done all of your other Next Actions -- buying the invites, getting the invite list, getting stamps, etc. You've estimated that it's going to take 2 hours to print the inside of the invite cards, print out the labels, stuff the envelopes, stamp and seal. Yes, any of those items could have been a smaller Next Action, but you've decided it's just easiest for you to sit down, spend 2 hours and do it all at once. sp at this point you have it as a Next Action @Home "Assemble invites - 2 hours". It's Friday, June 1, and you are doing your weekly review. You look at your calendar, and you see you have Wednesday night free to do the invites (although you don't think you want to do it at night), and you also have Saturday and Sunday afternoon free. Plus, depending upon whether it's raining or not, you will want to mow your lawn one of those afternoons. The invites have to go out that Monday. How would you handle that in your system?
Second scenario (Work-related): similar to above. Also, your organization is such that if you don't protect some actual "work" time on your calendar, many days it will get filled up with meetings (assume you can't just turn them down, either). You have a project that you've done as much of the "advance" items that you can -- get information from others, collect research, materials, etc. But now you have to just sit down and write the report, create the powerpoint, or draft the strategy, etc. You figure it'll take about 4 hours -- you could do it in 2 chunks, but any smaller chunks and you lose momentum, etc. You look at your calendar, and you've got several open spots of 2 hour slots on your calendar in the next 2 weeks right now. How do you handle this situation?
This is important for me now for 2 reasons. Literally too much work to fit in the space. Plus, I think that if I can actually use my calendar to drop in the actual work chunks for true "projects" (not GTD "projects") I can utilize that with my boss to discuss priorities and work load.
Thanks for any insight or suggestions you have.