N
njnjboy
Guest
Hello GTDers,
It's been a while since the last time I've posted. Many thanks to Bernard and company for all the excellent suggestions on making my weekly review useful, meaningful, and under an hour (http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4718).
I am still using a palm and memoleaf (a memopad organizer) as my way of getting all my projects entered and used (in terms of context, etc...).
My current question/issue deals with the birds-eye view part of GtD (20,000 foot, 40,000 foot...choose whatever height you want in terms of the name...I'll use "birds-eye" as the term for it). I am looking for an approach to this view, rather then specific tools (memoleaf and palm have worked really well for me).
I understand that the fundamental unit of a Next Action (NA) is a physical step, but I'm encountering some problems with projects that are part of a bigger overall goal. An example, might be the best way to describe my problem.
Ok - so I have a bunch of overall goals in my life with their own priority. These goals are much higher level "projects" than day to day projects. I'd call these "meta-projects" since they're more abstract and quite removed from a physical next action. So for example, lets say I have the following life goals (as birds-eye as I can get):
1. live a long and healthy life
2. spend meaningful time with my spouse
3. be financially healthy so that I can retire early
Now on a day-to-day basis, I'm dealing with many different projects. Many of which have nothing to do with the above goals (for example, a project called "get 200,000 miles out of Honda" or "fix up bathroom in apartment"). At the same time, when I empty my head and create projects, there are some that fit under the above goals. Now these related projects come into my head, and I drain them into projects. For example:
Under #1 goal I might have the following projects:
- "find exercise that I can do twice a week on a lifelong basis" (and this project would have the physical steps of: "search web for chart on types of exercises", "figure out how to measure effectiveness of walking", etc...)
- "take multi vitamins on a daily basis" (again - physical steps of choosing vitamins, tracking, and making this a recurring project)
Under goal #2, I might have the following projects:
- "figure out daily activities where we can spend time together" (again - physical actions may be: "list current activities", "talk to partner about her ideal things to do together", etc...)
- "find weekend activities to do with spouse and friends" (physical actions would be: "research museums" (which might have even more physical steps to it like "google for local museums"
For goal #3, I might have the following (a lot more than the following, but these are some of them):
- "cull and figure possible gold and/or oil investment strategy" (physical steps would be things like: "read Grham bk first for $ mgmt method", "figure out a behavior that will suit you for long term", "focus on incremental improvement"
- "Learn to trade for a living w/o dependence on boss" (physical steps would be things like: "explore lazy investing", "read/reviewTrading Now by Alex Deer (Author)", etc...)
Now keeping in mind that projects related to life goals can come at any moment, and I am looking for a cohesive way of ordering the projects related to each goal would be very helpful in having a somewhat focused approach on approaching that goal over a long period of time, while at the same time keeping to the GtD minute-to-minute concepts of context and physical actions.
One thought I had was to take each goal and have the related projects underneath it in one listing, and then split off the projects so that I can actually do them. What I mean is have something like following:
1. live a long and healthy life
- "find exercise that I can do twice a week on a lifelong basis"
-- "search web for chart on types of exercises"
-- "figure out how to measure effectiveness of walking", etc...)
- "take multi vitamins on a daily basis"
-- research "healthy" vitamins on google
-- research medical articles on effectives of specific proportions or specific brand (consumer reports perhaps)
-- choose a company that's been around for a while
...
2. spend meaningful time with my spouse
- project outcome
-- project physical next action steps
...
3. be financially healthy so that I can retire early
- project outcome
-- project physical next action steps
...
Now the problem that I have with the above approach is the inflexibility of such a long list. When I move projects from the above list to a memo format, then when I update the physical steps on that project, they're gone from the overall approach of the life goal. This is an issue that goes beyond a context problem.
My questions:
1. how do you folks maintain a birds-eye perspective above the day-to-day minutiae of projects? (i.e. do you have one project (for life type goals) that lists other projects as NAs? Do you review it weekly? How do you see the forest in spite of the trees (i.e. the sequence of projects supporting a life goal, as opposed to life goal itself?)
2. How do you chain multiple projects that belong to one birds-eye category?
3. How do you cohesively organize which NA of which project in a particular (birds eye) category will be done so that you're marching forward in accomplishing your overall birds-eye category? (i.e. sequence in time...I'm not talking about context here).
Thank you for your help.
njnjboy
It's been a while since the last time I've posted. Many thanks to Bernard and company for all the excellent suggestions on making my weekly review useful, meaningful, and under an hour (http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4718).
I am still using a palm and memoleaf (a memopad organizer) as my way of getting all my projects entered and used (in terms of context, etc...).
My current question/issue deals with the birds-eye view part of GtD (20,000 foot, 40,000 foot...choose whatever height you want in terms of the name...I'll use "birds-eye" as the term for it). I am looking for an approach to this view, rather then specific tools (memoleaf and palm have worked really well for me).
I understand that the fundamental unit of a Next Action (NA) is a physical step, but I'm encountering some problems with projects that are part of a bigger overall goal. An example, might be the best way to describe my problem.
Ok - so I have a bunch of overall goals in my life with their own priority. These goals are much higher level "projects" than day to day projects. I'd call these "meta-projects" since they're more abstract and quite removed from a physical next action. So for example, lets say I have the following life goals (as birds-eye as I can get):
1. live a long and healthy life
2. spend meaningful time with my spouse
3. be financially healthy so that I can retire early
Now on a day-to-day basis, I'm dealing with many different projects. Many of which have nothing to do with the above goals (for example, a project called "get 200,000 miles out of Honda" or "fix up bathroom in apartment"). At the same time, when I empty my head and create projects, there are some that fit under the above goals. Now these related projects come into my head, and I drain them into projects. For example:
Under #1 goal I might have the following projects:
- "find exercise that I can do twice a week on a lifelong basis" (and this project would have the physical steps of: "search web for chart on types of exercises", "figure out how to measure effectiveness of walking", etc...)
- "take multi vitamins on a daily basis" (again - physical steps of choosing vitamins, tracking, and making this a recurring project)
Under goal #2, I might have the following projects:
- "figure out daily activities where we can spend time together" (again - physical actions may be: "list current activities", "talk to partner about her ideal things to do together", etc...)
- "find weekend activities to do with spouse and friends" (physical actions would be: "research museums" (which might have even more physical steps to it like "google for local museums"
For goal #3, I might have the following (a lot more than the following, but these are some of them):
- "cull and figure possible gold and/or oil investment strategy" (physical steps would be things like: "read Grham bk first for $ mgmt method", "figure out a behavior that will suit you for long term", "focus on incremental improvement"
- "Learn to trade for a living w/o dependence on boss" (physical steps would be things like: "explore lazy investing", "read/reviewTrading Now by Alex Deer (Author)", etc...)
Now keeping in mind that projects related to life goals can come at any moment, and I am looking for a cohesive way of ordering the projects related to each goal would be very helpful in having a somewhat focused approach on approaching that goal over a long period of time, while at the same time keeping to the GtD minute-to-minute concepts of context and physical actions.
One thought I had was to take each goal and have the related projects underneath it in one listing, and then split off the projects so that I can actually do them. What I mean is have something like following:
1. live a long and healthy life
- "find exercise that I can do twice a week on a lifelong basis"
-- "search web for chart on types of exercises"
-- "figure out how to measure effectiveness of walking", etc...)
- "take multi vitamins on a daily basis"
-- research "healthy" vitamins on google
-- research medical articles on effectives of specific proportions or specific brand (consumer reports perhaps)
-- choose a company that's been around for a while
...
2. spend meaningful time with my spouse
- project outcome
-- project physical next action steps
...
3. be financially healthy so that I can retire early
- project outcome
-- project physical next action steps
...
Now the problem that I have with the above approach is the inflexibility of such a long list. When I move projects from the above list to a memo format, then when I update the physical steps on that project, they're gone from the overall approach of the life goal. This is an issue that goes beyond a context problem.
My questions:
1. how do you folks maintain a birds-eye perspective above the day-to-day minutiae of projects? (i.e. do you have one project (for life type goals) that lists other projects as NAs? Do you review it weekly? How do you see the forest in spite of the trees (i.e. the sequence of projects supporting a life goal, as opposed to life goal itself?)
2. How do you chain multiple projects that belong to one birds-eye category?
3. How do you cohesively organize which NA of which project in a particular (birds eye) category will be done so that you're marching forward in accomplishing your overall birds-eye category? (i.e. sequence in time...I'm not talking about context here).
Thank you for your help.
njnjboy