Too many projects, all of "equal" priority

[rmjb]

Hello everyone,

GTD has an admittedly loose definition of a project, being anything that takes more than one step to complete. This is a valid definition for GTD since you want to ensure that there is always a next action in the system to move the project toward the desired outcome.
What this results in, however, is a listing of projects of wildly varying complexity... from "Change tyres on the car" to "Renew this maintenance contract" to "Complete my MBA" to "Read Making it All Work" to "Execute exit for my startup". All of these require more than one step to complete, but they are all of different priorities.

What stood out for me when I got into GTD is that is discarded the mainstream concept of priorities; there is no High, Medium, Low or A, B, C. Instead it recommends the three-fold nature of work, working with contexts (place, energy, tools, etc.), and the higher horizons; and by practising these regularly in the daily and weekly reviews, and in periodic higher horizons reviews, you would build up the ability to trust your gut.

What I find actually happening though is that I have so many "active" projects, that by the time I get to that step in the weekly review in the get current phase, I'm overwhelmed, and "Complete my MBA" gets the same level of attention as "Change tyres on the car". How do you prioritize projects in your system?

- Richard

 

[Murray]

One simple method which I use often - when I see the number of active projects creeping higher and I don't feel comfortable with it, I find a few to shift over to either Projects on Hold or Someday/maybe. On occasions when I've had things change rapidly for me in the course of a day, I've taken a machete to my projects list and cut it down to the bare minimum necessary, storing everything else safely elsewhere in my system. (eg: I remember a day when my mum was in sudden health crisis and needing a lot of support, plus a I had a challenging new opportunity at work come up)

When I make the strategic decision to temporarily deactivate some of my projects, I am choosing to prioritise three things above those now inactive projects:
1. The remaining active projects
2. My mental wellbeing, ability to focus, effectiveness etc etc
3. The strategic value of clear space - my projects list is only fully functional if I feel completely free and at ease adding new projects to it when the need arises.

Another simple method I occasionally use is to sort my active projects by date created, and devote some focused attention to one of them that has been sitting there the longest.

 

[Murray]

Also you could consider breaking out big outcomes like "complete MBA" into smaller projects such as "complete unit on business ethics" or even smaller like "submit group assignment"

 

[Gardener]

Hello everyone,

GTD has an admittedly loose definition of a project, being anything that takes more than one step to complete. This is a valid definition for GTD since you want to ensure that there is always a next action in the system to move the project toward the desired outcome.
What this results in, however, is a listing of projects of wildly varying complexity... from "Change tyres on the car" to "Renew this maintenance contract" to "Complete my MBA" to "Read Making it All Work" to "Execute exit for my startup". All of these require more than one step to complete, but they are all of different priorities.

To me "Complete my MBA" and"Execute exit for my startup" aren't projects. They're goals, or areas of focus, or super-projects, or some other entity that encompasses multiple projects.

What I find actually happening though is that I have so many "active" projects, that by the time I get to that step in the weekly review in the get current phase, I'm overwhelmed, and "Complete my MBA" gets the same level of attention as "Change tyres on the car". How do you prioritize projects in your system?

One of the criteria that I use for moving a project to Someday/Maybe is "too many projects." The fact that a project is active is, in itself, a priority setting. If I have twenty non-urgent projects of equal priority, I just pick one or two and put the rest into Someday/Maybe.

I also use lists. You mentioned "Read Making it All Work". I have a long list of books I'd like to read. I don't actually create projects for this, but if I did, I'd have a project, "Keep reading going" with a repeating task of, "Spend an hour reading the current book." The rest of the books would lurk in the list. When I finish the current book, I pick another one.

So this is one way that lower priority goals can shrink to be less dominant in your project list.

Similarly, "Renew this maintenance contract" could be in a list of "Keep paperwork current" with a repeating task of, "Choose and work a paperwork task." You could sort the paperwork tasks by deadline, and, if none have a deadline that's soon, you could just choose one.

So the low priority goals shrink. Similarly, the high priority goals can expand. You could have three or five or twenty different projects that further the goal of "Complete my MBA."

 

[gtdstudente]

Hello everyone,

GTD has an admittedly loose definition of a project, being anything that takes more than one step to complete. This is a valid definition for GTD since you want to ensure that there is always a next action in the system to move the project toward the desired outcome.
What this results in, however, is a listing of projects of wildly varying complexity... from "Change tyres on the car" to "Renew this maintenance contract" to "Complete my MBA" to "Read Making it All Work" to "Execute exit for my startup". All of these require more than one step to complete, but they are all of different priorities.

What stood out for me when I got into GTD is that is discarded the mainstream concept of priorities; there is no High, Medium, Low or A, B, C. Instead it recommends the three-fold nature of work, working with contexts (place, energy, tools, etc.), and the higher horizons; and by practising these regularly in the daily and weekly reviews, and in periodic higher horizons reviews, you would build up the ability to trust your gut.

What I find actually happening though is that I have so many "active" projects, that by the time I get to that step in the weekly review in the get current phase, I'm overwhelmed, and "Complete my MBA" gets the same level of attention as "Change tyres on the car". How do you prioritize projects in your system?

- Richard

rmjb, This was one of the reason why is was necessary to reduce life of this end to five Areas-of-FOCUS [P E R S O N S{Good, Dangerous},
D I V I N E, M E T H O D O L O G I E S/U T I L I T I E S[T O O L S], F I S C A L] then all subordinate Projects (including Horizons) have an 'edge' within them expressing 'Anti-Blur' and Self-Evident importance/priority if and when necessary. Interestingly, on this end, and perhaps without measuring subjective suitability, all of your good examples would be Projects that readily fall under . . .
METHODOLOGIES/UTILITIES[TOOLS]


with the following four sub-divisions . . .
Accuracy/Awareness: "Complete my MBA"
Healthy: "Read Making it All Work"
Toxic: Perhaps someone, like a narrow-minded, self-serving bureaucrat, attempting to sabotage one's noble efforts for good?
Props: "Tyres"
Provisions: "Execute exit for my startup"



Ps. "three-fold nature of work" is an overarching principle while "Contexts (place, energy, tools, etc.)" pertain to Next-Actions according to my humble understanding.

Pps. While the Color Coding might appear perplexing, however, they have been a super productive once the colors meanings are stably understood and promptly applied to Areas-of-FOCUS and 'needing' to include critical Subordinate Areas-of-FOCUS [Pending/WF].

Meanwhile, if you so please: Love Your Life, Love Your Work, Love Living Your Work

Hope the above offers you some help, please be well. Thank you

 

[dtj]

Depending on your preferred software, the number of projects is largely irrelevant, if you use tagging to impose some sort of "structure" on it, whether it be priority or energy or time or .... Once thats don't you can create perspectives, using Omnifocus terms, to create a tactical list, whereas your main project list is more strategic. I add things like a @shortlist tag to stuff that I want to do now. A @on_deck type tag for whats up next. I then create a shortlist perspective for whats on my plate right now. You can create multiple project differentiated shortlists, for home and work.

 

[ivanjay205]

Hello everyone,

GTD has an admittedly loose definition of a project, being anything that takes more than one step to complete. This is a valid definition for GTD since you want to ensure that there is always a next action in the system to move the project toward the desired outcome.
What this results in, however, is a listing of projects of wildly varying complexity... from "Change tyres on the car" to "Renew this maintenance contract" to "Complete my MBA" to "Read Making it All Work" to "Execute exit for my startup". All of these require more than one step to complete, but they are all of different priorities.

What stood out for me when I got into GTD is that is discarded the mainstream concept of priorities; there is no High, Medium, Low or A, B, C. Instead it recommends the three-fold nature of work, working with contexts (place, energy, tools, etc.), and the higher horizons; and by practising these regularly in the daily and weekly reviews, and in periodic higher horizons reviews, you would build up the ability to trust your gut.

What I find actually happening though is that I have so many "active" projects, that by the time I get to that step in the weekly review in the get current phase, I'm overwhelmed, and "Complete my MBA" gets the same level of attention as "Change tyres on the car". How do you prioritize projects in your system?

- Richard

I am going through this right now.... I have done a lot of reading and I also follow GTD Nordic podcast as they are fantastic. I just listened to episode 59 and rewatched it on YouTube as they used some visuals during it. I am in no way affiliated but would highly recommend the PODCast and specifically that episode. What they really demonstrated is how easy it is to blur areas of focus and projects together. They advocated separate reviewable lists and also to maintain a project list that "feels" good and they talk for about 5-10 minutes on this subject. If your lists overwhelm you, as mine do today, you will avoid them, as I am doing right now by typing here lol. So what I plan to do is actually strip out my areas of focus to a separate list to use them to engage and create projects. I will separate and strip out goals (like complete MBA) and birth projects from them. Only projects will be in my system and I will restrict how many are active. I can have 6 projects or 60. I can only work on one next action at a time. So to me the prioritization comes from what is active on your list. From there you choose from the a la carte menu.

A good analogy I heard elsewhere is if you want to a restaurant that served Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, and American food you would be overwhelmed. So first you decide which restaurant to "activate" or go to. Once we choose the menu is still available but prioritized as to the actions that are available to you.

 

[schmeggahead]

What I find actually happening though is that I have so many "active" projects, that by the time I get to that step in the weekly review in the get current phase, I'm overwhelmed, and "Complete my MBA" gets the same level of attention as "Change tyres on the car". How do you prioritize projects in your system?

One thing that helped me in this area was to kind of reverse the order of the weekly review. I do a project review first. What this gives me is an estimated workload of this level of commitment. (Note: To mitigate the downside of having not reviewed my actions lists, if I don't know if there is an action in my system, I just write that project on a list. That sublist of projects is used to mark off when I review a next action for that project. Then I use it later to generate actions for the remaining items.)

What this reversal does is this: I know what I have on my plate now, before I process incoming, look at my calendar, or review next actions.

I build a picture of the open space in my system for more projects in the coming week.

When I process IN to zero, any projects generated are set aside with their next actions and not added to my system (yet).

Then, when reviewing next actions, are my lists getting overloaded?
When reviewing my calendar, how much space do I have left once my existing projects actions are considered?

I've review someday/maybe and know items I have a real passion for getting off the ground.

Then I go back to those projects I set aside from the clarify step. This lets me realistically add things to my commitments for these new projects, or I need to find something to remove to make space for the new project, or I need to find someone else to take the project on (or at least do some of the work).

What this results in, however, is a listing of projects of wildly varying complexity... from "Change tyres on the car" to "Renew this maintenance contract" to "Complete my MBA" to "Read Making it All Work" to "Execute exit for my startup". All of these require more than one step to complete, but they are all of different priorities.

So now that I have the lay of the land of my projects, I ask questions such as: do I need more steps on the Complete my MBA, rather than have it be a single project (the warning bell here is degrees usually take more that a year to complete which is greater than one year arbitrary limit on projects.)

The other thing is that I may see is synergy with existing projects and add ones that either feed off of each other (one creates momentum for the other) or complement each other (one uses different resources like executive decision making and planning, while the other provides many quick wins).

What I find actually happening though is that I have so many "active" projects, that by the time I get to that step in the weekly review in the get current phase, I'm overwhelmed

And back to this statement again.

Part of the management of your own capacity is the capacity to review. If you have too many projects to review, that itself is a high priority project (because it affects everything in my system) that needs a visualized outcome. Do I need more time in the review? Do I need a separate project review so I'm not toast? Do I need to commit to a fewer number of projects that I can actually review.

Once I get past a week since my last project review, that next project review becomes extremely high priority. Do my project level commitments exceed my ability to review them and manage them?

Hope this helps,
Clayton

If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

 

[cfoley]

Priority comes into GTD in the "Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment". The model lists three limiting criteria: context, time and energy. These three help you select actions that you could do right now, since there is no use in attempting an action that you cannot do. The fourth one is priority, and GTD encourages you to use your intuition to judge priority.

When viewing my projects as a whole, I prefer to think about my higher horizons. I use them all at various times but my favourite one is vision. I like to ask which projects will help me take the biggest steps towards my vision, which make little difference and are there any that move me further from it? When my intuition needs to be topped up, I look towards my higher horizons.

 

[bcmyers2112]

When viewing my projects as a whole, I prefer to think about my higher horizons. I use them all at various times but my favourite one is vision. I like to ask which projects will help me take the biggest steps towards my vision, which make little difference and are there any that move me further from it? When my intuition needs to be topped up, I look towards my higher horizons.

That's a really, really great way of articulating the value of defining things at different horizons. Lots of "gurus" will tell you it's important to focus on the things that matter, and eliminate the things that don't. But how can you decide whether you're doing too much of one thing and/or not enough of another unless you know what you've committed to, and what your longer-term vision and values are?

I don't think it matters at all what kind of tool you use. If you've got everything clarified at the various horizons of your life in a way you can easily review as often as you need to, then you've got what you need.

In the past couple of days I've had what I consider to be a bit of an epiphany. For me, the whole point of having a clear mind and clear space is to support my ability to use my intuition in any given moment. I think that's as good as my system can get.

 

[rmjb]

Thanks for the feedback and advice all.
I've read, and re-read the 2015 GTD book about three times, and I've read Making it All work once (that really helped tie the higher horizons together). I also listen to the official GTD Podcast, Next Action's podcast, and the GTDNordic podcast, I can give a vote of confidence to Lars and Morten, their content is excellent. Despite being in Trinidad and Tobago, with no official GTD partner available to me, I also managed to experience a GTD Level 1 workshop/coaching remotely in 2020 during the start of the pandemic from a firm out of Curacao; unfortunately that firm is no longer a GTD partner.

All that was to say that I've submersed myself fully in GTD, and my investment in time has paid dividends. I do not think I would have been able to reach the end of my MBA and have my sanity in check without it.

Despite all this, I still have the challenge with projects that prompted me to start this post.
Over time I have evolved my system, I now have a Projects-Delegated list which I don't review diligently on a weekly basis. In addition to the prescribed someday/maybe list I also created a Projects on HOLD list and parked a few there; I review this even less frequently than Projects-Delegated. And I do not actually complete phase three of the weekly review, get creative, where you review your someday/maybe list. As I mentioned I am overwhelmed by the time I get to my projects list.

I've posted in the past about time optimism and this may be a strong factor in my aversion to my projects list. As I post this I'm in the middle of a weekly review, I've just completed get clear, and looking at my projects list I have 52 items (does not include delegated nor on hold). Ironically, the first item on the list is "Prioritise and finish projects faster" which I created in September 2022. My oldest projects are dated September 2021, which would have been when I switched software from Nirvana to Microsoft To Do, so these projects are actually older than that date.

I know that there is more potential to unlock with GTD and my use of projects, and likely areas of focus, are the current barrier I need to get past.
I'll definitely relook that episode of the GTD Nordic podcast before I continue with this weekly review. I will also give some thought to reorganizing my weekly review.

My actual priority at this moment is my MBA final in 1 month, so any serious changes to my system will likely occur after that, however as I complete this stage of my personal development and look to the next stage I'm giving subconscious attention to my goal to 'Improve "achieving"' and I've been giving my system a lot more thought.

P.S.
For what it's worth in my original post I intentionally mixed goals, projects, and reference lists to make a point. I don't have "Complete MBA" as a project, that was broken down course by course, with next actions being module by module or assignment. I also have a reference list of "books to read" which has zero attention at the moment, but is a good parking spot for the future.
Also, I don't own a startup, but it would be nice to .

 

[bcmyers2112]

@rmjb, I've had the same issue as you. I often make commitments, both internal and external, to more projects than I can realistically deal with. Due to a lifetime of procrastination issues I have many projects that on the one hand seem like they're screaming for my attention, yet may have to wait for the practical reason that I can only engage with so much during a given week or even month.

I wish I could say I had a great solution to offer. I don't. I'm still working on it. I can say that I've come to the conclusion that it isn't about more or less projects, or about longer or shorter next actions lists. It's about whether I'm fully committed to everything on my active lists or not. If I feel like it's all too much, it probably is. Which means I need to pare things down and move some things (or maybe a lot of things) to Someday/Maybe status.

I'm learning to trust my gut in these circumstances. That's hard! I'd rather have a clear-cut answer. But I have a feeling that no tool, no hierarchy, no structure can replace my intuition. Other people may have a different experience. But that's mine.

Well, actually, I can say with certainty that you can have between 47 and 72 projects. Any more or less than that and you're doing it totally wrong. (Disclaimer: this may be the exact opposite of true.)

 

[Gardener]

looking at my projects list I have 52 items

Is it possible that moving even more things to Someday/Maybe would help?

To give you an idea of proportions, in my personal lists (my work system is on other software that I'm not touching on Saturday), I have three active projects and an active Miscellaneous project with two actions--actually, one; turns out I did that one.

I have another Miscellaneous list in my Someday/Maybe lists, called On Deck, for things that I may activate soon. It has five items. So those are sort of on the fence between Someday/Maybe and Active.

I look at the rest of my Someday/Maybe and remove Gifts, Recipes, Media, and Thoughts For The Novel. These could spawn projects, but they're so full of fluff that I'm not going to include them in the tally of possible projects.

That leaves me with 185 items, a large percentage of which absolutely could be projects. I do not review these every week. I tend to consult them when something is done and I therefore have room (in my head and in my schedule) for something new. Other than that, I review them roughly once a month, plus some are on a Defer that will make them visible after a certain date, so they don't draw my attention after it's too late. (For example, taxes will make themselves visible at 3/15 if I don't active them earlier.)

So that's a sample of my proportion of active versus Someday/Maybe.