billbryant
Registered
Hello All -
First time poster and new to GTD in general. I could use some help fine tuning my system.
Nirvana is my task management system that I work from, although I am strongly considering going back to Todoist or trying TickTick for some of the more powerful features that Nirvana has fallen behind on. Most of my tasks come from email (Outlook). When there is an email that is actionable, I forward it to Nirvana, changing the subject line and providing some context about what the action is in the body of the email I am forwarding. I then file the email in one of my folders in Outlook (@ACTIONSUPPORT or @WAITINGFORSUPPORT), which is an idea I got from the GTD Setup Guide.
I am finding a few challenges with this approach. It feels like with this approach, I am handling the emails multiple times. (1) To read the email initially to determine if it is actionable and then forward on if it is (2) when I process it in my Nirvana inbox and (3) when I am trying to clean up my email folders. I think this all stems from the fact that as a manager of two different teams, I get a lot of emails and many of them are not actionable for me personally for me, but for my teams. These are often very large emails or long email trails. In addition to those emails containing actions for me, if there is something being assigned to a member of my team and it is something I want to keep an eye on, I will forward this to Nirvana and eventually give it a context of @delegated, which helps me to compile agendas with my team later for 1:1 follow-ups. For the emails that don't immediately have actions for me or my team, but could possibly have an action later, I am putting them in an @WATCHING folder.
In addition to handling items more than once (I know that breaks a GTD rule), I am confused at the purpose of the @ACTIONSUPPORT and @WAITINGFORSUPPORT folders (and the one I added, @WATCHING) since the emails within them are fluid. @WATCHING emails could become @ACTIONSUPPORT or @WAITINGFORSUPPORT. @WAITINGFORSUPPORT can become @ACTIONSUPPORT or be both with multiple actions within them (some I'm waiting for and some I can be doing right now). I am not updating the location of the emails when a new reply comes in on the trail that could change where the ideal location for them would be. I am, however, placing the new reply in the correct folder, so when looking at the conversation thread, the different emails in the thread can be found in any of these folders. That part isn't a problem for me since the conversation thread can easily show me all of the emails regardless, but it's messier than I'd like. Also, it gives me some stress thinking about what I'm going to do when it is time to move all of the emails that no longer need to be in any of these folders (after the Nirvana project is completed) into a separate archive folder. I feel like I'll have to re-read many of these long emails again just to make sure they are since there isn't a great correlation between emails and the tasks in Nirvana. I thought briefly about adding a unique ID to the subject line in my tasks in Nirvana and then using the custom field in Outlook to add that same ID so I could make part of the step of closing out a project in Nirvana to find that email thread and move it to archive at that point. Of course, that sounds ridiculously complicated and something I'd probably not follow consistently.
Anyways, I could use some input from the experts here. Am I over-complicating this and, if so, can you help set me on the right track.
Thanks,
Bill
First time poster and new to GTD in general. I could use some help fine tuning my system.
Nirvana is my task management system that I work from, although I am strongly considering going back to Todoist or trying TickTick for some of the more powerful features that Nirvana has fallen behind on. Most of my tasks come from email (Outlook). When there is an email that is actionable, I forward it to Nirvana, changing the subject line and providing some context about what the action is in the body of the email I am forwarding. I then file the email in one of my folders in Outlook (@ACTIONSUPPORT or @WAITINGFORSUPPORT), which is an idea I got from the GTD Setup Guide.
I am finding a few challenges with this approach. It feels like with this approach, I am handling the emails multiple times. (1) To read the email initially to determine if it is actionable and then forward on if it is (2) when I process it in my Nirvana inbox and (3) when I am trying to clean up my email folders. I think this all stems from the fact that as a manager of two different teams, I get a lot of emails and many of them are not actionable for me personally for me, but for my teams. These are often very large emails or long email trails. In addition to those emails containing actions for me, if there is something being assigned to a member of my team and it is something I want to keep an eye on, I will forward this to Nirvana and eventually give it a context of @delegated, which helps me to compile agendas with my team later for 1:1 follow-ups. For the emails that don't immediately have actions for me or my team, but could possibly have an action later, I am putting them in an @WATCHING folder.
In addition to handling items more than once (I know that breaks a GTD rule), I am confused at the purpose of the @ACTIONSUPPORT and @WAITINGFORSUPPORT folders (and the one I added, @WATCHING) since the emails within them are fluid. @WATCHING emails could become @ACTIONSUPPORT or @WAITINGFORSUPPORT. @WAITINGFORSUPPORT can become @ACTIONSUPPORT or be both with multiple actions within them (some I'm waiting for and some I can be doing right now). I am not updating the location of the emails when a new reply comes in on the trail that could change where the ideal location for them would be. I am, however, placing the new reply in the correct folder, so when looking at the conversation thread, the different emails in the thread can be found in any of these folders. That part isn't a problem for me since the conversation thread can easily show me all of the emails regardless, but it's messier than I'd like. Also, it gives me some stress thinking about what I'm going to do when it is time to move all of the emails that no longer need to be in any of these folders (after the Nirvana project is completed) into a separate archive folder. I feel like I'll have to re-read many of these long emails again just to make sure they are since there isn't a great correlation between emails and the tasks in Nirvana. I thought briefly about adding a unique ID to the subject line in my tasks in Nirvana and then using the custom field in Outlook to add that same ID so I could make part of the step of closing out a project in Nirvana to find that email thread and move it to archive at that point. Of course, that sounds ridiculously complicated and something I'd probably not follow consistently.
Anyways, I could use some input from the experts here. Am I over-complicating this and, if so, can you help set me on the right track.
Thanks,
Bill