Tracking a Project's next action(s)

[Gardener]

I can see how that works in something linear where each action follows the previous action. But what about when a project has multiple actions that (seemingly) can happen simultaneously -- I have many of these.

I may kill your example, but in the same project, I will need some equipment (e.g., swim goggles), songs to run to, someone to drive me to the start, and maybe some special food. In my mind, each one of these is a NA and there's no particular order they need to happen in. And I don't want to lose any of them and I want to keep them all near top-of-mind. What would you do about choosing just one to put on your NA list. If I choose to do one of them first, what happens to the other items?

I see a few options--assuming this is "one action per project" situation:

- You could have a project plan. This is a separate entity from your project-and-context lists. You choose a next action from the project plan, and then either when it's done or in the first weekly review after it's done, you choose the next one.

- You could have multiple projects. If I had to select and buy swim goggles, that would be a project. If I just had to remember to pack them, not so much.

- Your project could interact with a list. (This is similar to the project plan.) So you have an action, "Create packing list for event." Then, after a WAITING FOR period, you have an action, "Pack for event from packing list."

I'm sure there are other possibilities.

 

[mcogilvie]

I may kill your example, but in the same project, I will need some equipment (e.g., swim goggles), songs to run to, someone to drive me to the start, and maybe some special food. In my mind, each one of these is a NA and there's no particular order they need to happen in. And I don't want to lose any of them and I want to keep them all near top-of-mind. What would you do about choosing just one to put on your NA list. If I choose to do one of them first, what happens to the other items?

It seems to me that really none of those are likely to be next actions. Unless you know exactly what gear you need and what to buy, you know exactly what songs you want on your playlist, you have a friend who you know will be available to drive you, and you’re an expert in sports nutrition. What you have are a set of independent sub-goals, which give rise to independent streams of next actions. Transportation to event: get event details; see if friend A can do it; if not, friend B….; check in with friend Z 2 days before event. Some people can handle each stream with a single next action at a time, while others go full OmniFocus and outline the whole project in great detail. Most of us are somewhere in between, and we each have our methods.

When my wife and I got more serious about hiking, we did a lot of research and had some trial and error. It was a series of not-so-small projects. We still buy new gear as we feel we need it, but we can be ready to go for a day hike in about 10 minutes (mostly filling water bottles), and a weekend trip in about 30-45 (mostly depending on weather). I do use a hiking checklist for trips longer than a day, but our packs are almost always ready to go. What we do has evolved as we have gained experience.

 

[Botany_Bill]

I see a few options--assuming this is "one action per project" situation:

- You could have a project plan. This is a separate entity from your project-and-context lists. You choose a next action from the project plan, and then either when it's done or in the first weekly review after it's done, you choose the next one.

- You could have multiple projects. If I had to select and buy swim goggles, that would be a project. If I just had to remember to pack them, not so much.

- Your project could interact with a list. (This is similar to the project plan.) So you have an action, "Create packing list for event." Then, after a WAITING FOR period, you have an action, "Pack for event from packing list."

I'm sure there are other possibilities.

I think where I get stuck in implementing GTD (one of the places I get stuck is more like it) is that we are to only write 1 NA per project, whereas I've always been comfortable writing any NA that comes to mind. If it's better to write only 1, do we need to go to some other list (project plan?) to find other actions to chose from? And if that's only done at weekly review, that seems to be a slow process.

 

[Botany_Bill]

It seems to me that really none of those are likely to be next actions. Unless you know exactly what gear you need and what to buy, you know exactly what songs you want on your playlist, you have a friend who you know will be available to drive you, and you’re an expert in sports nutrition. What you have are a set of independent sub-goals, which give rise to independent streams of next actions. Transportation to event: get event details; see if friend A can do it; if not, friend B….; check in with friend Z 2 days before event. Some people can handle each stream with a single next action at a time, while others go full OmniFocus and outline the whole project in great detail. Most of us are somewhere in between, and we each have our methods.

When my wife and I got more serious about hiking, we did a lot of research and had some trial and error. It was a series of not-so-small projects. We still buy new gear as we feel we need it, but we can be ready to go for a day hike in about 10 minutes (mostly filling water bottles), and a weekend trip in about 30-45 (mostly depending on weather). I do use a hiking checklist for trips longer than a day, but our packs are almost always ready to go. What we do has evolved as we have gained experience.

I don't disagree with you, and I was just trying to illustrate my point (perhaps poorly). But my question is: where do I place other actions I've identified but have not designated "Next Action?" I would normally collect them all on the same list and just scan for what I wanted or needed to do next. Is there a more effective way to do this?

 

[Gardener]

I think where I get stuck in implementing GTD (one of the places I get stuck is more like it) is that we are to only write 1 NA per project, whereas I've always been comfortable writing any NA that comes to mind. If it's better to write only 1, do we need to go to some other list (project plan?) to find other actions to chose from? And if that's only done at weekly review, that seems to be a slow process.

It depends, depending on what the thought/NA is.

Random examples:

- I have a lot of "thoughts" lists. Garden Thoughts, Work Thoughts, Writing Thoughts, Household Thoughts, Decluttering Thoughts, etc. If something isn't immediately relevant to a current specific, narrow, active project, it goes in one of those.

- If a project spawns a substantial subthread/parallel thread, I make another project.

Imagine that I have Plant Salad Greens Bed. I have a variety of lettuce and other greens seeds that I plan to all plant in a similar way, so that's just one project.

But if I decide, hey! Let's plant baby carrots there too! that's a different effort. I have to get carrot seed and figure out wehre I put the sand and the vermiculite and decide whether my watering of that bed is appropriate for carrots, blah blah blah.

So I split, and now I have Plant Salad Leaves and Plant Salad Carrots. If there were any risk of my forgetting where I'm planting those things, I'll add the name of the bed to the title, but there isn't, so I don't.

- I have lists that are slightly more formal than "thoughts". Like I might have a list of garden beds that need to be forked and amended. And a project for autumn amending. When I get the last bed amended, I go to the list and find the next one.

- I might have documents that serve as actual project plans.

I will usually add a new action sooner than the weekly review. Out in the garden, with my hands still dirty, I'll check my phone for the list of beds to amend, and choose one for which I have the right amendments and energy level.

 

[mcogilvie]

I don't disagree with you, and I was just trying to illustrate my point (perhaps poorly). But my question is: where do I place other actions I've identified but have not designated "Next Action?" I would normally collect them all on the same list and just scan for what I wanted or needed to do next. Is there a more effective way to do this?

By list here, I think you must mean project support material because not all possible future actions for a project would belong to the same context list. As I explained, different people do different things for project support for different projects. I find many projects only need next actions, but sometimes there is significant project support material. Let me put it this way: when it comes to taxes, there are rules and forms. But suppose you had to propose some project or course of action to the leader of your country. Do you think there’s a form to fill out?

 

[Oogiem]

think where I get stuck in implementing GTD (one of the places I get stuck is more like it) is that we are to only write 1 NA per project, whereas I've always been comfortable writing any NA that comes to mind.

Why do you think it's only 1 NA and only review once a week?

I have lots of projects with multiple parallel actions. And when I do one I typically look at the context and pick something else from that context or if I need to switch contexts. So I might get several things done on a single project or jump around in projects but get multiple things done in a context. Depends on how I am working that day.

 

[Oogiem]

where do I place other actions I've identified but have not designated "Next Action?"

In project support material

 

[devon.marie]

I have read through the thread, but I'm not going to pretend to understand what everyone said. So! I'm just going to post how I do this in a paper system

One thing I discovered when I went back to paper during the pandemic was that 99% of my problems around using GTD were due to 2 things: slacking off during my weekly review (or not doing it enough) and fiddling with tools and trying to make a perfect setup without ever actually getting things done.

Point 2 was solved when moving to paper because it gets incredibly annoying, incredibly quickly, having to constantly redo a setup on paper due to needless perfectionism. So I learned very quickly to stick to simplicity and then add things in if there's a real, measurable need. To this day, I have only really added 1 thing to my system, and it's related to project tracking. More on this in a moment.

Point 1 was more difficult to solve, and I had to have one of those "point at yourself in a mirror" conversations with myself. I was incredibly inconsistent with my weekly reviews, often skipping one or two or three and then rushing through it when I did do one. Now, I am more mindful and take 20-30 minutes to go through each task list, crossing off things I've done and missed X-ing out before, tasks I no longer need to do, adding due dates I was missing, etc. and going through each project and thinking about its progress and what my next actions look like. If you skimp on this, no system or tag hierarchy or anything is going to help you feel more comfortable with, or help you manage, your lists. You have to take the time to do a proper weekly review.

Once I sorted these problems out (mostly - no one's perfect), I found that I don't need a link between them at all. I engage with my lists enough that I take one glance at a task associated with a project and I know its relationship immediately due to simple familiarity. I'll show you an example.


My project list. Very simple and to the point.


An example of one of my active projects (please ignore the horrendously past-date deadlines: multiple bouts of COVID among project members set this back significantly). Again, pretty simple. One sheet per project, and I list tasks as I think of them. If I can act on the task, it gets added to an active task list (if without deadline) or my planner (if with deadline) and I put a little arrow to the left to show that I've put it on a list. I also put notes and project-relevant quick info here.

This means that, with a quick glance, I can see if each project has an active task on a task list or not. If multiple tasks can be done at once, multiple open boxes with arrows will exist. And during my weekly review, I compare these pages to my task lists and fill in tasks that have indeed been completed.

Simple. Easy. Effective.

Hope this helps!

 

[gtdstudente]

I think where I get stuck in implementing GTD (one of the places I get stuck is more like it) is that we are to only write 1 NA per project, whereas I've always been comfortable writing any NA that comes to mind. If it's better to write only 1, do we need to go to some other list (project plan?) to find other actions to chose from? And if that's only done at weekly review, that seems to be a slow process.

Botany_Bill, GTD thinking is that the minimal 1 NA is to keep the Project on the "Project List" and not 'sneak' to the "Maybe/Someday List" As such, prevent the Project from 'Gasllghting' one to think one has a Project(s) on the "Project List" when in reality one has a Project(s) on the "Maybe/Someday List" only pretending to be a Project?

 

[gtdstudente]

I have read through the thread, but I'm not going to pretend to understand what everyone said. So! I'm just going to post how I do this in a paper system

One thing I discovered when I went back to paper during the pandemic was that 99% of my problems around using GTD were due to 2 things: slacking off during my weekly review (or not doing it enough) and fiddling with tools and trying to make a perfect setup without ever actually getting things done.

Point 2 was solved when moving to paper because it gets incredibly annoying, incredibly quickly, having to constantly redo a setup on paper due to needless perfectionism. So I learned very quickly to stick to simplicity and then add things in if there's a real, measurable need. To this day, I have only really added 1 thing to my system, and it's related to project tracking. More on this in a moment.

Point 1 was more difficult to solve, and I had to have one of those "point at yourself in a mirror" conversations with myself. I was incredibly inconsistent with my weekly reviews, often skipping one or two or three and then rushing through it when I did do one. Now, I am more mindful and take 20-30 minutes to go through each task list, crossing off things I've done and missed X-ing out before, tasks I no longer need to do, adding due dates I was missing, etc. and going through each project and thinking about its progress and what my next actions look like. If you skimp on this, no system or tag hierarchy or anything is going to help you feel more comfortable with, or help you manage, your lists. You have to take the time to do a proper weekly review.

Once I sorted these problems out (mostly - no one's perfect), I found that I don't need a link between them at all. I engage with my lists enough that I take one glance at a task associated with a project and I know its relationship immediately due to simple familiarity. I'll show you an example.

View attachment 1377
My project list. Very simple and to the point.

View attachment 1378
An example of one of my active projects (please ignore the horrendously past-date deadlines: multiple bouts of COVID among project members set this back significantly). Again, pretty simple. One sheet per project, and I list tasks as I think of them. If I can act on the task, it gets added to an active task list (if without deadline) or my planner (if with deadline) and I put a little arrow to the left to show that I've put it on a list. I also put notes and project-relevant quick info here.

This means that, with a quick glance, I can see if each project has an active task on a task list or not. If multiple tasks can be done at once, multiple open boxes with arrows will exist. And during my weekly review, I compare these pages to my task lists and fill in tasks that have indeed been completed.

Simple. Easy. Effective.

Hope this helps!

devon.marie, Nice . . . so this means, if understanding correctly: 1. A Projects List, 2. Each Project with its particular NAs all managed without a Calendar and Context Lists? If so, how many Projects would you suggest could be handled this way without anything 'falling through the cracks'? Thank you

 

[devon.marie]

devon.marie, Nice . . . so this means, if understanding correctly: 1. A Projects List, 2. Each Project with its particular NAs all managed without a Calendar and Context Lists? If so, how many Projects would you suggest could be handled this way without anything 'falling through the cracks'? Thank you

I use a calendar heavily because I work in marketing and communications - almost all of my projects have deadlines, and at least half of my tasks. Any task with a deadline or a day I need to get it done goes on my calendar inside my Plotter. If it's deadline-free, though, it goes in my To Do list (or Agendas/Waiting/Someday lists depending on what type of task it is). I stopped using contexts awhile ago as COVID solidified their lack of relevance in my day to day work.

As long as you are thorough with your weekly review, nothing should fall through the cracks. Due to the collaborative nature of my work, folks don't respond well when I have 75 active projects and they see theirs on the active project list, but progress hasn't been made due to other priorities/time, so I limit my active projects to 15 or fewer and it works really well. But even 75+ projects should be just fine, as long as during the weekly review you look at each and assess them.

 

[Botany_Bill]

Botany_Bill, GTD thinking is that the minimal 1 NA is to keep the Project on the "Project List" and not 'sneak' to the "Maybe/Someday List" As such, prevent the Project from 'Gasllghting' one to think one has a Project(s) on the "Project List" when in reality one has a Project(s) on the "Maybe/Someday List" only pretending to be a Project?

I don't know why I thought it was a minimum of 1 NA and not a maximum. Makes more sense now! I thought GTD was trying to prevent us putting tasks on a list that were a step or two away (meaning, not a true NA). I do prefer just to dump what's in my head onto paper. I guess when I get to something like that (something with a precursor task) I can figure that out when I take it on.

 

[Botany_Bill]

devon.marie, Nice . . . so this means, if understanding correctly: 1. A Projects List, 2. Each Project with its particular NAs all managed without a Calendar and Context Lists? If so, how many Projects would you suggest could be handled this way without anything 'falling through the cracks'? Thank you

Thanks for sharing pictures of your lists. Helps me think about my paper system. Currently, any NA that's not an waiting for or agenda goes on a single list. Those pages have 2 columns: project - NA - due date (if applicable). That's how I can see all my NAs per project somewhat quickly, but yours is far quicker. And I'm also starting to put more NAs w/ due dates on my calendar (not sure why I haven't done all of them yet).

 

[ianfh10]

if my project is to buy a new bicycle and one of my first actions is: "research the available features, e.g. suspension, saddle type, etc." and this action is listed in the respective contexts of my next actions list how to I correlate it back to the project.

At the risk of sounding contrary and not at all helpful, why do you need to correlate actions back to the project?

 

[bishblaize]

At the risk of sounding contrary and not at all helpful, why do you need to correlate actions back to the project?

People find it's not always obvious at a glance what Project the Next Action is about.

 

[mcogilvie]

People find it's not always obvious at a glance what the Next Action is about.

Imagine you had a secret diary or notepad, which no one else saw, where you could jot down things that help you accomplish what you want or need to do. How you write things down is up to you. You can write “copy report” or “call Winifred”, but you can also write “copy xyz report THIS AM (check team for last minute changes)” and “call Fred for her advice on TEM funding (123-456-7890).” You can use a * at the end to indicate something is in progress, and use >, : or [ ] for additional information. And you don’t have to be consistent, as long as it’s useful to you. This is just a form of “being kind to your future self,” as one UK GTD coach put it. This kind of information can be very useful, and even motivating, without requiring an explicit link between project and next action.

 

[bishblaize]

Imagine you had a secret diary or notepad, which no one else saw, where you could jot down things that help you accomplish what you want or need to do. How you write things down is up to you. You can write “copy report” or “call Winifred”, but you can also write “copy xyz report THIS AM (check team for last minute changes)” and “call Fred for her advice on TEM funding (123-456-7890).” You can use a * at the end to indicate something is in progress, and use >, : or [ ] for additional information. And you don’t have to be consistent, as long as it’s useful to you. This is just a form of “being kind to your future self,” as one UK GTD coach put it. This kind of information can be very useful, and even motivating, without requiring an explicit link between project and next action.

You could do those things of course, or you could use a tool that does those on your behalf. I think that's what attracts people to certain tools, when they do that extra work for you. Part of the calculus for deciding which tools to use.

 

[mcogilvie]

You could do those things of course, or you could use a tool that does those on your behalf. I think that's what attracts people to certain tools, when they do that extra work for you. Part of the calculus for deciding which tools to use.

Sorry, but I disagree completely. There is no tool that will do the “extra work” of figuring out what your work actually is, just as there is no actual calculus for choosing a tool. I have used extensively some of the most popular and powerful tools available for Apple devices, and I have tried most of the others. I use Things, and I appreciate its amenities while not using all of them. However, the flexibility and usefulness of text is far greater than the most sophisticated GTD database I can imagine. (I will say that the adoption of Markdown within Things is a great feature.) But whatever works for you.

 

[bishblaize]

Sorry, but I disagree completely. There is no tool that will do the “extra work” of figuring out what your work actually is, just as there is no actual calculus for choosing a tool. I have used extensively some of the most popular and powerful tools available for Apple devices, and I have tried most of the others. I use Things, and I appreciate its amenities while not using all of them. However, the flexibility and usefulness of text is far greater than the most sophisticated GTD database I can imagine. (I will say that the adoption of Markdown within Things is a great feature.) But whatever works for you.

This is nothing to do with figuring things out, which implies reasoning and intuition. This is simply a matter of the easiest way to remember things. If you link your Projects and your NAs, your computer will remember those links with perfect accuracy and no extra effort. If you use your memory, it'll be less accurate. If you write extra-long NAs with clues built into them, it'll be more effort.