Advice needed for how DA suggests we use lists (when on paper!)

[Ship69]

Hello

I am confused about exactly how David Allen recommends we use lists.
e.g. How should we implement Area of Life ?? (i.e. Area of Responsibility)
I have just moved back to pen & paper for a while, which focuses the mind!

In my case "a list" neeeds to fit onto an A4 sheet of paper (but I am using whiteboard paper which helps slightly as the ink can easily be erased)

So far I have the following lists:

A) DEAD URGENT
[ This is time-critical stuff that really must be done today. It is a slight admission of failure when stuff ends up up this list. Ideally it should be intercepted earlier.]

B) MAJOR PROJECTS
[A "Major Mroject" is anything that takes more than a day or two. I have a list of 5 to 12 of these major projects. But should all these all fit onto one sheet of paper? And even if they are on one sheet of A4 paper, should they at least broken into sections? ]

C) NEXT ACTIONS
[This is where all my Do ASAP stuff lives. In order to prevent overwhelm, I have divided them by Context. For larger projects I like to have more than one Next Action - sometimes as many as 5 of them. Currently I have an A4 page for each of:
- Phone Calls
- Computer/Office
- Around the Home
- Errands
- (Evenings - not currently used much in practice)

F) SOON
[This is not very GTD but it is stuff that is coming up but should NOT be done immediately, but which is coming up. It should be scanned for stuff to move into NEXT ACTIONS. Some of this stuff I put into my Tickler File]

E) SOMEDAY-MAYBE
[This is a dumping ground for stuff to be consider in the future but not looked at for 2+ weeks]

G) PERIODS
This is where I plan what I will be doing for what periods of time in (c. 1 hour blocks of time). Each block contains either the name of a major project OR a context name

F) TEMPORARY LISTS
e.g. When about to travel I might create a special list. Likewise I have a groceries shopping list - although that is in a different system. I sometimes create Agenda lists for what needs to be discussed with others. Fwiw, I don't tend to use any Waiting For list. Instead I mark-up the original list with large brackets.

PROBLEMS
I have too many actions in my Computer/Office list. The vast majority of my next actions end up here.

In order to keep control of my Major Projects, I am strongly tempted to create a entire A4 page of actions (and sub-projects?) for each major project, and enter such Actions into both my Context lists of next actions.

I also have a huge problem distinguishing between urgent and important. In general I keep finding GTD a good way to get the un-important stuff done!

On thing I have started doing during reviews, is marking up my urgent and important tasks in colours.
e.g. Urgent (in red) and Important (in green).

Any suggestions?

J


PS Using A4 looks bad - v high geek/dawk factor. It looks like you are unable to summarise efficiently. It is also unweildy. For this reason I am toying with moving to the slightly smaller B4 format of notebook.

PPS I have borrowed this idea from a friend who is the most efficient person I know. From time to time (about once per month) I like to rebuild the whole thing. It is a good way to completely re-think your priorities in light of how your life has beening moving forward. Also being a very visual person it is a good way to de-clutter stuff in line with what is actually important.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

@Ship69, first let me encourage you: the three problems you describe are all "classics" others have been there and overcome them. It also means you'll likely get some decent replies in this thread here.

Before I go on, let me tell you, I am very sympathetic to your use of simple paper sheets. That sounds very good! While I am a computer geek of the first hour, I am not stupid enough to think that digital has all the advantages on it's side. There is definitively something to be said about paper!

I have too many actions in my Computer/Office list. The vast majority of my next actions end up here.

Yes, we are digital slaves in a computerized economy. First we played SimCity, now we are SimCity!

The thing is this: in terms of contexts, this is just a true reflection of our lives. Most of the time we sit and work in front of the computer. So, this long @computer list is just true.

I work from home, most of the time, which means I have an even longer @home list (which includes all @computer tasks naturally)!

So, what's the problem?

I don't know about you for sure - your post does not give all the details (which is ok) - but what then occurs is a form of paralysis as to what best to work on.

There are several means to mitigate that problem:

• See if you can off-load some of these actions into your Tickler file. Usually things that you want to do 1X per day or so and so many times per week/month are living much better in the Tickler.
• Make sure you are using the facilities of the Someday / Maybe to your advantage. Oftentimes that list ends up as a graveyard for have-beens and "brilliant" ideas we had at some point. A sort of semi-journal. It is more useful when it is actually tended well. If you don't see yourself working on a project this week, put it on Someday / Maybe.
• Do your Weekly Review often enough! Paralysis at the Runway level usually is a sign of a starved intuition. How do we feed one's intuition you may ask? Simple: by doing proper Review, often enough. It's not about the length of our lists, but our familiarity with our material.
• What about your higher Horizons of Focus? Are these thing super-dope to you? If you don't like what you have there, if these items aren't the total Star Wars conquest of the galaxy stuff for you… …then you will have a life of suckage at the Next Action level, not matter how much you shuffle your lists around, guaranteed.
• I have another idea, but I leave that to @Longstreet to explain.

Once all the above is dealt with and your are still uncomfortable with your list, consider the other criteria for our moment of choice: after context, we have time and energy available and then importance.

You write about importance further down, regarding time: maybe you don't have enough of it? I mean, maybe you are overcommitted and your list reflects that? Are you sure that you can finish all your projects without missing a deadline?

Your list should reflect the amount of work you have time to do, more or less. Maybe your intuiton is saying to you: "Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Too much work. Trim the list. Make decisions, re-negotiate."

In order to keep control of my Major Projects, I am strongly tempted to create a entire A4 page of actions (and sub-projects?) for each major project, and enter such Actions into both my Context lists of next actions.

This is exactly what you SHOULD do according to the GTD book! No wonder you feel like doing it! It's the natural planning model, it comes natural to us! These "entire A4 page of actions (and sub-projects?) for each major project" are called project plans and there is more than one chapter about them in the book.

GTD is one of those books that really profit from being read twice again! Do it! [insert Kaepernick joke]

I also have a huge problem distinguishing between urgent and important. In general I keep finding GTD a good way to get the un-important stuff done!

The way we deal with that, is not by shuffling lists and annotate with blinky colors and priority codes and whatnot. And with "we" I mean us humans, not GTDers only.

The problem with this thing is: starting.

We don't start the important because we have high expectations. We don't want to disappoint. So we evade.

This is a psychological, philosophical, spiritual problem. GTD cannot tell you how to think about your life, it is not a philosophy, neither it is a religion.

If you consistently choose the unthreatening tasks over those that you know you should do, my suggestion is two-fold:

1. Clarify your feelings and your thinking. What happens if you don't reach those goals? Where are you lying to yourself? Maybe you tell yourself you like your job but in truth you don't? Maybe you are not getting the recognition you deserve? I don't know, naturally, but generally speaking, a stalling list is a symptom, not the root cause. Have the courage to confront yourself with yourself. Gain self-knowledge.
2. Look at the important next actions and decide, on a general level, when you will do that type of work. Have a schedule - or at least an approximation thereof. Example; if your projects tell you, that you need to make 20 sales calls per day, then decide what time of the day is best to do them. In the morning? Do you want to have done all those calls before noon? You could have a scorecard "Sales Calls Today" in the Tickler file and then try to hit that mark every day? Again, GTD will not run your life for you, you will have to decide how it looks for you and the GTD will help you to accomplish that.

PS Using A4 looks bad - v high geek/dawk factor.

It is absolutely un-geeky to think like everyone else. If everybody deems B4 to be geeky and A4 not so, then it logically follows that geeks use A4, otherwise they would be too normal.

It looks like you are unable to summarise efficiently.

This is complete bollocks. If some people confuse the size of your notebook with the greatness of your words, just let them. It's a waste of time, IMO, to engage there.

 

[TesTeq]

It is absolutely un-geeky to think like everyone else. If everybody deems B4 to be geeky and A4 not so, then it logically follows that geeks use A4, otherwise they would be too normal.

I like it! Perfect GLA - Geek Logic Applied!

 

[mcogilvie]

I recognize most of the strategies and ideas in your description of your current setup, and have used many of them at one point or another. However, I don’t see them fitting together in any coherent way. Whatever else it is, GTD actually has a pretty simple setup: next action lists, calendar, project list, project support, someday-maybe, higher horizrons. There is normally very little ambiguity in where something goes, and little duplication. I would really recommend loooking at the official gtd how-to-setup-a-paper-planner guide, available on the store on this website. The guides generally give a good idea of the simplicity and clarity that is possible. One concrete piece of advice: try breaking your @compiter list up. I break out email and web actions separately, and get much benefit.

 

[Ship69]

Thanks for you replies and suggestions

But
1. How are we supposed to separate our lists by Area of Life (i.e. Area of Responsibility) in any way?
[If not, how do I avoid seeing Personal stuff when I am in Work mode?]
[If so, then I will suddently have about five times as many collections of lists - one for each of my five Areas!

2. The importance/urgency issue remains instractable to me. I can find no easy way to NOT see/do those things which are [or become] both non-urgent and non-important.
[ASIDE: Making good use of my high res (4K) computer screen, I recently experimented with putting my Actions into a 2D map using MindManager with Importance on the Y axis and urgency on the X axis. This works pretty well at helping me not even look at those non-importand AND non-urgent stuff, by virtue of their location on the map (bottom right).
However the filters of MindManager are irritatingly fiddly and obviously the system only work whilst you are actually on that computer. In then end I was wasting too much time fiddling with the system.]

3. How does GTD/DA suggest we handle the "dead urgent" stuff? Are we allowed to have a separate list for it?

4. I never did understand how to use the Higher Horizons lists. And most software doesn't readily allow you to allocate tasks to higher level goals. I read v slowly and I already find that running & understanding GTD takes up too much time. If anyone can point me towards a simple summary (ideally a video) I would be extremely grateful.

5. It's clearly a side-issue but I'm a bit confused about A4/B4 debate, but to get clear B4 is slightly smaller than A4, and I notice most Big Hitters in business seem to like using slightly smaller notebooks. i.e. It was the A4 that was more geeky, the B4 less so.

J

 

[bdavidson]

Let your areas of focus drive what goes on your Projects list. Then let the Projects list drive what goes on you various context-based Next Action lists. But don’t expect to organize your lists by area of focus. That’s too high level for the day-to-day nature of next actions.

You are very near the precipice of over complicating your lists from the start, so resist the urge for perfect and go with simple.

In the old days of GTD on paper, people used to recommend writing work tasks from the top of the page downward and personal tasks from the bottom of the page upward. Ignore the bottom half during the workday.

Dead urgent would go on your calendar as a day-specific action.

If @Computer is too large, think about sub contexts when you’re at the computer. For example, I have @Computer when I’m at any computer, but als @Computer-VPN when I am connected to my company’s VPN. Look for the differences in connectivity or mindset if you’re trying to break a large context into smaller more manageable chunks.

The possibilities are endless when starting with GTD, but the rewards come from keeping it simple enough that you can stick with it long term.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

(Ship69, it is good that you provide detail about your situation! That way one has a better chance to understand what may be the issue.)

2. The importance/urgency issue remains instractable to me. I can find no easy way to NOT see/do those things which are [or become] both non-urgent and non-important.

One solution is to pull that stuff into a section of your Someday/Maybe list and work from there, when you have the time. Thus it would not clutter your main Next Actions lists.

3. How does GTD/DA suggest we handle the "dead urgent" stuff? Are we allowed to have a separate list for it?

It depends on what "dead urgent" means. If it has to be done NOW, do it NOW. If it has to be done TODAY, write it on your calendar for TODAY.

The idea is, after doing GTD for a while you will have less and less of that sort of stuff.

2. The importance/urgency issue remains instractable to me.
[…]
4. I never did understand how to use the Higher Horizons lists.

These two things are closely related! By getting a grip on your Higher Horizons, you will clear the "underbrush" on the Next Actions lists.

 

[bcmyers2112]

If you're looking for a way to organize your next actions (i.e. those things you want or need to do as soon as possible) by area of focus, urgency, or anything other than context (the person, place or tool needed to accomplish something), you're looking outside of GTD. GTD best practice is to organize next actions by context, and assess priorities in the moment once you've identified what you can do at the moment, with the time and energy that are available.

I work from home and therefore strictly speaking I could simply have one context for the vast majority of my actions. But I have several contexts. One practical tip: I have divided my at-home and at-computer contexts into "work" and "personal" so I'm not looking at things I shouldn't be doing during work hours.

As for GTD helping you get only the unimportant things done, I don't think GTD is the problem. Clearly you know the difference between what's important and what's not, or else you wouldn't recognize there's a problem. But GTD -- and for that matter, any system for organizing your actions -- can't make your choices for you. If you don't want to do the important stuff, you won't, regardless of how you've structured your lists. There's a saying I like that goes (and I'm paraphrasing a little bit but I know I've got the gist), "If you want to do something badly enough, nothing can stop you. If you don't want to do it badly enough, nothing can help you."

 

[Longstreet]

If you're looking for a way to organize your next actions (i.e. those things you want or need to do as soon as possible) by area of focus, urgency, or anything other than context (the person, place or tool needed to accomplish something), you're looking outside of GTD. GTD best practice is to organize next actions by context, and assess priorities in the moment once you've identified what you can do at the moment, with the time and energy that are available.

I work from home and therefore strictly speaking I could simply have one context for the vast majority of my actions. But I have several contexts. One practical tip: I have divided my at-home and at-computer contexts into "work" and "personal" so I'm not looking at things I shouldn't be doing during work hours.

As for GTD helping you get only the unimportant things done, I don't think GTD is the problem. Clearly you know the difference between what's important and what's not, or else you wouldn't recognize there's a problem. But GTD -- and for that matter, any system for organizing your actions -- can't make your choices for you. If you don't want to do the important stuff, you won't, regardless of how you've structured your lists. There's a saying I like that goes (and I'm paraphrasing a little bit but I know I've got the gist), "If you want to do something badly enough, nothing can stop you. If you don't want to do it badly enough, nothing can help you."

This is right on - very nicely written! Cheers!