Agendas

A

AdamMiller81

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I've been thinking about ways to improve my use of this section, and I was just wondering how people use this section, and how useful they've found it. It was a section I was using fairly well at the beginning of my implementation, but I find I've largely just moved the items on the person-based agendas to my NA lists.

I've been considering moving back to using the agendas, just to make these actions far clearer to locate when actually meeting with people. For those of you who do use this section, do you currently keep a bookmark NA on your NA list (ie. Meet with So-and-so re: Agenda items) or do you just review your agendas regularly, or do you have any other wildly creative and successful systems as well?

Thanks for your input!
 
Two kinds of agendas

I have two kinds of agendas.
If items occur to me or come up in discussion that need to be included in an agenda of a future meeting, I can start or add to an agenda for that meeting. Then when it's time to prepare for the meeting, I haven't lost any of these fleeting items.

If I have people who I regularly work with, team members, employees, boss, etc., I may have an agenda list for that person. If I have a single @Waiting for, I won't turn that into an agenda. But if I have multiple items for one person, I'll keep that as a separate agenda list. Or if I notice when scanning action items that I have a lot of items for the same person, I'll try to call or see them and work my way through them.

Before GTD, I had a boss that would turn a single question into a half hour meeting as he rambled on. I would collect a whole list of things I wanted answers to or wanted to discuss and then go in. It would still take a half hour, but I'd have a listful of answers instead of just one. If I still worked for him, I'd definitely have a running agenda going. And he was impressed on my performance assessment at how efficient I was.
 
Nevermind . . .

Man, I've got to remember my forum etiquette, after posting, I looked at that nice little search button staring me in the face and realised I hadn't yet looked to see if this had been recently discussed (other than on the first 2 or 3 pages).

Lo and behold, Borisoff had started a thread last month that covered a lot of what I was looking for!

My mistake!
 
Nevermind the nevermind!

webrover said:
If I have people who I regularly work with, team members, employees, boss, etc., I may have an agenda list for that person. If I have a single @Waiting for, I won't turn that into an agenda. But if I have multiple items for one person, I'll keep that as a separate agenda list. Or if I notice when scanning action items that I have a lot of items for the same person, I'll try to call or see them and work my way through them.
Click to expand...

And then someone brings up a new question I hadn't thought of ;)

Now, you say that if you just have a single item on the waiting for, you won't create an agenda, but if you have multiple, you will. Now, say you notice that you've got several items in the waiting for for one person, and you decide to create an agenda, do you remove them from the waiting for, or leave both in the system? (I guess this also would be influenced by what kind of system you use, paper or electronic)
 
Adam, in spite that's the third time I'd like to share my point of view. As far as I got @Agenda context is useful only for people you meet regulary like your co-workers. That doesn't work for people you meet on a non-regular basis like your customers for example.

Anyway in both cases you can have a Next Action (not Waiting Fors) that you can discuss only one-on-one to move your project further i.e. make a sales meeting (@Agenda Allen GTD BOOK discuss discount level for 100 books). And @Agenda is a nice place to keep issues you'd like to touch.

But if you meet with this person not regulary then there should be a REAL Next Action to activate this @Agenda before (for example @Call Allen GTD BOOK arrange a meeting) because you can't suddenly "bump into" your customer :)

BTW David Allen mentions @Meetings to schedule category in one of his white papers that could be used instead of @Agenda items. I don't really understand how to use it as it sounds quite equal to @Call but contains one-on-one items at the same time. Maybe that's a way out but we need to brainstom that idea all together or ask for comments from DavidCo and David himself.

As for Waiting For then I have plenty of them and usually I make "active" Next Actions (calls, emails) follow ups on them during Weekly Review. I keep the item in WF till it's done. And when I meet with someone I need I usually open all contexts and have all items assosiated with him because I start all person related calls, email, waiting fors with his last name.

Regards,

Eugene.
 
just recently

I have been just recently using file folders for agendas and waiting for... I am fairly tied to my desk so this might not work for everyone. i normally use a palm, but I have found it easy to jot notes from phone messages (collect) and then if I leave a VM I note it and toss it in my WAITING folder for when they call back. this is great because the 8 1/2x11 sheet of paper can easily be made in to project support material. I also have been creating folders for agenda items with my boss and close co worker. this allows me to add to a list, or just toss in a bid proposal to add to the agenda without actually noting something down...

I know that its not captured in list format.. but I feel confident that the folder to my left has all of the info i need to speak to my boss about...

my 2c

-erik
 
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