Captured conditional actions are still in my mind

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musicisbliss

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Hello All.

Most of my categories are working great, as they completely unload from my mind, with one exception.

Most of my 'waiting for' actions do not seem to fully unload. I seem to keep thinking about them even after the task and next action are recorded. My hypothesis is that because they are conditional, there may still be some component not planned for, as the actual application may vary when the condition arises.

Anyone have thoughts on this issue?
 
Dunno. What to you mean by "conditional"?

The things I put on my Waiting For list are things that people "owe" me, e.g. to send me a monthly report or return a book they have borrowed.
 
I get this sometimes. It happens to me when there is some anxiety associated with the project. Maybe the next action is a difficult discussion and I don't know how the person will react. Maybe it's something that I find frightening. Maybe some detail of how I carry out an action will affect myself, others or a business profoundly. Maybe it's the other way around and someone else's actions could affect my life profoundly.

GTD can reduce or eliminate stress by managing commitments and guiding action choices. I've not found a way for GTD to eliminate anxieties like the ones above. It could be that we are missing something important or it could be out of scope for GTD. If anyone has any insight into this I'd be interested to hear it too.
 
I think GTD can help. Perhaps not remove the anxiety completely, but if it is still really on your mind, what do you need to do to get it off?

Do you need to have a sideline conversation in advance of a difficult discussion? Talk through with a trusted co-worked / friend / therapist things like 'what's the worst that could happen?' 'and then what would you do?'

Last year I was referred to a cancer surgeon for what (thankfully) turned out to be a benign tumour, and a simple 'Wait for test results' just wasn't enough to process it ;) Talking it out cleared my mind of enough fear that I could continue to function.
 
Excellent example, Jodie. I am now beginning to understand what this thread is all about.

Is that what you meant by "conditional", @musicisbliss? That there may be entirely different Next actions following depending on what is actually "delivered" by the Waiting For action (in this case, test results from the doctor)?

First, let me then say that this kind of uncertainty can ensue from all kinds of actions, even next actions. For example the next action "Build sand castle" might leave you with an unsettled question about what you will do if it breaks. It is not restricted to Waiting Fors.

Talking things through with somebody is probably generally a good move, as it covers many aspects on many levels, but at least in theory you accomplish something quite similar by simply outlining the various scenarios on paper, for example a) Benign: forget about it, b) Terminal: prepare estate, c) Slow: avoid certain carcinogens, etc. What this analysis does achieve is it prepares you mentally for what to do in each of the main cases. Even when an almost infinite variation in outcomes is possible, this spectrum can usually be simplified into just a handful of main cases and their corresponding courses of action.

EDIT: In my own projects I sometimes include actions categorized as Someday/Maybe for things that are "Plan B" - i.e. not sure whether they will be necessary, but I want to make a note of them while I still have a clear mind and can remember. I keep these Plan B items right among all the next and waiting for actions in the project, but clearly identified as S/M.
 
Last year I was referred to a cancer surgeon for what (thankfully) turned out to be a benign tumour, and a simple 'Wait for test results' just wasn't enough to process it  Talking it out cleared my mind of enough fear that I could continue to function.
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That is a really good example. Thanks for sharing it.
 
By conditional, I am referring to waiting for list.

Some examples I have could be just waiting for someone to complete something, a certain date, or it could be a task that requires nice weather out to perform.

After reading these great responses, I suppose it is tied to unsettled questions regarding the action. Not so much the result of the action, but that the situation surrounding the action could change by the time the condition is right.
  • When someone completes something, maybe they need something different from you.
  • 3 months from now, maybe I need something completely different to achieve that result.
  • If the weather is nice, but I don't have time to do it today, I question whether the weather would be nice tomorrow.
These are just some examples, I am interested in what you guys have to say.
 
In cases where you are "waiting for" something like good weather in order to be able to perform the task, what you might do instead is manage this restriction as a context. For example, define a context called @Weather to indicate that this task requires some form of special weather (hot, cool, overcast, sunny, whatever). (Or you could have several different weather related contexts.)

The same goes for any other required situational factors, such as certain people or tools being required. The normal GTD practice is to put such actions on separate Context/Agenda lists (or into Context/Agenda categories in some apps). It is not uncommon for a vast number of actions to be "conditional" in the sense that they require some particular situational factor to be present. Unless you take special action to bring the required context about (e.g. go visit someone) you will have to "wait" until you find yourself in that context. This kind of "waiting" takes place naturally for the vast majority of next actions and does not involve the Waiting For list.

Personally I would not put weather dependent actions or any other "situationally dependent" actions on my Waiting list. I use my Waiting For list only for things that people "owe" me, e.g. a report, an answer or a sum of money.

The other difficulty you mentioned is the fact that your desired course of action may change later on. There is often no way to predict this. The standard GTD solution is the review - a weekly review and a daily mini-review (scan). You could also consider making a habit of quickly reviewing the individual project whenever you complete an action that belongs to it. I often do this.
 
musicisbliss said:
Some examples I have could be just waiting for someone to complete something, a certain date, or it could be a task that requires nice weather out to perform.
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To me those are 3 separate things.

Waiting for something to be returned to you or to finish by someone else is a clear obvious waiting for. Those stay on the list no worries.I read all my lists except the someday/maybe lists quickly at least once a day so those ar easy to catch and see if it's time to ping them again for the item or task to be completed. Once it is your next action may be figure out wha to do with that thing or now and that goes on your appropriate context list.

Something that cannot start until a certain date but then needs to be done as soon after that as I can get to it within the limits of time/priority etc. Is set in my system to not even show up in the correct context where I will perform that action until the start date.

Related is something that is due by a certain date. I very rarely put in a due date but will on occasion. I will often put in a due date in my system that is actually at least one weekly review ahead of the real due date so I am sure to see the item in plenty of time to deal with any last minute things that may not be done yet.

Something that is a fixed apt. for a specific day, like a concert or something, goes on my calendar. If I have say, tickets, they go in my tickler file for the day before the concert so I can put them into my purse. If the specific day/time item is something I am considering doing, say attend a free concert in the park, I enter the item in my calendar as ?Honey Don't Concert at Town Park? The question marks indicate to me that it is an optional time dependent thing. On that day I can decide whether to plan to go or not at my own whim.

The weather one is very interesting, a very large number of my tasks are weather dependent. I've tried contexts for different weather types but that has never really worked for me. What happens with weather contexts is that I end up only doing the weather things even though I am in the location for another context, I will often switch locations or tools to accommodate the weather and that seems to spread me out and be extremely frustrating. So my tactic for all weather dependent tasks is that they are in the context where I would do them. For mine I know the weather constraints of the items just by looking at them so I can look at the weather and decide whether to do that one that day or not. For example, marking the orchard for irrigation requires that the ground be dry and it not be raining or snowing. We're within the calendar timeframe that we could do that so it's on my actions list right now in the outside with help context. However, our ground is still too wet and muddy and doing it now would result in compacted soils and poor grass growth so when I am outside with help and take a look at my list of actions I see that one is not really able to be done now.

Separating context even finer, outside with help and dry weather resulted in too much definition, grouping byt weather was also difficult so I use add that to my internal list of things to review as I make the decision on what to do next when I view my actions list along with time, energy and priority.
 
Oogiem said:
I know the weather constraints of the items just by looking at them so I can look at the weather and decide whether to do that one that day or not.
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That's how I do things, too. The reality of things is usually such that there are a whole lot of different situational factors that determine whether a particular task is possible/appropriate, but it is simply not workable to have contexts defined for all of these factors (places, tools, people, mood, weather, energy ...). The usual compromise is to just have enough contexts defined to be able to limit your list of options down to what you can easily overview and manage, but after that point there will typically be a more precise selection that we must do using our gut.

This is especially true if we are using a "flat" context structure, with only one context per action, but it remains true even if we use an app that allows several such factors to be applied independently to each task. Even in the latter case there are limits to how many such contextual factors we can maintain and "tag" for, and conveniently filter for.

I currently use a system with flat, single contexts, and I have only five of those. The fine selection I do by reading the task description and intuitively matching all the undocumented contextual criteria (mood, weather, exact person etc etc).
 
Very interesting points. Thank you all.

From reading this, I think that the solution is to plan to worry about it during weekly review. This would allow me to hopefully let go psychologically, knowing that I will deal with any concerns within that review.

Also interesting to think about over-defining contexts.
 
cfoley said:
GTD can reduce or eliminate stress by managing commitments and guiding action choices. I've not found a way for GTD to eliminate anxieties like the ones above. It could be that we are missing something important or it could be out of scope for GTD. If anyone has any insight into this I'd be interested to hear it too.
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Speaking as someone who only recently learned to overcome excessive worry, I think it depends on the source of the worry. Undefined and unmanaged outcomes and actions can produce anxiety and GTD can help with that. It is, however, possible to have defined an outcome and next action(s) and still worry about them for other reasons.

In my case, it wasn't GTD that helped me learn to worry less. Learning to lessen my anxiety is what enabled me to become more effective at GTD (among other things). My anxieties were based on unrealistic thinking about myself and the world around me. Once I learned to think differently, everything else began to fall into place.

I think the issue of how much and in what way GTD can help with anxiety depends on the individual.
 
Oogiem said:
If the specific day/time item is something I am considering doing, say attend a free concert in the park, I enter the item in my calendar as ?Honey Don't Concert at Town Park? The question marks indicate to me that it is an optional time dependent thing. On that day I can decide whether to plan to go or not at my own whim.
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Love the idea of question marks in the calendar to flag optional time-dependent items - thanks!
 
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