Complex projects with deadlines; or, to date or not date your tasks

ArcCaster said:
My perspective -- we might want to work backwards from a 'use model'.

I start my day by opening my calendar in week view. THEN, I look at next actions. So, you can see that the week view of the calendar influences my choice of next actions.

IF you start your day by looking at next actions, you would treat due dates totally differently than if you start with the calendar.

That is, if my calendar says a project is due on Friday, that might influence my choice of next actions every day until then.

It sounds like there are a variety of use models being assumed in this discussion, so I would like to ask -- how do you use your calendar and next action lists?
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I use three things:

- Calendar
- Lists
- Reminders

For me, reminders are really a hack to cover up imperfect use of the lists.

The lists are where that project that's due Friday belongs. If that project doesn't have an appointment (maybe a presentation) or other fixed-time activity (maybe a server down time that I've pre-negotiated) associated with it then the fact that it's due Friday will not be reflected on my calendar at all. Even if it does appear on my calendar, the calendar is not where I discover that it's due Friday.

I MAY discover that it's due Friday through reminders. I may have, say, a daily reminder scheduled to pop up and say, "Delivery Friday!" This is a flaw in my use of my system, because:

I SHOULD discover that it's due Friday through my lists. I should have been maintaining my lists diligently, and I should have cleared the decks so that the actions for the stuff that's due Friday, and the deadline, are clear and obvious. The reminders are there because I don't sufficiently trust myself to do that.

When I look at my calendar, I'm looking for blocks of time for solitary work, and where those blocks are broken up by appointments that I must be available for. My calendar is not telling me anything about my workload; it's telling me how much time, and what nature of time (long blocks are fundamentally different from short blocks) I have for getting work done.

HOWEVER: The only capability at work for reminders is...the calendar. So those reminders are calendar entries with a span of one minute, set to show an alert, with a special color code that I know to ignore when I'm looking at my calendar. However, I don't think of these as being on "the calendar"--I see this as a hack. On my phone I use Reminders, without involving the calendar in any way, which to me makes much more sense.

So my use is to:

- Look at the calendar to see what I need to show up for and what kind of time I have for getting things from my lists done. If I have a heavy deadline coming up I may look a few days ahead to see if I have enough of that unscheduled time; if my deadlines are flexible I will rarely look beyond today.
- Look at the lists and start getting things done.
 
chirmer said:
The bolded sections are essentially what I'm getting at. It has seemed in many threads that those of us who put deadlines for certain project parts on the calendar to keep it on track, despite them not necessarily being "hard" in the sense that the day before and the day after would work just as well, are having these referred to as "arbitrary" or "artificial". I'm curious to hear how those folk do otherwise, because I can't imagine having a project with 400 individual tasks that all must be completed within 6 months and not creating secondary deadlines to keep it flowing smoothly.
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Drat. I deleted my own previous post. Well, to summarize, I think that there's a difference between (1) having interim deadlines on the calendar and (2) having interim deadlines at all. I have some interim deadlines, but they're in my lists. And so I suspect that part of the issue here may be the definition of "the calendar". If the calendar were my only tool with dates, I might have more tasks in the calendar. But I have two tools with dates, the calendar and the lists. And in fact I pretend that I have three, as described in my preceding post--calendar, lists, and reminders.
 
Hmm. I've also left out "defensive appointment making." If I have a deadline on Friday, I may set an all-day appointment for both Thursday and Friday to keep anyone from trying to drop an appointment on my calendar. But I see that less as hard landscape and more as preemptive clutter avoidance.
 
Gardener said:
And so I suspect that part of the issue here may be the definition of "the calendar". If the calendar were my only tool with dates, I might have more tasks in the calendar.
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I agree that this might be part of the problem. I always refer to "the calendar" because with the variety of tools available, it's really the only way to refer to all date-related things. And, it's in line with the traditional GTD system - a common ground. AFAIK, referring to due dates is talking about "the calendar" in regards to GTD because that's how the 2001 book describes it. Just because some of these things can now be housed in a task app doesn't mean they're not part of "the calendar" - one's deadlines and time commitments.

I use a task app at work because my job is filled with deadlines, huge/complex projects, and various other complexities. From home I used to use Reminders on my iPhone (and still do for my habits and repeat items), but have switched to keeping my lists in a Field Notes notebook. For some inexplicable reason, I check the notebook and I never check Reminders. And, GTD + Bullet Journal make the humble pocket notebook very powerful. So anyway, I have a tendency to refer to all date-related items as "the calendar," and I think that led to confusion initially. The initial goal for the topic was to discuss using interim deadlines as a philosophy - less so where one chooses to house them.
 
chirmer said:
I agree that this might be part of the problem. I always refer to "the calendar" because with the variety of tools available, it's really the only way to refer to all date-related things. And, it's in line with the traditional GTD system - a common ground.
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I agree that terminology and tools probably play a major part in this overall confusion. Does David really say anything in GTD 2001 about deadlines? I cannot recall him even mentioning that, but I am too tired to double-check, because even if he did not say it there, he may well have said it in some podcast or article. Or someone may have inferred it from some blanket statement that you must adapt the whole thing to your own needs - everything is GTD as long as it works for you and you choose to call it GTD. Or you might consider a due date to be "date-specific information", which I remember that he did in fact mention in GTD 2001. I really don't know.

Anyway, I think this whole debate about dates or no dates goes deeper. We all have limited time. We all want clarity. We all grasp for clarity and control and want to picture it somehow and make it manageable. Most of David's rivals seem to go for the method of stringing it all to a timeline - they even claim there is proof that this is effective. David used to be part of a minority claiming that each moment carries unique opportunities that must be utilized accordingly. Obviously that message does not go down too well with corporate clients wanting to control their employees. I can understand if he is having a hard time.

I also understand if we, the personal clients or "users", are having a hard time. We are all different personalities. Some seek comfort in having a firm timeline. Some seek stability elsewhere, for example in clarifying the facts and visualizing them. But we all need to use our time well. And no one seems to have an unchallenged solution.
 
Folke said:
I agree that terminology and tools probably play a major part in this overall confusion. Does David really say anything in GTD 2001 about deadlines?
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I'm not too tired (in the morning). In Kindle edition of the GTD book there's only one "deadline" at location 1413:

GTD-2011 said:
One manager, who had taken over responsibility many months in advance for organizing a major annual conference, asked me how to prevent the crisis all-nighters her team experienced near the deadline the previous year. When she produced an outline of the various pieces of the project she'd inherited, I asked, "Which pieces could actually be moved right now?" After identifying half a dozen, we clarified the next action on each one. It was off and running.
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My comment:

GTD is focused on maintaining a constant project progress not on specific deadlines. If you do something now you don't have to worry about deadlines.

David Allen said:
Small things done consistently in strategic places create major impact.
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Big projects need deadlines but I always say that GTD is a personal productivity methodology. It is not a project management tool.
 
And if you're asking: GTD 2015 book is 100% better. There is one more "deadline" in the new edition. Even in plural "deadlines" at Kindle location 825:

GTD-2015 said:
Many people don't look ahead at their own calendars consistently enough to stay current about upcoming events and deadlines, and they consequently become victims of last-minute craziness.
Ask yourself, "When do I need to see what, in what form, to get it off my mind?" You build a system for function, not just to have e system.
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Yet another proof that GTD is a personal productivity methodology, not a project management tool.
 
TesTeq said:
And if you're asking: GTD 2015 book is 100% better. There is one more "deadline" in the new edition. Even in plural "deadlines" at Kindle location 825:

Yet another proof that GTD is a personal productivity methodology, not a project management tool.
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What is needed to get things off your mind is different for each of us - how could it not be? Our worlds and brains are different - personality, work, workload, how fast things move, how much of your work is 'thinking' and not routine tasks, work styles, environment, etc. It is great to hear how others handle things, ideas to consider to improve our own GTD practice. We are given great guidelines and best practices to apply to our personal situations. I understand there are those that take things more literally and want to have black and white rules and processes to follow, and I completely get that this works for them.

I handle a caseload of at about 50 clients in addition to management and business owner responsibilities. This requires that I be available to clients and staff when needed (within a day or so and sometimes more quickly if the item is time sensitive); I also need to complete time intensive projects requiring dedicated focused time for these same clients and often for staff. I have found that blocking my time on the calendar can be critical. Most of these projects have many moving parts which I prefer not to (actually cannot) keep in my head - I have not found an efficient/effective way to keep this kind of detail up-to-date and easily noted in my lists. I prefer to use that time to get things done knowing I will have a weekly review to catch anything else. My world moves so fast that placing items I need to see on my calendar is the most effective for me. It seems others similarly identify time they need for pre-planned work, and are able to either keep this in their head or code in their lists, this has not worked for me so far. I also find the visual of the electronic calendar best for me when I'm in the weeds (or often its more like a tornado!).

I do my high level thinking and planning during my weekly review and will often block time on my calendar or note projects in the All Day portion of my calendar that need time during the week. The tool I look at most frequently is my calendar and I completely trust it, which I believe is David's entire message about overusing the calendar - overuse to the point that you can't trust your calendar is not GTD. I do use a separate "Blocking Calendar" that overlaps my regular calendar. When I have time available to work on other items, I will go to my lists.

This is a glimpse of my world, hoping to provide some insight as to how and why I use my calendar. I don't see this as going against GTD principles nor am I saying that this is how others should work.
 
mommoe436 said:
I do my high level thinking and planning during my weekly review and will often block time on my calendar or note projects in the All Day portion of my calendar that need time during the week. The tool I look at most frequently is my calendar and I completely trust it, which I believe is David's entire message about overusing the calendar - overuse to the point that you can't trust your calendar is not GTD.
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I think this is an important point, too. There's a difference between planning your day on your calendar and blocking time for specific, priority tasks to make sure progress happens. Planning each minute of your day can quickly lead to distrust of one's calendar; periodically blocking off a morning or afternoon or few hours to make headway on that important project is a different beast. And I think there might be two (or more) types of people when this comes up - those comforted by knowing time is reserved on the calendar, and those feeling trapped by it.
 
chirmer said:
I think there might be two (or more) types of people when this comes up - those comforted by knowing time is reserved on the calendar, and those feeling trapped by it.
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I think you are on to something very important here. You are a good coach.

Another such psychological factor would seem to be enthusiasm. I have come across people in my life who seem to be doing everything with the same stable cruise speed, enthusiasm and equanimity, regardless of what it is or when it is or what the circumstances are, whereas others are extremely sensitive and exhibit vast differences in speed and quality of work depending on how they perceive the task at hand right there and then - their overall enthusiasm or perhaps the anxiety or challenge or potential or timeliness that they feel about the task at that time. The former type might be more prone to find scheduling useful, whereas the second type would be heavily impaired by not being able to follow their heart - analogous to making the best use of the current context, in this case an emotional-intuitive kind of context. I am more the second type.
 
Folke said:
I have come across people in my life who seem to be doing everything with the same stable cruise speed, enthusiasm and equanimity, regardless of what it is or when it is or what the circumstances are, whereas others are extremely sensitive and exhibit vast differences in speed and quality of work depending on how they perceive the task at hand right there and then - their overall enthusiasm or perhaps the anxiety or challenge or potential or timeliness that they feel about the task at that time. The former type might be more prone to find scheduling useful, whereas the second type would be heavily impaired by not being able to follow their heart - analogous to making the best use of the current context, in this case an emotional-intuitive kind of context. I am more the second type.
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Oddly enough, I'm definitely more of the second type, too. Unfortunately, I work a career path that doesn't give me a lot of flexibility :D For me, blocking time on the calendar helps me get over the humps of never feeling like working on a certain project and yet its deadline forcing me to. It almost lets me know, "Hey, this time you've gotta work on this thing you don't like, but ALL of your other open time is for what you want to tackle." Somehow it helps. But I do it rarely - only for those complex projects that must move at a certain pace. Everything else is left to my discretion. Moderation is key :)
 
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