Confused about Projects and Overwhelmed

[Anonymous]

I thought I was doing so well....

I did all my implementation this weekend. The only thing I had left to do was to sort my tasks into contexts. No big deal. I had that done in a very short time.

However...

I don't have a well-defined project list yet. And that leaves a BIG open loop because I know that simply checking off the next action doesn't trigger the NEXT next action.

Furthermore, in setting up my projects, I found big open loops again.

For example, if the mini-project is "Get the car serviced", I can easily see the steps. But don't I really need a project "Maintain the Car" for which the next action/project is "Get the car serviced"? And then the next next action might be a note in the tickler for 4 months out to get the car serviced again?

I suspect I'm just being obsessive here, but I'm not confident of my implementation yet and I'm feeling a bit stuck and overwhelmed by the huge number of "mini projects". Add to this, I'm trying to implement the system using the GTD Outlook add in and just trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together.

I look at my lists and all I see are projects that really need to be broken down further. And each one of those is part of a bigger project, that is probably part of a goal or responsibility. I don't think these bigger picture items are getting well represented here.

Thanks for any insights you can offer.

 

[MarkTAW]

If "Maintain the car" is a priority, put it on a list for quarterly reviews and put an item on your calender to do the quarterly reiews.

Check out Sciral Consistency, it's a program designed to make repetitive actions trackable.

 

[severance1970]

"Maintain the car" isn't really a project. It's a focus area in which you have cyclical projects like "Get car serviced," which have next actions like "Call garage." If it were me, I'd throw a note to revisit those kind of projects with a checklist in my tickler file 4 months out like you suggested, not the calendar (unless I'd already scheduled an appointment for a specific date).