Delegating effectively with GTD

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tglake

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I am fairly new to GTD but am finding it very effective for organising every aspect of my life. However, there is one area that I am still not happy with. I have at work a team of 6 direct reports, who I meet and agree actions with every week.

I have set up GTD (using Palm Desktop) with the standard folders @Agendas and @Waiting For. In the @Agenda list I keep an entry for each person, and the notes (for that entry) record the specific items I want to discuss when we meet. Once the person has committed to an action, I go the the @Waiting For list and find the entry for that person, and add the action to the notes behind their entry. So I end up with a list of names in both the @Agenda and @Waiting For categories, with the notes for each name holding all the detail and actions.

It all makes sense, but I find it quite fiddly to cut and paste the actions from one entry to another,across form @Agneda to @Waiting For.

An alternative would be to list every agenda item and action as a separate entry under the relevant category. This would be easier to move, because you can just change category very simply (from @Agenda to @Waiting For). However, the category ends up with a huge number of entries this way.

Anyone else in the same position - how do you do it?!
 
I keep one item per person and write it this way:

Name/Subject

So if I need to look up items for a specific person and can do a search for Name/ and get the list. I'm using datebk5 so I can save my list, but you can do this with the palm find function. It does make for a long list sometimes, but with my saved views in Datebk5 it's pretty easy to manage.

At one point I also did it this way... I kept all agendas and waiting fors in one entry per person in the agenda category. The note looked like this:

===Agenda===
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3

===Waiting For===
Item 1
Item 2

This method required copy/paste within the same note which is less fiddling. The downside is that you can't attach a date next to the waiting for so it sorts chronologically in a WF category. That is the main reason I keep each item as an individual task. I have a lot of deadline driven items and I want to be reminded to follow up on certain dates. Also, in some cases I may only have a few minutes to meet with that person so I may want to only discuss the dated items and leave the rest for another time.
 
Just a thought (from someone not in the same position) - could you create another context category, or perhaps a category of memos that list both the Agenda and Waiting For items by person? This might make it easier to review the entire list at once, and move items as well.

I don't the approach would work in every circumstance, but when you're seeing the same people on a weekly basis, it might be simpler.
 
I guess so, but my problem lies more with the inefficiency in copy info from one entry to the next.

If I assign an action, does it go as a new entry, or just another bullet in an entry for that person.

If it's a new entry, you can have trouble finding all the actions for a person when it comes to a meeting.

If it's another bullet, you have trouble moving it around and tracking the date due etc
 
Here's an idea

I'm in a similar situation. My approach is to have a category for each person on the team.

And for each person, I list everything associated with them, starting with either "Waiting:" "Assign" or "Talk About". ("Talk About" is my section for things I have to remember to discuss with the person, like new personnel policies, upcoming meetings, or readouts from other meetings)

So when I meet with that person next, everything is there -- things they're doing (Waiting), things I have to Assign, and things to Talk About.

And it's easy to change from "Assign" to "Waiting" by just changing that word in the title.
 
Except that Palm Desktop only allows 15 categories, so my setup won't allow for this..shame
 
If you use the Outlook Add-In, you can have the Persons name as a Project, i.e. ^Robert Johnson (I put the accent sign so all of my agenda items are put at the top of the project list) and then you can assign individual agenda items in their appropriate contexts. When assigning individual items, I put the persons Initials in front of each, i.e. RJ, to be able to identify it when I'm viewing it on the Palm. The plus side of this, is that you can do a project view and see all of the items for that person. The downside is that when looking at it from the Palm, your only identification is with the initials.

Tom
 
I use Pop! which allows me to double tap the palm screen, add an "@waiting for" Add the persons name after the "@waiting for" tag and use Cando to filter on items containing the words "@waiting for" or if you want more specificity "@waiting for Doe, Jon" and you'll get a list of items that Jon Doe owes you. Paste the "@waiting for" tag in front of task items to show the current status of items ordered, etc...
 
I have a separate task for each action, starting with the name (and, for @phone, the phone number) of any people concerned. Then it is straightforward to filter by initial letter (in PI) or sort alphabetically(in outlook).

Moving context categories is also dead easy.

Works for me.

FBA
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