Friday Afternoons

C

cfoley

0
... are the most productive time of the week for me. I think it's because my weekly review is on Friday morning. Have you noticed anything similar?

I'm at a loss over what to do with this observation. I scan my action lists at the start of each day but I'm not sure I could justify a full weekly review every morning. Maybe I could move my weekly review to Monday and hope the boost lasts a couple of days longer, or move it to Wednesday to get over that midweek lull. Maybe I would benefit from a biweekly or triweekly review.

I'd welcome any thoughts, especially if you have experimented with moving the weekly review around.
 
I have not really noticed that effect. Maybe this is because I tend to review things (e.g. some project or area) creatively whenever I feel a need to, even between reviews, because I simply cannot wait. This means my lists tend to be in reasonably good shape when I start my weekly review, and for the most part it becomes an administrative checkpoint more than a creative session. But I agree that it feels good to have thought things through properly, whenever that happens.

As for the time of week I do not schedule the weekly review as a calendar action. I tickle it for Sunday, and then it usually gets done within a few days.
 
Maybe I should try to aim for Friday morning. I almost always do my weekly review on Friday afternoons and I feel better about leaving work knowing that I'm in control and I have a clean path for the next week. It also makes it easier to plug back in on Monday mornings.
 
I can't remember where but Friday was suggested for the benefits you mention. The morning was suggested to keep the afternoon available in case something urgent was uncovered.
 
I tend to move the review around a bit but seem to have settled for now into trying to clear inboxes on Friday, review on Friday or Saturday and get creative on Sunday. Once we are open for tours to the public for summer I'll probably move it so that my review is finished on Thursday as we are open Fri-Sunday and I can't count on any time to concentrate on review. I don't seem to notice being any more productive after the review but I usually am calmer as i know what Iv'e got to finish or what is coming up.
 
Maybe related -- but on a daily, not a weekly, basis -- on those days that I start planning my next day in the closing hour of my current day, I find that both the remainder of that closing hour AND my next day are wonderfully productive. The question I ask is 'what is next'? And 'what is next' is often NOT on my next action list.
 
I wonder if that's the reason for me too. I'll be mindful of that over the next couple of weeks. If that really is the reason then there must be a remedy other than waiting for the weekly review. Maybe I could do better at capturing everything or maybe I could do the review when I feel it's needed rather than at a set time.
 
cfoley said:
... or maybe I could do the review when I feel it's needed rather than at a set time.
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Well, that's what I do. I usually review individual projects or areas whenever I do not trust what I have written down. These reviews are always of the creative type. In addition, I still do a weekly review, and this can sometimes be of a more administrative, double-checking nature if most of it has already been well reviewed during the week.
 
I think it is a project-specific thing. Our next-action list contains a single next action for each of many projects. However, as a technical writer, I can spend the bulk of my day on a single project, starting from my 'next action' list. That next action may get completed in the first hour of my day, followed by a whole sequence of spontaneous hitherto-uncontemplated next actions for that project. At the end of the day, I assess where I am, and what the most appropriate next action is, FOR THAT PROJECT. Then, the next day, I hit the ground running on that same project.

So, when you complete a next action AND shift contexts to another project, you must add your next action for that project to your list. That is, I believe your next action list should always contain THE next action for every active project. Which means that, all week, unless you complete a project or add a project, your next action list has the same number of next actions. At the weekly review, you may add or change or complete projects, which gives a whole different picture.

Deciding what project to work on is a different topic. Yes, I do squeeze in other projects at either end of my day and at intervals in it.
 
ArcCaster said:
That next action may get completed in the first hour of my day, followed by a whole sequence of spontaneous hitherto-uncontemplated next actions for that project.
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Indeed. I agree. And I even saw some statistics about that recently. I cannot recall the actual figures, but I think they had found that 80% or so of what we do was not listed before we did it. And conversely, that the stuff that gets listed tends to stay listed.

ArcCaster said:
That is, I believe your next action list should always contain THE next action for every active project. Which means that, all week, unless you complete a project or add a project, your next action list has the same number of next actions.
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That is a cute idea, cherished by many. And it is probably good enough for many projects, if the time frames permit this kind of forced strict sequentialization. But I honestly must say I agree 100% with David Allen (in his first book) that the correct way is to "identify each and every next action from every moving part of every project" (paraphrased from memory). This means, the number of next actions can vary as you go.
 
Folke said:
I But I honestly must say I agree 100% with David Allen (in his first book) that the correct way is to "identify each and every next action from every moving part of every project" (paraphrased from memory). This means, the number of next actions can vary as you go.
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I agree. I should not have expanded my 'best practice' into the broader realm of next action lists.

So let me take a step backwards and narrow my focus:

For me, reviewing my day and deciding exactly where I want to start the next day, then allowing that chosen start point time to percolate and marinate in my brain, allows me to get a fabulous start when I pick up that project again. Additionally, often my 'starting point' has dependencies, and I don't see those dependencies until I pick the starting point. So my 'starting point' is not really my next action. The dependencies are. And often I can initiate work on those dependencies in the closing hours of the current day so that yes, I CAN begin the next day at my starting point.

So, oddly enough, picking THE next action is a multi-step process. You identify your wished-for next action, then ask if you have everything needed to take that next action, then you identify the REAL next actions so you can get to your initially-identified next action.

Hmm -- I am just reporting on what works for me. Maybe this ties in to some process for correctly identifying next actions. All I have heard is something like "identify the desired outcome for the project; pick THE next action towards that outcome". I guess that, for me, it isn't that simple. I think I would like to hear what others go through to identify next actions. Is it a quick 5-second thought process? Is it "decide on your NEXT desired outcome for your "current project" (maybe what you want to accomplish for the day), then work backwards from that to your next action(s)?
 
ArcCaster said:
So, oddly enough, picking THE next action is a multi-step process. You identify your wished-for next action, then ask if you have everything needed to take that next action, then you identify the REAL next actions so you can get to your initially-identified next action.
...
I think I would like to hear what others go through to identify next actions. Is it a quick 5-second thought process? Is it "decide on your NEXT desired outcome for your "current project" (maybe what you want to accomplish for the day), then work backwards from that to your next action(s)?
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I agree with that description of how it works inside my brain, too. I often deal with GTD projects "by ear", a step at a time, without knowing what the next step will be, and I suspect that it often starts out, as you say, with a hunch about what the next "outcome" or "milestone" or "major step" will be and what I will need to do first to be able to accomplish that. These GTD projects I often deal with as single-line actions that stay on the list for a long time. I don't check them off until the whole thing ("project") is finished. I just move them around from one context to another, if the next step seems to require that, and I typically remember or can easily determine where I left off (or else I make a note in the task comments).

Some things are particularly difficult to break down into meaningful steps. For example, for me personally, "draft a contract" and "draft a presentation" are things that require a constant change of perspectives, additional research, experimentation, contemplation, formulation, redisposition etc, which is why it is so hard (useless, in my case) to even try to break it down into distinct steps. It remains a one-line item for me even if its size and importance etc are considerable and it contains a lot of work of a varied nature in alternating contexts.
 
@Folke&ArcCaster re NAs etc:

I can relate to what you both said very well.

Several overarching thoughts come to my mind on this.
  • Next Action for every moving part is logical also because you are preparering for REVIEW. When you switch over from REVIEW into DO, you will always narrow down from multiple NAs to just one. You DO always just one NA. This is so, even if your whole system contains just one project.
  • One NA on the list or just the project itself is the same thing. All you do is deciding which part to move forward - in advance before you DO it. This is the same as scheduling a NA, but only one half of it: you say which NA, but you don't say WHEN to do it. Scheduling would mean you specify WHEN as well.
  • The original problem to solve was that mayn people had THINGS lingering on their todo lists without being clear about them. The minimum viable clarity is reached when you answer the GTD questions: "Purpose? Outcome? Physical Action? etc" Then of course you only can DO an NA when you are in it's context. But after learning GTD, the original problem is not there any more. It is fine to have this one project/bookmark on your list, because you have: a) an outcome thinking process awareness, b) dito for physical next action. And the bookmark is on the right context, so everything is covered.
  • Granularity of meaningful steps: if clarity about physicality is 100% available: I will work at my desk for a while. No need to write this down again. The NA descriptor should prompt the right mental state, because that is what would alleviate the original problem. The jump is not: doubleclick on Powerpoint file icon. The jump is: "what can I say on the second slide to make them look up from their smartphones" (or whatever). So the NA should reflect that. BTW, as much as a brain is physical, this is a physical NA.
  • Back to many NAs vs one NA: there is a fine art in this, having many moving parts descripted but working on them in sequence, necessarily so. It is repeated on the 10k level HoF. If you have a 30k goal or a 20k area and could do many projects there, how do you decide which to put on @projects which are SdMb and wish are @trash_can? There is no one answer. You could say, one project per goal or so. But very fast you will find out, his will never work. It will stay a matter of: this is how I like to slice and dice it on that perspective and it just reflects my mental awareness of all that and it will never be perfect, oh no, I am a human! On the 0k-10k level we can say: "Well, until you stop thinking about it!" Yes, but on the higher levels that is not necessarily true. After all we are sorting the runway to make room in our minds for the big, exciting stuff!
As you can see I am already thinking too much on this. Please provoke me to do more of it!
 
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