Further newbie question(s): How many of each sort of thing... do you have?

[Ship69]

Hi

I have some further newbie questions.

I am interested in rough numbers of stuff that you good people have at any one moment. For example, ignoring archived stuff:

1. Roughly how many Projects do you have in total?
2. Roughly how many of those Project are 'live'?
3. Roughly how many are put into the Someday/Maybe list?
4. Roughly how many are put into the future i.e. in it the Tickler file? (or Scheduled to a future start date)
5. Do you have Actions/Next Actions that don't belong to any particular Project - and if so how many?

Also:

6. If you get too many Projects what do you do? (And what counts as "too many" for you?)
7. Do you have a Next Action for every single Project ?
8. On average how many Actions do you have (lining up ready "to be Next" as it were) ?

Finally please indicate whether you are using paper or digital to control you GTD.

Many thanks

 

[marcia]

1. Roughly how many Projects do you have in total?

I have 15 projects. (sorry, that may not be answering your question properly, I don't know how many non-active projects I have)

2. Roughly how many of those Project are 'live'?

15 live projects. Some moving along faster than others

3. Roughly how many are put into the Someday/Maybe list?

I have both single actions and projects on Someday/Maybe list, haven't broken down the count for each.

4. Roughly how many are put into the future i.e. in it the Tickler file? (or Scheduled to a future start date)

My tickler file doesn't have projects in it, only single actions. In other words my projects don't have specific start dates.

5. Do you have Actions/Next Actions that don't belong to any particular Project - and if so how many?

Yes, my action lists contain actions that are single actions, they don't belong to a project. These lists have 2-12 actions on them.

Also:

6. If you get too many Projects what do you do? (And what counts as "too many" for you?)

Too many for me is about 12, I probably have too many right now! Projects I am not currently working on get reviewed weekly in Someday/Maybe in case I need to make one active.

7. Do you have a Next Action for every single Project ?

Yes

8. On average how many Actions do you have (lining up ready "to be Next" as it were) ?

15 projects = 15 next actions.

Finally please indicate whether you are using paper or digital to control you GTD.

Digital

 

[Oogiem]

1. Roughly how many Projects do you have in total?
as of this minute 752 but I am taking a break after a major trip and know I will be adding between 20-30 new projects when I finish processing all of my notes and an undetermined number of single one-off actions.

2. Roughly how many of those Project are 'live'?
Currently have 155 active projects

3. Roughly how many are put into the Someday/Maybe list?
Currently have 534 in someday/maybe

4. Roughly how many are put into the future i.e. in it the Tickler file? (or Scheduled to a future start date)
Currently have 63 that are pending

5. Do you have Actions/Next Actions that don't belong to any particular Project - and if so how many?
Currently 22 single or one off actions

6. If you get too many Projects what do you do? (And what counts as "too many" for you?)
Depends. Too many in a single context I split contexts. Too many total I put some in someday/maybe.
Too many in a context is more than 1 screenfull
Too many total tends to be anything over 200

7. Do you have a Next Action for every single Project ?
Yes

8. On average how many Actions do you have (lining up ready "to be Next" as it were) ?
varies a lot by project. For some I may have 10-15 actions all planned and some only 1.

Finally please indicate whether you are using paper or digital to control you GTD.
Digital, Omnifocus

And to answer questions you didn't ask. I currently have 39 active contexts
Currently total 2038 remaining actions split thusly 999 in projects on hold, 399 blocked due to future start date (tickler file stuff) 257 blocked because they are sequential and have 383 current available actions.

 

[marcia]

Oogiem, that's an amazing number of projects, and contexts. Do you review all projects weekly? Does your weekly review take a long time?

Ship, I may have misunderstood question 8.

 

[Oogiem]

Yes I do a review each week. Not all projects get reviewed weekly. All Active and Pending projects are reviewed weekly. On Hold Projects are handled differently. Many are set with review dates of every 3 months or so. For example. I have projects on hold for every knitting thing I want to start. I set them to review once a year when I enter them because realistically how I use them is when I finish the current knitting project I pull up all my someday/maybe projects in that area and pick one to work on, make it active and do the project planning for it. Others are set with review dates that are yearly at the equinox or solstice that is before I will be able to work on them. For example, I do not need to review a project about Ultrasounding the ewes to count lambs until after they are bred so I set its first review date to be the autumnal equinox as that is when I am planning matings and will then know the dates we need to do ultrasounds on. I can then set it active either then or at the solstice depending on how I am doing the breeding for that year.

I've tried the keep on hold potential projects like knitting projects or scrapbooks to make or garments to sew or weave in a separate list, but for me I tend to collect stuff related to those someday/maybe projects and it's a lot easier to manage if it's all in my Omnifocus system. If I have other electronic project support material I put that in DEVONThink or in a folder for the project but then put a link in Omnifocus so I don't forget the info is there. If I have paper project support material it goes into a paper folder but again with an Omnifocus link. Paper folders for on-hold projects are filed in my reference filing system.