GTD and Lotus Notes

[Lmalnati]

First of all I am a newbie to GTD. In the past week I have
Read Dave's book, GTD.
Read Davids paper on GTD and Lotus Notes
Reviewed software called mGSD
Read Dave's paper Getting Email Under Control

I am really struggling with next actions with a project. If I have a project called Roll out new contacts database I am struggling with how David recommends to organize the data. In his paper GTD and Lotus Notes he indicates to create categories such as -Project, Office, and Waiting.

Thus, as an example if I have a 3 projects with 30 independent task each and my boss ask me for a print out of all outstanding tasks for Project1 there is no way I can produce this with Davids method as all of my next actions for all 3 projects have now been placed under the categories of waiting and office. There is no way to know which na's belong to project 1.

I think I am making this more complicated than it is, but I feel I am worse off productivity wise than a week ago.

Update Feb 6, 2011 7:20 PM
I actually found a nice link here below that nicely explains my GTD link concern. I think maybe now I wade deeper into the GTD without drowning, but any Lotus Notes tips would be great.

http://tools-for-thought.com/2008/07/18/linking-actions-to-projects-the-big-gtd-controversy/

 

[TesTeq]

Everything is more complicated in Lotus Notes.

I think I am making this more complicated than it is, but I feel I am worse off productivity wise than a week ago.

Everything is more complicated in Lotus Notes. But struggle with this software gives you a high social status in the corporate world.

 

[PaulK]

Sounds like some of the projects might need more tracking

Your Next Actions should only contain the next physical action that you can take. For example if your project is 'choose a new email system', your next action might be 'Search web for email providers'. If you can't take the action because it is waiting on something, it should be on a 'waiting for' list.

Your project 'choose a new email system' might contain ideas and actions that happen after that if they are not self-evident. For example:
Decide important criteria for selecting provider
Search web for email providers
Shortlist providers against decision criteria
Trial top 2 providers
Migrate to new email provider

Some of these may become 'projects' in their own right when you get to that stage. Projects in GTD may be more granular than projects you are used to elsewhere. If you are running formal projects, it may be worth looking into project management methods such as PMBOK or PRINCE2 with appropriate software to support them.

In Notes, I have a category '-Projects' which has one 'to-do' per project with a list of ideas included in each'. I also have 'Waiting', 'Computer', 'Agendas', 'Calls', 'Someday' categories that capture next actions or possible future ideas.

Hope this helps