How to organize @adgenda paperwork?

J

Jamie Elis

0
I know to put the item on my @adg for that person, but what do I do with the materials? I have a number of projects in which I need to discuss something with others. If the discussion is the n/a, do you separate the material pertaining to the discussion from the rest of the project support and keep that in its own folder in your active projects area or do you keep the project folder itself in active projects? I am talking about paper notes and folders, not electronic text or drawings.

When there are several projects that have @adg with a single person, do you collect the paperwork that pertains to a given individual in one folder or section, or do you work from a list and gather up all the materials just before you meet?

What do you do when you have to discuss the same thing with several people but you will not being seeing them all at the same time?

Does this matter or am I just getting stuck in procedural details? If it matters, some of the people I have to confer with are very impatient, hard to pin down, you have to catch them and practically run them down. If you give them a folder or a paper you might not see it again.
 
You might consider setting up a meeting time and bringing the support material with you. If the material is related to a project, file it with the project support material. If it's just an ad-hoc type action, put the item in your action support folder.

I don't find the @Agendas category very useful as an action reminder. For me it's good for parking ideas to bring up at an upcoming meeting with a person or group, but not to remind me to talk to someone. If my next action on a project is to talk to someone, I create an action like "Call Fred" (@Calls) or "Talk to Fred" (@Office) or perhaps even "Schedule meeting with Fred" (@Computer-Office -- we use Outlook). The active nature of the action ensures it gets done.
 
I use @agendas for people I have regular meetings with -- the list is used to track things we need to discuss, tasks to delegate to the person, etc. I have a labeled file for each regular meeting where I drop papers and other physical stuff needed for the meeting.

--Marc
 
Just my..

The most important on meetings is to be obligatory in tasks and top be prepared properly. A lot of meetings end in more work than less and no results. Then you can GTD.
 
I put the papers I want to have with me when I talk to the person in a plastic wallet and mark it e.g. "AGENDA - Jim". If Jim is someone who tends to lose paperwork, I will put several copies in there so that if he does lose it, I still have more copies to give to him and refer to myself. After we've met, I either put the paper in the recycling bin if I'm not going to need it again, or move it to Reference or Project Support. If I meet with Jim regularly, I'll keep the empty wallet and re-use it for the next meeting. If it was a one-off meeting, I'll throw it away. (Unfortunately we can't recycle that type of plastic, but having a transparent folder is so much more convenient than cardboard, and the plastic ones are so much cheaper and less bulky, that I've decided to live with the waste for now.)
 
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