I have an awkward project, and I'm not sure the best way to track it. I would love to hear how you would deal with this.
The Scenario
I moved house a while ago and set up a mail redirect, which came up for renewal this week. Ideally, I would like to cancel the redirect but I'm not certain that I have updated my address with 100% of important companies. I decided to renew for one more year, monitor redirected mail carefully and then cancel with confidence next year.
How I Tracked it
Project:
Be able to cancel my mail redirect with confidence.
Next Action:
I can't assign a next action because there is nothing I can do right now. If some redirected mail arrives then I want to log the occurrence and change my address with the company.
Tickler:
Have I recieved any mail redirected mail? If so, I need to notify the sender.
I hope this tickler is unnecessary because the mail itself should remind me to take action. However, a year is a long time so I have set this to remind me once per month.
I did not include a tickler to cancel at the end of the year because it is set to expire by default. In any case, Royal Mail send a reminder.
Analysis
Although I have successfully captured this open loop, they way I have incorporated it in my system is far from elegant.
Here is what I'm not happy with:
The Scenario
I moved house a while ago and set up a mail redirect, which came up for renewal this week. Ideally, I would like to cancel the redirect but I'm not certain that I have updated my address with 100% of important companies. I decided to renew for one more year, monitor redirected mail carefully and then cancel with confidence next year.
How I Tracked it
Project:
Be able to cancel my mail redirect with confidence.
Next Action:
I can't assign a next action because there is nothing I can do right now. If some redirected mail arrives then I want to log the occurrence and change my address with the company.
Tickler:
Have I recieved any mail redirected mail? If so, I need to notify the sender.
I hope this tickler is unnecessary because the mail itself should remind me to take action. However, a year is a long time so I have set this to remind me once per month.
I did not include a tickler to cancel at the end of the year because it is set to expire by default. In any case, Royal Mail send a reminder.
Analysis
Although I have successfully captured this open loop, they way I have incorporated it in my system is far from elegant.
Here is what I'm not happy with:
- A project with no next action.
- It will remain in my projects list for a year. If I add many projects like this, they could drown out the truly active ones.
- The tickler itself will never turn into an action. It serves just to keep the "redirected mail trigger" in my head.
- Should I be "Waiting For" redirected mail rather than "Tickling" redirected mail?
- Should the project really be a goal?
- Should it be a Project but in my Someday/Maybe list?
- Should I tickle the entire project?