I would like to hear how people STRUCTURE their days

S

Ship69

0
I would like to hear how people STRUCTURE their days (as opposed to listing specific tasks & projects) when making plans.
e.g.
Do you make a list of Contexts that you're planning to be in?
And/or do you make a list of major projects?

e.g. Do you do say:
- Plan day/ Daily review (15-30 mins?)
- Urgent stuff (30 mins)
- Trivial stuff/quick wins (30 mins)
- Major project X (1 hour)
- [Lunch Break]
- Major project Y (1 hour)
- GTD Weekly review [1.5 hours]
- Errands/shopping (2 hrs]

Do you have a default structure for all days that starts with the first 2 in the list and has a lunch break at 1PM?

Do you distinguish between definite/important goals and soft/bonus goals ?

How much time in total are you spending doing your planning? (as opposed to doing DOING!)

And how happy are you with your system - how well is it working for you?

Thanks

J
 
Hi!

That sounds a bit to rigid for me, a bit like trying to book your entire day.

Your milage may vary, but I trust my GTD system to help me define the structure of my day, every day, with a daily review.

I dont have urgent things everyday, nor do I need weekly reviews everyday or shopping. If your lists are updated, your inbox processed and you are properly reviewing everything weekly, a quick daily review should be sufficient to see whats on your plate for that day, the unflexible parts of your schedule what you can do and can not do.
Above all, trust your intuition :)
 
Ship69 said:
I would like to hear how people STRUCTURE their days (as opposed to listing specific tasks & projects) when making plans.
e.g.
Do you make a list of Contexts that you're planning to be in?
And/or do you make a list of major projects?...
Do you have a default structure for all days that starts with the first 2 in the list and has a lunch break at 1PM?

Do you distinguish between definite/important goals and soft/bonus goals ?

How much time in total are you spending doing your planning? (as opposed to doing DOING!)

And how happy are you with your system - how well is it working for you?
Click to expand...

The only guaranteed structure to my day is that I will get up at the beginning and I will go to bed at the end.

In general there are rough guidelines that vary by the season. Right now in winter my day is usually get up, eat breakfast, check e-mail and forums, then go out and do chores, inside for inside work, deliver hay as required just before my lunch, more inside work, evening chores, errands if required then dinner and movie or reading or other relaxation.

During lambing my day is up out check sheep and from there it all depends on the ovine masters. I may be out there with a ewe for several hours while she labors, I may have to deal with lost lambs or stuck lambs or a lambing snowstorm and be hand carrying hay to make sheep nests or I may just have to catch, tag and weigh a bunch of lively healthy lambs with no problems and can come right back in for coffee and some breakfast.

I don't worry about goals at all. That is what the weekly, quarterly and yearly reviews are all about. During lambing I'm doing well to keep us fed, stay fairly well rested, collect required data on the new lambs and make sure we don't lose any that I could have saved. I'm lucky if I can get a real deep weekly review during primary lambing but I do mini reviews in between lambs. During summer I have more time and structure but I still work off my lists not to a calendar unless i have an apt. to go to that is time dependent. In winter I have the most "free" time so I plan doing things like scanning and shredding old papers, major house cleaning and changes and hobbies.

I generally spend about 20-25% of my time planning and about 75-80% of my time doing. That varies a bit by season but is a yearly average.

It's working well. Our farm is in better shape than it's been in 50 years. We have a large healthy flock of top quality performance recorded sheep that are in demand all over the US and Canada as breeding stock. We sell all our market animals locally providing superior food for my friends and neighbors and the tourists who come to visit. I have time to pursue other interests, like getting a masters degree, spinning, knitting, weaving, reading, scrapbooks and writing the entire LambTracker system and database design. We have good friends and neighbors and enjoy socializing with them regularly. We are fighting inappropriate oil and gas development that threatens our water and air and entire business but in general we are doing well and the system is working; I know I'm happier now than ever before in my life and only wish I'd learned GTD 40 years ago!
 
Ship69 said:
Do you make a list of Contexts that you're planning to be in?
- Plan day/ Daily review (15-30 mins?)
Click to expand...

Yes, I do a daily review, usually one of the first things I do. I then make a short-list selection of tasks that I will do or will consider doing during the day. This list is automatically grouped by context. I also check my calendar and include appointments etc on that same list.

If something happens during the day that causes me to revise my selection of tasks (and contexts) I will simply do that, as necessary.

Ship69 said:
And/or do you make a list of major projects?
Do you distinguish between definite/important goals and soft/bonus goals ?
Click to expand...

I have it my stuff fundamentally organized by project and areas and goals, but I do not do any daily planning based on it. They probably affect my gut decisons about what to do, though.

Ship69 said:
- Urgent stuff (30 mins)
- Trivial stuff/quick wins (30 mins)
- Major project X (1 hour)
- [Lunch Break]
- Major project Y (1 hour)
- GTD Weekly review [1.5 hours]
- Errands/shopping (2 hrs]

Do you have a default structure for all days that starts with the first 2 in the list and has a lunch break at 1PM?
Click to expand...

No such schedule or structure at all.

Ship69 said:
How much time in total are you spending doing your planning? (as opposed to doing DOING!)
Click to expand...

Very little, I think, but I hardly notice because I like it and I do it when I like. I seldom leave the main thinking for the weekly review. If I need to think through a certain project or goal I just do so. I do not have the patience to wait. My weekly review becomes more of a safety catch and consistency check than a thinking exercise.

Ship69 said:
And how happy are you with your system - how well is it working for you?
Click to expand...

Probably never fully satisfied. I have been trying to perfect this for thirty-forty years. Still improving. But I know of no better way.
 
And then there are days like today, when "work as it appears" takes over. Went outside to do morning chores to find a dead ram. So after calls to state vet to get approval for disposition spent the morning doing a quick post mortem on him to determine cause of death. Now in to document the findings and file the official report with the federal vets.
 
My structure is to get up, make coffee, leisurely drink it, walk the dog, then start with whatever requires the most mental energy. With morning over and as the afternoon wears on, I move to things that require less mental energy and more physical.

A fabulously effective best practice that I have sadly let slip is to start planning my next 'work day' an hour before finishing the current one. Then, if I still have cycles and energy left over today, I start implementing 'next day' items.
 
I've found that planning for the day means less decisions throughout the day, which makes me more productive. I'm curently toying with using a separate calendar which overlays my "real" calendar on which I block out time, leaving time in between for processing and unplanned work. This keeps me from being overwhelmed. I am a small business owner and wear many hats - some areas are not getting the attention they need so for now I am blocking time for these different hats . For my deliverable work I am identifying what projects to move forward because this work has client deadlines. For the other areas I am less likely to list what I plan to do unless a deadline (like payroll submission) and will go from my lists...but this allows me to focus on only that responsibility which is a context for me. I expect this will help me balance my responsibilities.
 
I follow the system by Priacta a kind of advanced GTD ( Total Relaxed Organisation) to review and plan my day. I also use a scheduling tool like skedpal.com that allows me to schedule by context priority deadline, time available, and time / energy maps. I feel very much in control these days
 
I wake up early and get outside for a walk (weather permitting), eat, read the news and get ready for work. When I arrive, I meet with my assistant to review the day ahead for both of us. She tries to group my meetings so I have blocks of time to do work. I do a quick check of email looking only for urgent items and go about my day following my calendar and task lists defined by context. I set aside time in the early afternoon to process email. I do another email review before I go home responding as needed. i end the day usually by getting lose ends into my inbox and taking a brief look at the day ahead. My weekly review happens on Friday afternoons and what I call my weekly preview is done on Sunday nights.
 
Most of my daily structure is dictated to me, or at least negotiated in advance. For example, most days I go to the office 9--5 or 8--4. Some evenings I have commitments or events I want to go to.

Adding further structure than that seems fundamentally un-GTD. My available contexts are restricted by being either at the office or not at the office. Beyond that GTD describes the threefold model for evaluating daily work and the four criteria model for choosing actions in the moment. I may not be consciously thinking through the steps in those models but they are essentially what I use to choose how to fill my time.
 
I keep my Calendar pretty clean - only time-specific commitments, day-specific commitments and day-specific info. No "to do" lists! My Outlook opens in my Calendar, NOT my in-box (otherwise I start the day by chasing "butterflies"), and I review my commitments for the day, and in particular for the morning. I then review my calendar for the afternoon at lunch (so I don't forget about any of them). Throughout the day I'm constantly scanning my Next Action lists, by context, for what I can do in between the appointments.

I wouldn't over-structure your day - it's way too much work, and unnecessary IF you're scanning your Next Action lists several times throughout the day.
 
mommoe436 said:
I've found that planning for the day means less decisions throughout the day, which makes me more productive. I'm curently toying with using a separate calendar which overlays my "real" calendar on which I block out time, leaving time in between for processing and unplanned work. This keeps me from being overwhelmed.
Click to expand...

I do this and love it. My workplace uses Google Calendar, so I have my Work Hours calendar that is my basic day (Currently 8am-5pm M-F). This also syncs to my personal iPhone. Then I have my Work Schedule calendar where I block out times for things like my Weekly Review (8-8:30am every Monday), Lunch, meetings, and any other odd miscellaneous items. This does NOT sync to my phone as it's irrelevant to my home life. I find separating them out really helps me keep my mind where I'm currently at - work or home.

I also set a new habit at the beginning of the year and used my Work Schedule calendar to set it - working on high focus items in the morning and, essentially, brain-dead items in the afternoon. I also try to schedule all meetings for the afternoon. This has been a complete game-changer for me. My focus is best in the morning, so after a quick 5 minute glance over my calendar and deadlined tasks, I start to work on items from my active projects. I work on these from ~8:15-noon. I use Trello to keep track of my tasks, so when I filter so only my Next Actions show, I can work from my projects lists without being distracted by the tasks I cannot act on. Then I go to lunch, and then tackle items on my general Next Actions list (tasks that aren't tied to a project) for the remainder of the afternoon. I like that in the morning I can keep my focus by working on projects in chunks, and then in the afternoon can complete a bunch of little tasks that require little brain effort but also let me feel accomplished. I also am free from worry in the afternoon about the state of my projects because I got that work done during the morning hours.

Here's a screenshot to show you what I mean: https://cloudup.com/ctmGzQRXC_1
 
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