Is putting time sensitive actions in Next Actions lists a risk?

[smithdoug]

That's what I use Weekly Review for

I think the ability to assign dates to tasks (next actions) in Outlook 2007 is what's preventing me from trusting my lists.

Catch-22. I use dates because I don't get to look at the lists. I don't get to look at the lists because I use dates!

Lists of three- or four-hundred next actions become too unwieldy to use. You get numbed to them and quit looking at them. And quite frankly, since most of those items may be "Someday/Maybe" actions, you don't need or want to look at them every day. That's what weekly reviews are for; a chance to review what needs to be brought forward for the week ahead. I tend to put those on the "current" action lists or even flag them when they have special urgency and I want to be confronted by them on a regular basis. And I also find it quite useful (in Outlook 2007's weekly calendar view) to drag them onto the calendar and block out time for them. Everything else is in the system, but if I don't need to see it until the next Weekly Review, I choose not to see it until the next Weekly Review.

 

[mikeweinberg]

as with most things, it depends...

I think it really depends on the nature of your job and the nature of the "stuff" flowing into your inbox. If you have the type of job, where there's a pretty rigid workflow of similar items (like say you're a settlement clerk at an investment bank), then it's likely that each "item" is very similar to the last and that you have a system that is designed to track your core job "stuff", due dates etc...feeding this into your GTD methodology, in my opinion, is a waste of time.

If you dont' have an automated system at work: let's say you just have a stack of 100 paper claims that need to be processed, and it's up to you to figure out the order of priority, which ones are "vanilla" and which ones require more effort, etc., but at the end of the day they're all pretty similar in terms of WHAT you actually have to do, then, to me, it still doesn't make sense to feed these things into your "master" GTD lists: WoT. What makes sense here is to set up a "dedicated mini GTD" workflow, just for that process. You have an inbox...you process top-down...you organize them based on some criteria either to: (a) do now because it's low-effort, (b) delegate because someone else should do this, (c) put it in another bucket or set of buckets that are deferred. And then at some stage you turn your attention to the deferred buckets and crank them out.

If you have the type of job where the requests for your time/effort are many, varied in nature, varied in incoming format (emails, voicemails, notes from meetings, notes on your hand fom elevator conversations, project requests, blah blah blah), varied in complexity, and varied in WHAT you actually have to do to complete them, then I think you need GTD, and you need an appropriate way to integrate your calendar with your lists. in my view, this is where Outlook (and other apps) is way better than paper lists: (1) when you set up tasks in outlook, you can set a due-date (but no reminder), and set it up so that the tasks turns red on their due date; (2a) you can set a due-date and default reminder to remind you on the day things need to happen (say 9am) if there's no time-sensitivity, or (2b) set the reminder for the actual time (or an hour before the deadline, or whatever) ...then you get an automatic pop-up reminder (tough to forget about that), so no real need to put it on your calendar, UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO BLOCK OFF TIME TO DO IT. (3) if there is no date/time sensitivity, you just don't set a due-date or reminder. Then it hits you when you do your periodic review, and you have to make a decision about it.

In my view, if your managing offline lists via pencil & paper, then this becomes very cumbersome, and the risk you're concerned about is very real. Add the fact that deadline might be 12noon tomorrow, and NA#1 today might be to reach out to Joe Schmoe for something before you can finish it, and then that goes on your WF list, and you need to track the dependency, etc....and managing via paper becomes nearly impossible.

 

[Richard Love]

Isn't this actually very simple in that David recommends the use of the calendar to hold reminders (ie, Bill is coming back from vacation today).

I place reminders of upcoming milestones that serve to focus my context based daily reviews.

 

[Howard]

Thoughts from further down the road

As this thread has been revived I'll add the thoughts I've had on the subject since we originally discussed it.

Now GTD has been a real find for me. I have found the benefits of the trusted system in unburdening the mind and the sheer efficiency of regular in-to-empty processing to have been huge. I wish I'd had D. Allen's methods ten years ago. And translating my (frequently demoralising) to-do lists to the system of front-end decided next actions, by context has greatly increased my productivity. However, I don't agree with DA that only things that MUST be done on a given day should be put on the calendar. Two reasons:
a) When you have a very busy reactive job you need to be able to clearly see and have constant reminders of the time critical jobs. These will sometimes be IMPORTANT SHOULDS as well as MUSTS. This can be a particular problem with computer based GTD, such as in Outlook, where you have to go and look for next actions as they may not be immediately on view. This does matter when you are very busy and I have been caught out missing next action-listed SHOULDS more than once.

b) Sometimes numerically prioritising actions helps the mind to move easily from one to another - the order has been pre-decided as well as the action itself. In this situation the easiest place to refer to this mini-list is in the calendar. Yes, I know we're getting back to to-do lists and softening those "hard edges", but when you've got a number of items you SHOULD be getting through quickly it often just makes sense.

When your work is less driven these points are not as important; you have more time to check and decide what to do as you go along.

I started this thread because I was experiencing a conflict between wishing to avoid watering down GTD and making it work perfectly in my own workflow. Now, a few weeks and experiments later I've made my mind up.

May I suggest a new icon for certain postings to this forum? A little red face with two horns: "Heretical".