Is Waiting For proactive category?

[Borisoff]

"Waiting For" makes most sense in the context of performing a weekly review (or somewhat regular review) where you take a look at everything you have, check off what you've done, and decide what to do next. It is during this time that you would look at your WF list and decide if you needed to get any of that stuff taken care of in the span of time before your next Weekly Review. Anything that had to happen between this and the next review should be taken off your WF list and given a context like @Phone, etc. If it was critical that it happen by a certain date then you might make an all day activity on your calendar to contact that person. Need it by a certain time? Make an appointment to contact that person at or by that time. But, anything that could wait for you to look at in the next weekly review could be left on your WF list

In my world of Sales the customer loves to get everything in a timely manner and even if I'm waiting for some input from him he Loves to get reminders (some kind of attention) sooner then my Weekly Reviews periods It means no way for me to use Waiting For?

 

[webagogue]

http://www.davidco.com/forum/images/icons/icon7.gif

In my world of Sales the customer loves to get everything in a timely manner and even if I'm waiting for some input from him he Loves to get reminders (some kind of attention) sooner then my Weekly Reviews periods It means no way for me to use Waiting For?

The purpose of your contact during the week has nothing to do with the particular item for which you are waiting. As you state, it is because your customer likes to get attention. In this case, yes, @WF is the wrong context.

If you use @WF like you are saying then you are not allowing yourself any breathing room for anything. If you have a tickler file, do you go though all of the days and months once or twice a week because there is something in the future that you might want to act on? Not likely. And if you did, we'd probably tell you to seek some kind of professional help for OCD .

An @Follow Up category makes more sense for your scenario (or whatever you want to call it).

 

[Borisoff]

Webagogue, I think your way of using WF is quite good. I even copied your messages to my desktop for future reading If I start using WF I will use it like you suggested and'd check it at Weekly Review.

 

[severance1970]

It seems that @Waiting for category is more reactive. Maybe it's more acurate to put all the @Waiting for into @Call category. I.e. I'm waiting for a reply from customer on my proposal. I can put it in @Waiting for and wait, wait, wait... but I can put it in @Call like "CUSTOMER ABC: remind that I'm waiting for reply". What Alain says about that?

It's proactive in the sense that you're actively monitoring what you're waiting for and making moment-to-moment decisions as to whether you're really still waiting or need to recategorize to your @Calls list. Except for emergencies, there's no reason to keep someone on your @Calls list with whom you just left a voice mail 15 minutes ago.

But there's also no formula to tell you how long is too long to wait. It's really an intuitive choice in most cases. So generally I keep things in @Waiting For, knowing that I'll see them at least one a day in my daily review (and usually more often), and as soon as I feel like enough time has gone by, I either make the call (if it's under 2 minutes) or move it to my @Calls list.

 

[jkgrossi]

If you are using it that way then I think you are missing the point of @WF.

@WF is a stake in the ground - a time out until the next review, most likely. It gets things out of your NA view and allows you to focus on those things over which you have immediate control. Or maybe a better way to say it is that @WF is a way for you to allow yourself to forget about something while someone else takes care of it.

If the person associated with the @WF does get back to you by the date promised, then you have to do nothing. If this person is a slacker and won't get back to you, then yes, you will need to follow up with them. Your @WF then becomes an NA in the @Phone or @Email (or something else appropriate) context list and loses the @WF label.

If you subscribe to the idea of "the way anyone wants to" then what is the point of discussion on this board, or heck, even reading David's book? I'm not trying to get into a right/wrong argument, but I am suggesting that some ways of using these tools are more effective than others.

I never suggested that you could not or should not "follow up" on an @WF.. quite the opposite, in fact. But if you are using @WF and @Follow Up interchangably, then, again, I think you are missing the point of @WF.

That's exactly the way that I've been using the @WF category. My @WF's that are still outstanding at the time of my weekly review are followed up on (at this point, they turn back into NA's for me).

The Weekly Review is the catch-all... if you don't do the Weekly Review, then you're missing out on about 3/4 of the benefit of this entire program, IMHO.