Shortly after praying for wisdom for the dealing with the incompletes and disorganized piles on hold at my desk, I had an interesting thought.
There seems to be a psychological place where I get to when I have LOTS of things on my next actions/ contexts lists that I am committed to doing, but that I cannot do because I am mired down into lots of details on 1-2 major projects. This is frustrating, since I have MANY things to do that do not fall into the things I get credit for at work (those projects), any many things at home that I am INTERESTED in or just curious about, but are not mission-critical for getting through the business of house-kids-bills etc. These things are not clearly on my front burner, but they are not Maybe's. They are things that are at an intermediate priority. They make me feel like I am accomplishing something psychologically, but they are really a distraction from my most important mission-critical tasks.
I have heard of people making a list for urgents at work, that is, picking the most importants of their next actions to get those done. That is one way, but I feel like the GTD stuff has been sold to me such that the generation of extra lists is not great. I believe that. Yet, I see its importance when it takes an hour to scroll through all your lists before you can decide on the very next action.
One possibility is to have another time and priority position, of things that I do not have to scroll through, but that are not maybe’s. Making progress on them will probably have a very positive impact my on life/family/organization/psyche/achievement/fulfillment, but I cannot do them now with the mission-critical projects on my front burner that are of primary importance or are urgent.
So how about another list called “Hold” or “On hold.” The airport analogy are those things “in the hangar” or in line ready for takeoff that I cannot launch right now. The someday/maybe does not fall into this for me, since that to me are things that I am only considering.
I will try this and see what happens.
There seems to be a psychological place where I get to when I have LOTS of things on my next actions/ contexts lists that I am committed to doing, but that I cannot do because I am mired down into lots of details on 1-2 major projects. This is frustrating, since I have MANY things to do that do not fall into the things I get credit for at work (those projects), any many things at home that I am INTERESTED in or just curious about, but are not mission-critical for getting through the business of house-kids-bills etc. These things are not clearly on my front burner, but they are not Maybe's. They are things that are at an intermediate priority. They make me feel like I am accomplishing something psychologically, but they are really a distraction from my most important mission-critical tasks.
I have heard of people making a list for urgents at work, that is, picking the most importants of their next actions to get those done. That is one way, but I feel like the GTD stuff has been sold to me such that the generation of extra lists is not great. I believe that. Yet, I see its importance when it takes an hour to scroll through all your lists before you can decide on the very next action.
One possibility is to have another time and priority position, of things that I do not have to scroll through, but that are not maybe’s. Making progress on them will probably have a very positive impact my on life/family/organization/psyche/achievement/fulfillment, but I cannot do them now with the mission-critical projects on my front burner that are of primary importance or are urgent.
So how about another list called “Hold” or “On hold.” The airport analogy are those things “in the hangar” or in line ready for takeoff that I cannot launch right now. The someday/maybe does not fall into this for me, since that to me are things that I am only considering.
I will try this and see what happens.