Question on Projects, Next Actions and Sub-Projects&qu

[Teflon]

The "!Today" NA list is essentially the same as putting a non-timed daily note on your calendar as David Allen suggests. Those daily notes are essentially, or exactly, NAs that you have committed to doing today. However, if the NA list makes it easier to move them or do them then that seems like a perfectly acceptable alternative to the pure GTD approach of using the calendar.

 

[Anonymous]

Intuition

Question: What exactly is Intuition? Is it a thinking thing? A heart thing? Or a gut thing?

Portentous

Portentous: Warning of disaster on the horizon......

 

[Rainer Burmeister]

Re: Intuition

Question: What exactly is Intuition? Is it a thinking thing? A heart thing? Or a gut thing?

It's a "nerve thing" that resides somewhere at "the doors of perception".

In a dictionary I read:

intuition

1.) direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension.
2.) a fact, truth, etc., perceived in this way.
3.) a keen and quick insight.
4.) the quality or ability of having such direct perception or quick insight.
5.) Philos. :
5. a.) an immediate cognition of an object not inferred or determined by a previous cognition of the same object.
5. b.) any object or truth so discerned.
5. c.) pure, untaught, noninferential knowledge.
6.) Ling. : the ability of the native speaker to make linguistic judgments, as of the grammaticality, ambiguity, equivalence, or nonequivalence of sentences, deriving from the speaker's native-language competence.

Hope this helps.

Rainer

 

[Rainer Burmeister]

Re: @Today

… the idea of proactively deciding if there are any vital NAs that should/must get done before any others works for me. I make sure that my @!Today is not extensive and comprised of mainly NAs from my important projects.

The "!Today" NA list is essentially the same as putting a non-timed daily note on your calendar as David Allen suggests. Those daily notes are essentially, or exactly, NAs that you have committed to doing today. However, if the NA list makes it easier to move them or do them then that seems like a perfectly acceptable alternative to the pure GTD approach of using the calendar.

Teflon and Guest,

Thank you! Very well thought out! This could be used for having daily commitment-lists (based on a time-budget) within the GTD-system without cluttering the individual's calendar.

Rainer

 

[Anonymous]

Intuition

Wow. Thanks. So if one asks oneself, "what is the best use of my time right now?" would that be considered "a reasoning process?"
Sort of a conundrum.

 

[Tspall]

I use the list in a similar way. Instead of having daily lists that end up being moved to the next day due to unforseen circumstances, I think of it as a weekly list that I want to try to accomplish by the end of the week. It gives me enough flexibility to get these tasks done without letting it get too far ahead of me. The deadline for most of the tasks is my Weekly Review.

 

[Richard Love]

I use two indispensible tools:

Next Actionsocket Informant for the PPC - http://www.pocketinformant.com/p_pocketinformant.php
Projects:Mind Manager - http://www.mindjet.com/us

Richard

 

[webagogue]

I use two indispensible tools:

Next Actionsocket Informant for the PPC - http://www.pocketinformant.com/p_pocketinformant.php
Projects:Mind Manager - http://www.mindjet.com/us

Richard

I would just like to add that there is an equally capable alternative to PI - Agenda Fusion (www.developerone.com). I find the default implementation of Agenda Fusion to be much cleaner than PI.

I live in the tasks screen. In Pocket Informant, when colapsing and expanding task groups there is a short pause. In Agenda Fusion, the colapsing and expanding is immediate. The pause is very short, but enough to annoy me.

 

[Anonymous]

Okay Okay. I'm sold on the fact that GTD will free my mind on what all I have to do. Projects and Tasks. And I'm sold that GTD will get me off center on projects by focusing on the Next Action.
But something is bugging me. And that bug is WHEN? My clients want to know WHEN! So here is my question: Would I get de-bugged if I attempted to Schedule (block out time on the calendar) various Contexts. And perhaps various Projects? Example: WHEN am I going to BE @Computer? I could go (theoretically) a whole week without being @Computer. Or @Office.
So would I be breaking the GTD rules if I blocked out, say, Wed mornings for @computer? I could still use Intuition to decide which @computer NAs to do.
Overworked CPA

 

[beyerst]

I use the NA-lists in 2 ways.

Firstly I use it to make use of the small free blocks of time that come up during the day: Additional 15 or 30 minutes because a meeting ended early, ... . I look at the context I am in and pick a topic. (Or I go for a coffee ;-) ) Usually, I will only tackle only 1 or 2 actions for a certain project, but possible more actions for that specific context.

Secondly, the NA-lists are bookmarks for my projects: they tell me what to do as very next action to get me started on the project. In this case, I will do a lot work possibly in different contexts but all for 1 project.

As an example: I might have an @Phone list with a topic: Call Christa re: budget 2005 - 161
(161 is my project number; the project can be something like "Budget 2005 is approved").
I blocked time for this project on Thursday, because I need to hand in a proposal on Friday. When I start on Thursday, I will look for the next action for this project (hence the number at the end of the NA), I will pick up the phone and call Christa. Based on the outcome of the call, I will rework my original proposal, contact someone else for more info, ... . (Second case)
If I would have some spare time on Wednesday and would happen to be near a phone, I might very well make the call and create a new next action based on the result of the phone call. (first case).

Conclusion: there is nothing wrong with blocking certain time for a project.

br,
tb

 

[Rainer Burmeister]

Workload Scheduling

Would I get de-bugged if I attempted to Schedule (block out time on the calendar) various Contexts. And perhaps various Projects?

Yes, in my experience, yes.

So would I be breaking the GTD rules if I blocked out, say, Wed mornings for @computer?

No, GTD has no rigid rules for that kind of situations. You can easily make up your own rules for this case.

Rainer

 

[Jason Womack]

Free blocks of time...

Conclusion: there is nothing wrong with blocking certain time for a project.

Creating blocks of time...ahh, what a luxury in the "information society!"

Ok, honestly, raise your hand if you're at all like me...

A quick trip to the Internet, to find out what movies are playing this weekend turns into an hour of surfing the latest articles or research...or...



I've got tricks I use to do exactly this...set a timer, cook dinner in the oven, go to the coffee shop and have "one" drink. Anything to set myself down and focus. Sometimes I get a quarter of an hour, every now and then (especially when I'm writing articles) I need more, like three hours plus, to get in, get going, and get done.

I agree...create your blocks of time!

 

[jmarkey]

I agree that it is certainly useful to create blocks of time for particular contexts or projects. I've developed certain habits that tie in to particular blocks of time (e.g., e-mail first thing in the morning, calls second thing, filing at the end of the work day and reading for pleasure before sleeping)(oh yeah, and weekly review on Friday afternoon - almost forgot). I also schedule projects that require larger blocks of time, but generally only if I've committed to doing them on a particular day. If I have a brief that I know is going to take ten hours to write, it's not going to get done in five minute spurts between other next actions. I have to schedule a block of time to work on it (not necessarily ten hours all in one sitting, but you get the idea).

 

[djsugg]

Tonight I came across a reference to an interesting article by Mark Forster, "How to Get any Project Up and Running". For projects that we know we should do, but never seem to get to, he advocates:

1) Take some action
2) First Thing
3) Every Day

To me this is another of the "tricks" that we can use in conjunction with our list's of NA's, which will tell us the "some action" we need to take.

The full article is available online at:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/coaching/message/134

 

[Richard Love]

I make extensive use of PI's task view:

I use the categories as my GTD contexts (@eMail, @phone, @mindmanager, etc).

I use the ABC priority field to capture timing (A=Today, B=This week, C=This month, D=Defer)

I assign everything a Medium priority except those "A" items targeted for today that I ABSOLUTELY must get done that day. These I assign a High priority -and make a commitment to myself not not to let them slip.

Using View Manger I have defined a limited number of Views (ToDo, WaitingFor, MindManager) that let me focus as I desire. By excluding the MindManager context from my ToDo view I keep hard edges around my "Doing" mode vs my "Brainstorming/Planning" modes. By filtering my ToDo on my high priority, "A" items I keep focus on those critical next actions.

I've worked these tools for a while and for me this is a system that has let me realize the potential of the GTD approach in that I actually get things done, without stress and in a very efficient manner.

A tweak I recently discovered is that the use of MindJet MindManager (@mindmanager) provides the perfect context to define and then do those brainstorming/planning/focus next actions. The process loops back on itself in that MindManager becomes the repository for project stuff and is a great place to develop Next Actions which make their way into PI.

 

[joeycan]

Longstreet

I would be interested in learning about your Outlook 2003 setup for TOYL and GTD.

 

[dsmccormick]

He basically describes creating an @Today category for his tasks that is applied during a daily review of his projects list.

With this tweak, you could impose a sort of priority to the tasks from the projects you know you need to work on that day.

Hyatt has some great posts, especially the one on the "90-day Challenge": http://michaelhyatt.blogs.com/workingsmart/2005/01/goalsetting_the.html

Just as a point of information, the Category he creates is !Today. The exclamation point (not the "@") makes it sort to the top of the Catagory list in Outlook, Palm, etc., above the @ GTD categories, so that it is top-of-list and top-of-mind.

Cheers, David.

 

[remyc88]

I have a question about this as well. I am a software engineer. We have our department heads turn in technology requests forms with any changes, bug reports and enhancement requests. These get put on a spreadsheet (along with an estimate of hours to complete the request) and they are reviewed by our technology steering committee on a weekly basis. The committee decides what tasks fit the current priorities of the company. They then assign a list of "tasks" based upon the priorities for the company and the list of outstanding requests. These "tasks" must be completed by the following week's meeting. These "tasks" are generally projects (based upon the definition that a project is anything requiring more than one next action to complete it) while some of them are actually just next actions.

If I get a list like this:

(1) Possibility of e-mailing gift certificates.

(2) Group Ordering graphics and changes

(3) There needs to be a cash drawer check before the credit card authorization button is active

...

(17) Great Plains Installation

Now, items 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 are all single step items (though they may be tied to a specific project) so they are Next Actions.

Items 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 all require multiple actions to complete.

My problem in figuring out how to manage these has more to do with the fact that as a whole they are a "project" because they belong to "tasks that must be completed by the next Tech Steering Committee meeting" but at the same time, they belong to their own projects. I am concerned that they will fall through the cracks and not get done.

How should I be handling this situation?

Thanks!

Mike

I recommend using a bug/issue tracker.

Something like Bugzilla or FogBugz will really help you out.

When my company installed one (we used bugzilla because it was free), it was a godsend. Of course the hard part is getting people to use a bug/issue tracker instead of just emailing you to fix a problem. Luckily this initiative was supported by upper management so it wasn't that hard.