Combining top-down planning with weekly reviews
I evolved this methodology over a number of years, in part to deal with the issues of overview, balance, and getting something do-able from vague goals. This works for me. Try it – if it works for you, great; if not, try something else.
1. Complete the freebie online “Your Best Year Yet Assessment”. You end up with clarification of values and roles, goals for the next 12 months, top 10 goals (which you can make to correspond with your top 10 roles or areas of responsibility or focus areas, whatever you want to call them), and sub-goals or projects for the next month.
2. I keep these monthly goals separate from Outlook. I use a Circus Ponies Notebook on my Mac, but have previously used a Word doc in outline format. Use whatever you like for these higher level goals.
3. This next step is optional. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don’t have time for it. It is not entirely necessary if you proceed straight to step 4 and consistently do a weekly review that includes a quick review of monthly goals. Ironically, sometimes when things are hot its better to carve out time for it to ensure balance, or at least temporary conscious imbalance.
Anyway, step 3 is :- at the weekly review, create a weekly plan (taking the monthly goals as a template) drilling down sub-goals or projects based on the monthly plan. Again I don’t put this in Outlook. I print it & stick a copy in my 2 page per day Daytimer (pocket size), which I use only as a capture tool & journal of “Magic Moments and Accomplishments” (hey there, RPM/OPA’ers!), for occasional review.
4. Then, as part of the Weekly Review create projects and next actions from either the weekly plan (if you inserted step 3) or from the monthly plan if you did not. These do go into outlook, either through a Windoze PC at Work or via Entourage on the Mac, synced to an old iPaq (used more or less exclusively just for GTD).
5. I have categories set up for each of my personal and professional Areas of Responsibility or Focus Areas (Mind/Body/Spirit/Home-maker/Client work; business development etc) as well as the standard GTD NAs. Each project is categorised under what appears to me at the time to be the most applicable category – some projects benefit more than one area but its usually not a big deal for me to go intuitively with one area – I don’t stress out about whether this should be “there” rather than “here” – for me its enough if its somewhere! Professional Projects are key-coded (e.g. by client reference e.g. SHE/0042) but personal ones are not – its sufficient for me to look at Projects sorted by Category with the tasks collapsed which provides a simple count of the number of projects under the category headings, to see where I might be out of balance and factor that into the next weekly review.
6. Do the Weekly Review weekly, converting the goals into projects and NAs. It’s the best way I’ve found to make the associations between NAs, personal projects & goals, instead of fretting about coding them in some way. I’ve found that if I skip weekly reviews, I stop trusting the system & lose the benefit of the top-down planning from YBYY.
7. Do a Monthly Review, adjusting the annual plan as required, and repeating steps 2-6.
8. Complete the YBYY process again in 12 month’s time (also sometimes helps to do it at 6 months’ in, to check if the goalposts have moved, consciously or subconsciously).
There’s no level higher than a 12 monthly view for me, but that’s simply because I’ve never found it helpful. In part, some of the thinking that is relevant to higher altitudes is done in creating the 12 monthly plan and determining your roles/values.
This methodology has helped give me the overview the OP mentioned, whilst translating goals into projects and NAs. I’m not affiliated to YBYY or Circus Ponies, only a satisfied customer.
HTH.
TTFN.
