Should 'Project list' be

assdfd513213

Registered
Now I have Project list looks like this

>Project 1
- Action1
- Action2
- Action3
>Project 2
- Action1
- Action2
- Action3

I can fold and unfold Actions in project
Should I maintain Project list as only pure Project like below?
>Project 1
>Project 2
>project 3
..

It's hard to landscape fast what project I have but I can see what Project I have.
Is it ok maintain my project like above one(unfolded one)?
 

cfoley

Registered
My project list is more like your second example but whatever works best for you is fine.

I'm not really sure what your first example is getting at. Let me try to explain what I mean first by explaining how I think about GTD.

  • Project: A change in the world you commit to making (requires two or more actions).

  • Action: A step in completing a project, granular enough to do.

  • Next Action: The very next action to move a project forward, a bookmark in your progress. By definition, each project only has one next action.

  • Project Plan: A guide to help you complete a project. Most projects don't need one. The natural planning model helps create project plans.

  • Context: A grouping of next actions to guide choosing in the moment.

So, with these definitions in mind, I can't tell whether the actions in your first example are 'actions' or 'next actions'. If they are actions then I suggest that your first example might be describing project plans rather than being a project list. If so, You might find that this style of plan is not suitable for all projects.

If those actions are 'next actions' then I would ask why projects have more than one, and suggest that you might want to try grouping them by context rather than by project.
 

OF user

Registered
Traditionally, the project list is similar to your second example. There is no need to tie actions to projects. Nothing wrong with that however. Of course, some digital solutions do this for you. One of GTDs unique techniques is to work off of your next actions list using contexts (or not if you just have a single list) regardless of what project an action is associated with. It is during the weekly review that you examine all of your projects and their associated next actions, and makes sure you are moving everything forward.
 

Oogiem

Registered
I'm not entirely following what you see but my task management tool keeps projects and actions together. So if I were to convert my system to outlines it would look like your first example. I use a tool that automatically sets the visibility of actions based on the choices I make for that project, either sequential so that only the next action is visible or parallel so that all actions in the project are visible. My default setting is for sequential.

I do not keep a separate project list from what my task manager provides.

In fact in all the years I've been working with GTD I've never had a separate project list that is divorced from my various context lists.

What matters to me is that my tools allow me to either see the projecs (by collapsing the list of actions) or the actions (organized by contexts) but when I am reviewing my menu of possibilities I want to see not just the project name but also any other project support stuff and all the actions I have defined for that project. So I look at the fully expanded view at review.

To me the depiction of a project list as a separate thing from the actions that the project takes only makes sense in a paper based system. On paper you cannot set the viewability easily so it is logivcal to separate the list of prjects from the context lists. But then again, I've never even made it a week using paper before I run screaming to some sort of compute based task manager that supports much more flexibilty. Which is why I've been using Omnifocus as my task manager for over 11 years
 
Top