Using GTD for a predominantly time-sensitive workload

D

ds934238

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Hi,

I've been trying to use GTD on and off for years, but one thing keeps failing me.

It doesn't seem to have sufficient consideration for time-sensitive tasks, including sequences of dependent tasks. For example, if I have a customer meeting on Thursday, then I'll need to have a briefing call on Tuesday, write some materials on Wednesday, which will include searching our internet for slide decks to use, phoning a few people for information, researching the customer, etc.

All those last items are subtasks with contexts, which fit GTD. However, if I try and fit them into an order and time/date assignment to make everything happen in time, it feels that I'm moving away from a GTD methodology to more straight project planning. As this happens, my day-by-day tasks build up as I plan my week, until I look at all the tasks and realise they're completely impossible.

By this process, I go from a weekly GTD planning stage, to complete lack of trust in the tool (I use MLO) to manage my tasks so that all are delivered in time and as efficiently as possible. Right now I band-aid this by setting weekly goals to focus on a subset of tasks to ensure i get those done, but I'm effectively moving back to a manual process.

Surely everyone has time-sensitive tasks? So how does GTD work for you?

Thanks!

Darren
 
Hi Darren,

This is a fantastic question, and quite honestly something I've struggled with to find a satisfactory answer to. But let me have a go at it...

I think the most important thing here is the customer meeting on the calendar. That's your external event that triggers all these other tasks. In other words, tasks usually aren't just "time-sensitive" without regard to some other thing happening in the world, whether that's a deadline, meeting, end of the quarter, etc. Other external triggers could be a list of goals you check once a month, or any other document that makes something seem more or less important in the immediate future.

So long as you set up these external points that imbue your tasks with importance, time-sensitivity, urgency, priority, or what-have-you, I don't think there's anything wrong with plucking those tasks out of your list-manager or otherwise flagging them for your attention. I think that could include putting these tasks on your calendar, or just making a "Tuesday" list for yourself with everything you want to accomplish that day.

Also, there is no inherent tension between project planning and the GTD methodology. If your tasks require more robust project planning to deal with them appropriately, then that's what you need to do. That planning all fits into project support material, and you can plant any next actions you think of on your calendar, NA lists, or any ad-hoc lists you wish to create.
 
ds934238 said:
Surely everyone has time-sensitive tasks? So how does GTD work for you?
Click to expand...
I have lots of time sensitive and recurring tasks. I make liberal use of start dates, due dates and repeat intervals in my GTD tool, Omnifocus.

Here is an example, we have just finished lambing our first batch of ewes. I have time critical things to do with the new lambs based on the earliest and latest birthdates for each batch of lambs. In my Omnifocus system I have a recurring project that is in the folder "Recurring Projects Apr-Jun" called Lamb Vaccinations. There are a number of planned actions and the project is set to sequential so only a single action shows up in my OF lists at any given time. The project has a start date of 5/1 and reoccurs yearly. That's because we generally have lambs starting the last week in April. I need the first batch to be out before I can do the first task, which is Set dates for vaccinating early lambs. The first shot needs to be when the youngest lambs are at least 8 weeks old and the oldest lambs are no more than 12 weeks old. Our first lambs were born on 24 April and the last ones of the early batch were born on 1 May. So the youngest will be 8 weeks on 26 June and the oldest 12 weeks on 17 July. So I set my start date for the first vaccine to be 26 June with a due date of 17 July. Sometime in that timeframe we'll do it, depending on weather and other workload (that's also when we are getting hay in). As soon as their first shot is in then the second needs to be between 3 and 4 weeks later. So I'll set the exact start and due dates for the second shot as part of checking off the first one. All the planning has been done once, I don't have to re-do that until we change vaccines with a different schedule. That continues for each batch of lambs (we have 3 separate batches) The dates may overlap and if they do I'll combine the tasks but I won't know if they overlap until the lambs are out.

I'd probably set due dates for your stuff and it also sound sliek you need ot make use of both parallel and sequential tasks within projects.

Anyway might play with that idea and see how it goes.
 
ds934238 said:
Hi,
(GTD) doesn't seem to have sufficient consideration for time-sensitive tasks, including sequences of dependent tasks. For example, if I have a customer meeting on Thursday, then I'll need to have a briefing call on Tuesday, write some materials on Wednesday, which will include searching our internet for slide decks to use, phoning a few people for information, researching the customer, etc.

All those last items are subtasks with contexts, which fit GTD. However, if I try and fit them into an order and time/date assignment to make everything happen in time, it feels that I'm moving away from a GTD methodology to more straight project planning. As this happens, my day-by-day tasks build up as I plan my week, until I look at all the tasks and realise they're completely impossible.

By this process, I go from a weekly GTD planning stage, to complete lack of trust in the tool (I use MLO) to manage my tasks so that all are delivered in time and as efficiently as possible. Right now I band-aid this by setting weekly goals to focus on a subset of tasks to ensure i get those done, but I'm effectively moving back to a manual process.

Surely everyone has time-sensitive tasks? So how does GTD work for you?
Click to expand...

Let me begin with a suggestion for non-scheduled deadline-driven work. If there is a an obvious short sequence of dependent next actions, try something like this "Jot ideas for XYZ presentation" and put the due date on the item. You may or may not want to add some of the next steps in the note field. It might be that after performing this next action, you feel that the next action is "Jot more ideas for XYZ presentation"; just make the change. On the other hand, the next action might be "Expand on ideas for XYZ presentation" or "Organize ideas for XYZ presentation" (You should see the progression of the natural planning model at work here.) You may have independent next actions for the same project, such as "Call Sue for info on ABC for XYZ presentation." Worry as little about scheduling and sequencing as you can. Concentrate on doing and an awareness of deadlines. Try it and see what you think. If you do the same sort of things over and over, you might consider a checklist for recurring types of projects.

You mention "weekly GTD planning" and "day-to-day tasks." GTD is compatible with careful planning when needed, but it's not about planning. Rather, it's about planning as little as you can get away with and making good decisions in the moment. It's possible that you are just trying to do more in a day than you actually can; you might need to renegotiate your agreements. It's also possible that your tool (MLO) is not supporting your practice of good GTD habits. In any case, it might be a good idea to review some of the core GTD ideas and best practices. One idea I really like is that your next action lists are menus, and you don't have to eat everything on the menu.
 
ds934238 said:
As this happens, my day-by-day tasks build up as I plan my week, until I look at all the tasks and realise they're completely impossible.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering about the details of how this impossible situation happens.

- Is your workload inherently impossible, and GTD is just revealing that?
- Do you make too many customer apppointments because you don't have enough visibility into your workload to know when to stop?
- Do you do too many kinda-optional tasks because you don't have enough visibility into your workload to know that you should be doing customer appointment prep instead?

One possibility could be to create some new types of project support material. You could create a "customer support grid", for example. For most meetings, you assume that the workload will follow the pattern you described--consult, then two days later research, then two days later meet. So as meetings come in, you fill in the grid:

Mon 5/16------Tue 5/17------Wed 5/18------Thu 5/19------Fri 5/20
Consult Jones---------------Prep Jones------------------Meet Jones
Prep Smith------------------Meet Smith-----------------------------
Meet Wilson--------------------------------------------------------
--------------Consult Andrews-------------Prep Andrews-------------

Looking at this grid, you can see that you have three customer meeting tasks on Monday, one on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, and so on. If Mr. Kent asks you for a Friday meeting, you pull out the grid (either in electronic or paper form) and see that that would involve adding a fourth task on Monday, so you suggest that you meet on Monday the 23rd instead. Or you could conclude that since Tuesday and Thursday are light days, you'll just add a non-standard line:

Mon 5/16------Tue 5/17------Wed 5/18------Thu 5/19------Fri 5/20
Consult Jones---------------Prep Jones------------------Meet Jones-
Prep Smith------------------Meet Smith-----------------------------
Meet Wilson--------------------------------------------------------
--------------Consult Andrews-------------Prep Andrews-------------
--------------Consult Kent----------------Prep Kent-----Meet Kent--

Why not just put all of this in the calendar or enter them as tasks with ticklers? Mostly because that eliminates the visibility that you get with the grid--you see the load for the day or the week at a glance.

How does this plug into GTD? I'd suggest that in GTD, you have a daily repeating task, "Complete customer support grid work." Maybe you have a checklist for that repeating task, one that tells you to identify and complete last-minute work first (so, on Thursday you'd do Kent before Andrews), and provides other guidance. Or maybe that's unnecessary.
 
ds934238, I do not have any particularly sophisticated system for this, but it seems to work.

In my daily morning review I simply "feel" whether this will be a very hectic day or a day with plenty of room for random actions. If it is a hectic day I gear up for a high cruise speed and I also "put up my blinkers" - avoid new ideas, new discussions etc, avoid economizing too much with making the most use of each context etc. I stay more acutely focused on what has been scheduled (promised) and what I have selected to be important to do today. I usually flag all these as focus items on my list.

As for projects with subsequent tasks that will need to be done one after the other, I do not do much at all to manage all these individual tasks. I just flag the whole project as a focus item and keep working on it until I know I am in the clear.
 
I really like Gardener's way of visualizing an activity set for each new customer/client and seeing the time required to get from start to finish of each "project."

But I'm with Folke and mcogilvie in that I don't spend time entering each step in the activity set as a separate task -- just the next action, my jumping off point. I have internalized my activity set and know about how long it takes to complete it, so I don't promise something in less time than it truly takes to deliver. (I do have my activity set lists as reference items in Evernote in case I need to refer to them at any point.)

The other thing I do is to make an appointment with myself (block out time on my calendar) to work on a specific project that has a hard deadline. This helps me stay on track and not over-commit.
 
I want to clarify that I do plan. David Allen has said many times that the value of planning lies in how it changes your current reality. Many times I plan on paper a bit, perhaps talk to some people, plan a bit more, then enter some calendar actions, projects, next actions and reference material. Then I usually throw away the "plans", which are just a rough draft of where things are headed. If I need to refocus later, I want to refocus based on my current reality then. This was hard for me to learn, because I naturally wanted to save those "plans" for "reference."

A happy case in point: we received a text late last night from our son that our daughter in law's water had broke, and they were on there way to the hospital with their two-year-old daughter in tow. We had made plans to care for our granddaughter based on a due date a week from now, but now there was a new reality. After some rapid informal planning, everything is under control, and little Naomi is beautiful in the way that newborns are.
 
mcogilvie said:
After some rapid informal planning, everything is under control, and little Naomi is beautiful in the way that newborns are.
Click to expand...

Congratulations! And that's the power of GTD: you're always ready for unexpected!
 
mcogilvie said:
We had made plans to care for our granddaughter based on a due date a week from now, but now there was a new reality. After some rapid informal planning, everything is under control, and little Naomi is beautiful in the way that newborns are.
Click to expand...

Congratulations!
 
I work in marketing and graphic design, so most of my tasks have a deadline of some sort. If it's a task with multiple steps to completion (or a project) and it's due fairly soon, I plan them all out and stick them on the calendar. Every day I work from calendar to list, because if it's on my calendar it must get done that day. Once my calendar is free of tasks, I often look to tomorrow and start work on those. If they can wait, I go to my lists and work on undated tasks.

If it spans a long time (say, you have to get initial ideas and sketches to a client in three weeks), I do all of the same steps above but tend to stick tasks on multiple days, thus spreading the workload over the entire time between now and the due date. That way I know I should work on and be thinking about it, but it doesn't have to get done THAT SPECIFIC DAY OR ELSE. So the deadline on my calendar might say "Send ideas and sketches to client" but the entire week before might have a running event titled "Compile sketches and ideas for client" and the week before that "Finalize best sketches and ideas for client" and the week before that "Sketch ideas for client". If it's due in 3 days each of those steps would be assigned on a day (and honestly, probably with specific times so my coworkers leave me alone :) ). It all depends on the timeframe and amount of work.

I do highly suggest planning the bare bones of the project or task, however. Sure, next steps do change and little ones pop in here and there, but you NEED that structure and basic outline or you run the risk of getting close to deadline and having too much work left. You need to be able to see the progress you've made and how much you roughly have left.
 
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