What to do with monthly recurring services?

Christiaan

Registered
Hi all,

So I'm quite new to GTD. I've spent two days in the weekend on the capture, clarify and organize step.

I think it's going well with the exception of one type of action, namely my monthly recurring services I have to perform.

Some background. I'm an online marketer. This means that I optimize campaigns of clients each month. Clients pay for let's say 10 hours each month and I have to meet those 10 hours.

Let's say for example that I have five clients with the following profile:
- Client one: 15 hours each month
- Client two: 5 hours each month
- Client three: 20 hours each month
- Client four: 8 hours each month
- Client five: 30 hours each month

At the beginning of the month, it's not clear what action's I will perform during the month. It's a constant workflow of analyzing, processing and optimizing.

Therefore I used to plan these hours in my agenda to make sure I meet the hours that I've sold. This is against the GTD method because it's not a concrete action and has, therefore, no due date.

Does anyone have some advice on how to handle the monthly optimisations within the GTD methodology?

Realy looking forward to your reply. I think this is the missing link for a successful implementation.

Thanks!

Christiaan
 

Gardener

Registered
One part of this could be to design a form that shows you the hours required and hours spent for each client in the month, and to have recurring Next Actions to update that form and evaluate how you're doing, maybe twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday?).

You could design the form to be quickly scannable and always keep it at hand, so that you can instantly see which client is most at risk of being shortchanged, and whose tasks are therefore a higher priority. Each time you finish an action, you glance at the form as guidance for what action to start next.
 

treelike

Registered
Therefore I used to plan these hours in my agenda to make sure I meet the hours that I've sold. This is against the GTD method because it's not a concrete action and has, therefore, no due date.
If people are paying you to work for these certain hours, and they're happy with the results of your work, then what's the problem with just scheduling the hours like you're doing now? In what specific way do you hope that GTD could improve the situation?
 
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