What triggers you to act on your action items?

[Conejo23]

Cameron.....i’m actually going to start a new thread talking about how one defines a project as active vs on hold or in some day status. But for me, yeah, on a typical day I'm getting maybe a 30 minute window in the morning, then a 20 minute window after lunch, and then another 30 minute window late afternoon, then whatever I want to do when I get home. So for me it’s important that when I get those windows I have it laid out in front of me what I want/need to get done. If I was in one of my prior jobs where I was constantly doing nothing but working on my projects, then it would be different.

But for me, every time I get one of these windows, to have to re-review my task list to pluck out what I can act on at that point? Just wasn’t working. At all.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

Conejo23, I think what you are doing is not so much attaching deadlines to next actions, but scheduling them. You are shaping your hard landscape proactively.

You already pointed at this by distinguishing your practice from attaching milestone's due dates to NAs. The point is: there is a difference between "due by" and "due on".

 

[Conejo23]

CPU....i think that’s a fair assessment, although I'd say that these kinds of items aren’t what I'd call ‘hard landscape’ unless I'm misunderstanding that term. Some of the things I say are due on a given date really ARE due that date and those are indeed hard landscape, and I supplement the date with a flag on those items. But most of them are simply scheduled, as you suggest. For me it’s a process of matching up and planning out when I'll have time available to work on actions with what actions I want to get done in those slots.

And what I've found is it takes me less energy and I make better choices more in line with my priorities when I make that decision in my weekly review as opposed to daily. Sunday night I can say “OK, I need to reconcile the business checking account during my window of time Wednesday afternoon”, a job I do not enjoy. If I waited until Wednesday afternoon and looked at my contexts, I would likely pick something else that was less mentally demanding.

So far, it’s working. Tomorrow may be a different story.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

I make better choices more in line with my priorities when I make that decision in my weekly review

Some on this forum mentioned 'mental contexts in past discussions about context-lists. Seems to be that the Weekly Review can be a mental context, a mental state, too. Makes some sense to me at least.

 

[Conejo23]

indeed. I think that’s one of the powerful things about the weekly review and why so far I like doing it on Sunday afternoon or evening. I can be a little more rational and dispassionate about my workload. When I'm in the middle of a day and if I just had a difficult client, or a long phone call or the printer is being a pain in the butt, it’s easy to “lose state”, as Tony Robbins would say, and then it’s easy for me to make less than optimal choices about what to do with my time. But by planning it earlier in the week I find I'm more grounded. Kind of an “OK Rick, shake it off and get to work, this needs to get done now” type of thing.

And I was just listening to a DA podcast, I think it was on best practices for organizing and their chief tech guy was saying he has a context for when he’s just mentally burnt and at really low energy, and into that he’ll put things he can do without a lot of thought. I thought that was a cool idea.

The more I read on and listen to GTD information, and the more I practice it, the more I'm struck by how it’s really not a system as much as a mindset, and that it can be flexibly implemented in a lot of ways to fit a lot of different workflows.

 

[Rob78]

The point is: there is a difference between "due by" and "due on".

Perhaps the full set is: "due by" (deadline), "must do on" (hard date but not time constraint) and "do on" (scheduling).

Often it's software tools that drive the confusion (e.g. I use RTM which has only "due date").

rob

 

[Conejo23]

those are good points.

My software (OmniFocus) has start date and due date (along with completion date, presumably for history but I don’t use it). For me there is no difference (in the context of an action) between due by and must due on. They gotta get done that day, so in my system those are represented by a due date and a flag. Those that are simply scheduled for that day but could move out if circumstances dictate are represented by a due date and no flag.

The reason for me that I don’t differentiate between the first two is that I perceive the main difference between the two (due by and must due on). The first implies that it might be something I started earlier than that day and it needs to be finished by the specified date. I don’t give myself any actions that take more than a day to complete. In fact, I try not to give myself any actions that take more than a few hours to complete at the most. For me, a multi-day action is probably a project, not an action, and I'll break down the actions accordingly, in smaller chunks I can actually do in the time that I have.

 

[TomW]

CPU....i think that’s a fair assessment, although I'd say that these kinds of items aren’t what I'd call ‘hard landscape’ unless I'm misunderstanding that term. Some of the things I say are due on a given date really ARE due that date and those are indeed hard landscape, and I supplement the date with a flag on those items. But most of them are simply scheduled, as you suggest. For me it’s a process of matching up and planning out when I'll have time available to work on actions with what actions I want to get done in those slots.

And what I've found is it takes me less energy and I make better choices more in line with my priorities when I make that decision in my weekly review as opposed to daily. Sunday night I can say “OK, I need to reconcile the business checking account during my window of time Wednesday afternoon”, a job I do not enjoy. If I waited until Wednesday afternoon and looked at my contexts, I would likely pick something else that was less mentally demanding.

So far, it’s working. Tomorrow may be a different story.

This has been a really fruitful discussion to me -- thanks.

I have a very, very similar work environment and had hit on nearly the same solution... only the opposite!

I put due dates only on NAs that are truly due that date. I flag NAs that are important to me, high priority, or urgent. My day begins with first checking the hard landscape on the calendar, then next checking the Due Date view which lists NAs with due dates, followed by NAs with a flag, and then all the rest. I then spend a couple of minutes choosing flagged NAs that I plan to do that day (i.e. schedule for that day as in your non-hard due dates.) It's essentially the same system but I do not put dates on NAs that don't have real due dates. I used to do it your way but found I spent too much energy recognizing/sorting what was really due and not due today. I realized that I was giving myself permission to ignore due dates for some NAs and not for others, and that seemed not an optimum path to follow, as NAs with overdue dates piled up.

 

[Conejo23]

Tom, glad this has helped you. It’s certainly helped clarify my own thinking, for better or worse. I’m actually having a free consult call this afternoon with one of the coaches to see if personal coaching is the right move for me, already forwarded her this thread and suggested that if she read it prior to our call it would give insights into where I'm at in the process. Will come back and post if I get new insights.

I realize my system wouldn’t work for a lot of people, maybe for most people. For me, I realized that I have two different modes of work. There are times when I'm just in the heat of it and I'm grinding out the stuff that I know I NEED to get done, and in that mode I just don’t have the time to go back and review context lists and re review my available NAs. When I tried doing that I just spun out, wasted energy and my productivity was terrible.

So each week during my review when I ‘schedule’ my workflow, when I get to that date I know what my plan is, and the way I represent tasks visually tells me whether it’s something I HAVE to get done that day or something I'd LIKE to get done that day. One thing I think is key, which is something I heard David say on a podcast (and I mentioned above) is that I give myself full permission to reschedule tasks that can be rescheduled if that needs to happen. I don’t view the due date as a fire alarm, but I view my “due today” list as almost a context to itself. And re the mechanics of it, rescheduling a task is super easy. I can reschedule 5 tasks in about 10-15 seconds, so it’s just not a big deal.

Then my other mode of work is when I'm not grinding in the heat of the workday and I can step back and say “OK, I've got some discretionary time here to advance some of my projects, let’s review my contexts and pick out what feels like it’s what should move forward right now.”

I know it’s kind of a schizoid approach, but my work environment is a little schizoid, so there you have it.

 

[Oogiem]

Sounds Familiar

I know it’s kind of a schizoid approach, but my work environment is a little schizoid, so there you have it.

Sounds like lambing ;-)

During lambing all bets are off, the priority is keeping sheepies and lambies alive. All else, including food for the humans pales into insignificance. But once nighttime hits I try to do as much on contexts as my energy allows. I know that the mad crush will all start again at dawn the next day. During lambing we are out with the sheep from first light until after dark.

I don't use due dates but instead work to pre-load a lot of task and jobs.

So I have food prepared we can microwave, alert the neighbors that the lambalanch is imminent (the same neighbors who often arrive unannounced with wine, coffee, bread, or food or just a spare set of hands just when we really need it) and set all sorts of things onto automatic reply "I'm lambing, call back in June" type messages. I also set up a bunch of helper things, the checklist for dystocia triage printed out in large type so I can read it in the field w/o my glasses, (which often get slimed by the end of the day) the lamb bag contents so I could restock after each trip out to the ewes w/o thinking, the picture of how to tie a baling twine prolapse harness in my bag (only needed it once but I really needed it then), the proper place to euthanize a sheep and notes on how to do a field emergency c-section plus tools and instruments needed are also now in my bag for use if needed. Whatever I think I might need for any emergency was prepared in advance because during the crisis I can't stop to think I have to just do or follow a checklist.

I also found last year that the more I did in weekly review (actually pre-lambing review) to really chunk things down to the tiniest next action possible really helped. I needed to have no thought or brain capacity required to do anything on any action list or it never got done until the lull between lambing flights.

I went into lambalanch with a huge next actions list (I'd guess maybe 50-60 actions per context) but the actual actions were very small easy to do things, much more granular than my normal next actions lists. I came out of lambing with nothing critical left undone and nothing dropped, a first for me.