Where do Admin-tasks go in GTD?

[evholten]

Paying bills, sorting tax forms, replying to those letters (again!) ... are those kind of administrative tasks single actions (=do it and get it over with) or project related (=to an overall higher goal to keep order)? Wouldn't it be better to keep "admin support material" in its own filling cabinet(s), at both current / open activity level and final filing level?

Also, do admin tasks have their own task-list or are they at the generic next actions-list?

 

[mcogilvie]

Paying bills, sorting tax forms, replying to those letters (again!) ... are those kind of administrative tasks single actions (=do it and get it over with) or project related (=to an overall higher goal to keep order)? Wouldn't it be better to keep "admin support material" in its own filling cabinet(s), at both current / open activity level and final filing level?

Also, do admin tasks have their own task-list or are they at the generic next actions-list?

You get to structure your life the way you see it:

If you pay bills on the second Sunday of the month every month, and that's an appointment with yourself you will keep, it's an appointment.

If you will do it by the end of the month sometime in your home office, it may be on your @HomeOffice list with a due date. If something is a next action, it goes on a list that will cause you to see it when you want to see it. Generally, this is a context list, like @Home or @Office.

Maybe your life is sufficiently complicated that paying the bills is a monthly project. In GTD projects are not goals like "keeping order"; projects have reasonably clear end-points, which "keeping order" does not.

Perhaps you assign this appointment/next action/project to a "Money" area of focus or to a goal of "Keeping Order." This might be purely a mental association, or explicit in some software program you are using.

Notice that although you have the freedom of treating "pay bills" however you like, the categories are distinct. Furthermore, how you choose to store project support information, e.g. bills, has little to do with the calendars and lists that guide your daily routine.

I hope this helps!

 

[Folke]

I keep them as single actions (often set to auto-repeat), and I keep them in an AoR container (folder) for administrative tasks.

 

[Oogiem]

I tend to have recurring projects like "Handle monthly bill from put into my system set to repeat every month, The reason is there are often more than one step to actually doing the work, get the notice of the bill via e-mail, go on-line to pay it, download a copy of the statement if required for tax purposes etc. I also need to have the steps written down so in case I was incapacitated someone else would be able to do the job.

Same for the yearly filing and tax stuff. It's all written down as a project in my list manager that actually starts in December as I start to gather needed paperwork.

 

[evholten]

Oogiem Are these multiple steps in a project or simply (annoyingly time consuming) sub tasks as part of a single action?

Writting down subtasks is interesting, if you mention filing locations, reference to particular related goals and plans, schemes, you might want to go through, etc. allthought it explain why it takes you 1,5 hour daily ghehe

Folke What's an AoR container? You don't have two cabinets to make a distinction between stuff to do and filing? Am i only one with piles and piles of admin stuff that should have been done ages ago?

mcogilvie I guess i was asking where to physically store admin-stuff in the organizing proces. And where to put the tasks. What you're saying is that besides of where you keep things it's handy to connect parameters to the tasks .. put an appointment in agenda, set it to recur, label a context to it, etc? You emphasis the difference between agenda and tasks with duedates. Thanks for reminding. A goal indeed needs to be smart, so to be able to finish it, but in this case it is a never ending story anyway. So ... it's a recurring appointment? May a task not be put at the calendar? But calendar was for hard landscape, and since admin is not bound to a fixed time it shouldn't be on there .. so that would make them a recurring task. How to be reminded of that indeed depend on the software as well .. and i haven't figured that one out either.

So you all are not using a seperate task list for admin tasks? I currently do, in conjunction with a seperate area for "admin support material" (for stuff to do) and a seperate "admin filing cabinet" (for filing when done).

BTW That is assuming that an area/shelve/cabinet for "project support material" is not devided into sub areas for the various projects, and being a collection of stuff related to all kinds of things to do. That is my interpretation for the physical part. This may work differently in digital dossiers and direct linking to a location in there from the taks lists.

I am becoming a liberian here.

 

[Folke]

What's an AoR container?

I was referring to my app setup - I keep a "permanent project", if you will, for miscellaneous tasks that belong to a particular Area of Responsibility. I have about a dozen AoRs defined (and equally many such AoR "projects". My "real" projects are in addition to that.)

You don't have two cabinets to make a distinction between stuff to do and filing?

I definitely do make a distinction between tasks to do and reference material. Tasks I keep in an app (currently Doit). Reference material I keep in various places - I think we discussed that in another thread recently.

Am i only one with piles and piles of admin stuff that should have been done ages ago?

No idea
But I don't ;-)

 

[Oogiem]

Oogiem Are these multiple steps in a project or simply (annoyingly time consuming) sub tasks as part of a single action?

Writting down subtasks is interesting, if you mention filing locations, reference to particular related goals and plans, schemes, you might want to go through, etc. allthought it explain why it takes you 1,5 hour daily ghehe

I only have to figure out the tasks once and then the list is good until I change the procedure due to some external change, like a different bank account or different e-mail address etc.

At my age and job there is the very real possibility that I could have an illness or injury that would require that someone else pick up with everything I do on a routine basis with no prior training. Part of the detail for my lists is that once that person got access to my computer (and passwords are stored several places and encrypted but there are several trusted folks who have access including our estate lawyer, financial adviser and accountant) they would be able to tell exactly what bills are due and when, what income is due and when, what the routine chores are for the sheep, dogs, chickens and also gain access to a whole series of estate and living will directives. I've been through both parents dying without having a clear set of instructions left for me and being lost and having bills not paid because I had no clue they were due and being unable to find stuff because neither one had ever bothered to document their procedures. My parents were separated so I had this to do twice. Just recently in our town a young lady was driving and rolled the car. She is now paralyzed from the waist down. She's ok now but will live in a wheelchair the rest of her life. During her lengthy recovery there was a lot of stuff like bills and other items that got past due because no one knew what needed to be done or how. Fortunately we are in a small town and most folks were understanding and assisted in getting everything in order but it was unnecessary. If she had a detailed list it would have saved her and her friends a lot of grief.

Kelly Forrester has often used the phrase be kind to your future self, well in my case such details are being kind to the people who may have to deal with it in the future whether it's me or not.

I also don't like to think about things twice. Ocne I've made the decisions about how and where to file stuff I want consistency above all. If I document it properly then I can do those sorts of admin tasks in low eneergy times and also if there are enough tiny steps I can use them to fill in small bits of time. If I had to stop , go look up in the disk drive exactly how I named the files before to make it match that takes more time than it does when I have the naming formula as part of the task of save the statement in with name Again it's part of do the task once and then forget it until you have to change it.

It's not like I have to create these big checklists very often. I've been using the same one for sheep vaccinations for 15 years, so I spent a bit more time when I first created that recurring project, now I can just crank the widgets and the tasks get done.

So you all are not using a seperate task list for admin tasks? I currently do, in conjunction with a seperate area for "admin support material" (for stuff to do) and a seperate "admin filing cabinet" (for filing when done).

Nope, I tried that for a very short time, separate list for admin stuff, separate folders for bills to pay, letters to write etc. Separate filing area for recurring projects vs one off ones. The entire mess became totally unwieldy very quickly and I gave up. Now I have a single monolithic A-Z filing cabinet for both reference and someday/maybe project support material. I have one drawer for current active projects and I have a tickler file. This same structure is repeated in my digital system so at worst I have 2 places to look, physical files and digital files.