Due Date and Today
There are times I finish a day and a few items remain on my Today list. I am noticing that when I evaluate those items, I oftentimes decide that I need to complete the item several days from now rather than tomorrow. To avoid cluttering up my Today list and to avoid overlooking the item in a rather huge list of tasks and projects, I have started giving such items due dates as well as setting the show on due date selection. That comforts me. I know that the task will most certainly appear on that date within my Today list.
In GTD due dates are hard dates for when a task/project is due. Thus, I am not adhering to GTD; I understand one can be flexible.
However, I am wondering what others do about such situations. I am so busy with business-related work that I am discovering that a morning routine of reducing email box to zero, checking voice mail, checking calendar, processing nirvana in-box, scanning tasks and projects for today items and assessing unfinished today items is quite time-consuming. For someone who needs to achieve a 75% billable day, this 'nonbillable' time causes me to move as fast as possible, which, for me, isn't fast enough. In my haste, I can overlook something which is why I, rather unconsciously, began using the due date field.
Surely others face such scenarios. What are you doing differently than me? Hoping for suggestions.
2 Posted by Terminado on 02 May, 2010 02:56 AM
Sunni,
"Start" (or "Review" or "Tickle" or ?) dates are coming, I believe, and they will let you schedule a future date in addition to (if you want) a "due" date. In the mean time, I'm using "due date" and describing the task as "Review. . ." or "Start. . .". Not perfect, but it's okay for now.
3 Posted by DC Clarke on 03 May, 2010 04:52 AM
Sunni, I think you are raising a very good question about the GTD process and one that I am still struggling with myself pretty regularly. I think there is a certain comfort level that one derives from assigning due dates to tasks and knowing that they will pop into the Today list, hopefully, at the right time. After thinking about this quite a bit (because it something I have a tendency to do too), I've come to the conclusion that due dates are disfavored for a reason -- the very reason you cite: due dates are hard dates for tasks that absolutely have to be done on a certain date. I think that if you adhere to this hard line rule, you will eventually find your GTD system more reliable and eventually, you will derive more comfort from your GTD system by using as few due dates as possible, not more.
The alternative, using due dates more frequently for tasks that don't really have to be completed on a certain day, acts as nothing more than a reminder. An analogy is the physical reminders most "true" GTD'ers relied upon before adopting the system. For example, I was infamous for keeping documents and files on my desk in plain view just to remind me that I had to deal with something soon. I did this for years. Every time a new "open loop" came in to my office, I placed the paper or file on my desk. And for years, my desk was covered with papers three to eight inches thick and never found anything when I needed it! (Although I pretended, quite well, that I know exactly where everything was.)
I now believe that over using due dates in Nirvana or any software-based system is nothing more than adopting the same crutch that I relied upon with physical reminders. The result is the same... the today list, like my desk, becomes over-crowded with stuff that does not have to be done today. That is not control!
David Allen recently (as in April 27th recently) replied to a thread on the GTDConnect site in response to the inquiry "Does GTD make one busy, but not accomplished?" The context was an academician who was lamenting that his colleagues, who ridiculed his GTD system as a "busy work" tracker, seemed more "accomplished" (through publication) despite their haphazard organizational methods, messy desks and and half-used calendars. The poster felt that his GTD system was bogging him down and preventing him from concentrating on the big projects that lead to academic "accomplishment". David replied "I understand the perception that GTD requires spending time with the less-than-immediately-important stuff, but the operating principle is simply to make sure you're OK with what you're not doing at any point in time, so you can appropriately focus on what you ARE doing. That's it. I'd be interested to know if the "successful academics" keep a calendar, or if they just wing that, too. If they maintain one, and think it's important, then... why? Pretending that time-based commitments are worth tracking, and do-whenever-I-can's aren't, would be intellectual dishonesty, in my book."
(http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?11095-Important-Discuss...)
And I think that captures the point. The "busy work" associated with maintaining your GTD system is important because that is what is required to ensure that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing at any given moment in time. Without the busy work of tracking your tasks, you simply do not know what you are not doing, which is just as important as knowing what you should be doing at any given time.
The answer to ensuring that you know what you're doing is the weekly review. It is the key part of the system that is often pushed aside. After a comprehensive weekly review, if done properly, you will have emptied all of your "in" buckets, processed all open loops, organized your tasks into projects and next actions and set yourself up for doing.
As far as Nirvana is concerned, after a weekly review, you are ready to identify the projects you need to move from inactive to active and placed on your today list those tasks that need to be done today or soon (I use "soon" here as within the next 24 to 48 hours. Ideally, at the end of the day, or mid-afternoon, over lunch or whenever you have a half hour or so, you pound down the emails again, run through your inbox and do a quick processing, and review your Today list, adjusting it for the next 12 to 48 hours. In other words, you conduct a mini-weekly review on a daily or every-other-day basis.
This keeps you organized and allows all of your open loops to flow through your mind on a regular basis. If you let yourself derive comfort from that, I think you will find that the idea of using physical reminders and overusing due dates will actually make you feel less comfortable. You will really trust your system, and when you truly do that you, you feel great!
I know this replay was probably way long-winded, but I hope it helps.
p.s. David Allen's GTDConnect service is well worth the $50 a month if you are really looking to improve your GTD experience.
4 Posted by sunni.freyer on 03 May, 2010 05:51 PM
Ahhh, says this grasshopper.
I took away several salient points from your post but a major one that
requires a different mind set for me is your use of the Today list. You are
giving that list a 12-to-48-hour completion time line while my time line is
midnight of "today." So "today" is actually a "complete now" list, in other
words.
Yes, the busy work is driving me cuckoo, as I cannot find a client to bill
it out to! :-) It's overhead time, and my financial success is based on
keeping overhead hours to a minimum. However, you make a good point and
this is a well-thought out response. I greatly appreciate the time you
spent explaining this so well.
I do think it's important to know what I'm doing and what I'm not doing --
that's a great explanation. Where I am seeing my trouble is that my project
and task list is, quite simply, very lengthy. Add to that list length is the
fact that I have always operated with a "touch paper once" mindset. Given
that mindset, my insides quiver when I find myself doing mini-reviews of the
same tasks once daily. I have a few people to delegate to but the days when
I employed 12 people and was primarily a CEO and people manager are no
longer. It was my choice to step out of the people management game but now,
on occasion, I see that I'm someone who manages to win contracts or create
new income centers constantly and it, unfortunately, just keeps creating
huge mounds of work. :-)) It's a real pia. So the problem may be that I
need to rethink my "no employee" decision, which I thought I had finally
settled.
I'll be acting on your tips. Thank you.
Back to work
5 Posted by deekod on 26 Jun, 2010 08:44 PM
When deciding to use (or not use) due dates during task creation - how do you determine whether a tasks absolutely MUST be done by a certain date?
I know that ultimately this decision will rely on intuition or "gut" feelings as informed by the weekly review, but I wondered if people used any simple guidlelines on this that they would like to share?
6 Posted by DC Clarke on 27 Jun, 2010 11:44 PM
@deekod Except for those tasks that have a hard deadline (which would probably appear on the calendar as a due date) I have been trying to avoid due dates for the most part. The reason is to not only avoid the "crutch" I referred to in my earlier post, but also to reduce the anxiety that comes with too many commitments to myself that I am unable to keep. The folks at GTD headquarters really boil this down to only three things you can do with a task:
1) do it
2) delegate it
3) or defer it
Practically speaking, if you commit to doing it, you make it a task or if necessary a project. If you delegate it, note the "waiting for" if it has to be tracked. If you don't have to track it, just delegate it and not worry about it. For example, if you and a person you haven't seen in a while meet up and they say, "Hey, let's do lunch", be honest with yourself. Are you too busy? If so, don't keep that task laying around to call your friend for lunch. Just defer it, "Why don't you call me with some dates and times." Now you can forget about it until they call.
Of course deferring it simply means making it a someday/maybe item. "I want to get to this, maybe, just not now and I don't want to deal with it now."
Try not to fall into the [bad] habit of thinking that everything needs a due date. Just because the date field is there doesn't mean it needs a date. It only needs a due date when it's really due! If you have school report due in two weeks, then that's the due date. If your boss says the report is due in one month, that's the due date. If want to get something done, but the only consequence is that if you take six months you feel guilty or boss looks at you like you're a slacker, then it really doesn't have a due date. That is a task you merely keep in focus until it's done.
By not putting arbitrary due dates, you keep your commitments to yourself clear and maintain focus on what's really important. If everything that doesn't really truly absolutely needs a due date has one, then you're diluting the trustworthiness of your system.
So, that's my current view of due dates at the moment!
7 Posted by PeterW on 28 Jun, 2010 01:17 AM
Great points, DC Clarke.
I would add that using due dates when they're not really necessary will often result in you wasting time continuously rolling the due dates forward every time those tasks "fall due" (unless you get comfortable looking at tasks that appear to be seriously overdue). All of this becomes self-defeating and the value of a due date becomes seriously undermined. You don't want to build in tricks or have your mind second guessing your trusted system trying to determine what's really due and what's not. Keep it simple and honest, and it will serve you well.
8 Posted by roddyt on 28 Jun, 2010 05:13 PM
Great post DC, I think you're Proximo's alter ego :)
I'll just add that, in a nutshell, if you're not sure whether a task should have a due date or not, then it almost definitely shouldn't.