GTD Questions
Rish Raghu
via web
Hello All!
I would say I am a novice GTD user who has been practicing the new process for about 2-3 months. I have come accross some obstacles, and am wondering if anyone else has experienced the same issue and/or provide solutions in case I could be doing something better.
I am a project manager, so a lot of my tasks are waiting for people to get back to me.
Before Nirvana If I were to send an email to someone in order to touch base with them to see how a task is going or to ask for something, I would send them an email and cc myself. I set up a rule in my email so any emails sent from me and I cc'ed myself will automatcially go to my '@WAITING FOR' Folder. So I can follow up in a few hours / days / weeks depending on its priority. Sometimes I forget to CC myself, so if that is the case, I will manually move the email from my send folder into my '@WAITING FOR' folder.
Using Nirvana With Nirvana, I find this more cumbersome. If I have a task for example, "Post issue about spam comments on habitusliving website to PMS", I can perform that task quite easily and tick it done. Now I am waiting for my developer to come back to me, so do I either
a) tick this task complete and create a new task
b) do not tick this task complete, and move it to my waiting for
folder?
c) Do i treat this as a little project with 4 tasks instead: (Brief
Task, Perform Task (delegated), Check Task, Sign-off Task)
If I do a), then it gets cumbersom
If i do b), then my tasks will need to be more generic and I feel
that loses the GTD effect and it will be more of a project
If i do c), then I will have 100's of small projects and will be
overwelhmed with what to do next
I am not sure if everyone comes accross this crossroad and questions if they understood it right. Any help or experience stories would be much appreaiated.
Thanks in advance
Rish
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2 Posted by Proximo on 27 Jul, 2010 01:31 PM
@Rish,
It seems that you will not be happy with the 3 choices you mentioned, so let me just give you my thoughts on this.
When creating a task for yourself to do, you must make sure that you clearly define what it would take to complete this task. If the task required that someone approve something or take some action on it, you probably should have never made it a single task to begin with but a small project.
In your example, the task could not have been easily done by your actions alone, so it should not have been a single task.
Option A: Is not something you should get in the habit of doing. If you do, this simply means you are not clearly defining what is needed for the task completion. If it's your responsibility to make sure it's done but you require someone's input, that should be part of the process and therefore a small project.
Option B: Task should not be generic but clear. If you identified what doing would look like and you clearly know what is required to complete the task, you should not be taking action on something to only delegate it to someone else and waiting for their response in order to complete it. Again, this is a multi step task and should be a small project.
Option C: Only create the number of steps that are necessary and are required to move it forward. This is something you would have to decide on yourself, but there is nothing wrong with having a lot of small projects.
The idea of GTD is that you captured everything so that you don't forget what needs to be done or have to think about it when it's no important. You need to clearly define what doing looks like and having several small task that move something toward completion is perfectly fine.
The alternative of having 100's of small projects that clearly define the steps needed to move them all toward completion is to have a much smaller amount of task that are very generalized and force you to spend too much time thinking about what needs to be done.
Mind like water is about having clarity and if 100's of small projects give you that, it's the best option. There is no award for having a few task or having 100's of task, but there is an award for being productive and it's called Sanity.
There is always exceptions to everything but if you focus on having things clearly defined, you will feel comfortable with your decisions.
just my thought's.
3 Posted by Rish Raghu on 27 Jul, 2010 11:01 PM
@Proximo,
Thank you for sharing your points with me (and to this community). I kind of was expecting point c) to be the closest to GTD.
I will practice using option C for all my projects. For now, I am using tags to tie in all my projects and tasks until (or if) sub-projects will be implemented. This way I can have plenty of projects and not lose track of the project.
4 Posted by Proximo on 28 Jul, 2010 04:22 PM
@Rish,
It's my pleasure to help if I can. You will need to see how it works for you and don't be afraid to make adjustments that are specific to making you productive. There is not a One all solution for everyone.
GTD is build on an idea that can be used by just about anyone, but you still need to tweak things to work best for your situation or style.
Don't over engineer your GTD System by making it more complex than it needs to be. Keeping things simple is usually the better choice. :-)
good luck
David McLaughlin closed this discussion on 01 Feb, 2011 04:04 PM.