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Getting Things Done
Ep. 325: Your Projects – What to Know When
00:37:51
What do you need to know, and when, to stay on top of your projects from start to finish? This webinar examines how you define and list your projects, how you track what’s necessary for completion, and the rhythm for reviewing that assures you are...
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Transcript20 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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Hi everyone, I'm John Forester and I'm here with Ana Maria Gonzalez. Hi Ana Maria.
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A
Hey John. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining. Welcome to your projects and what to.
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Know when yes, and let's see, one thing I'd like to mention that you probably all know already, although I'm just going to mention that in case you could change the setting, there is when you're chatting with us, if, if you're willing, please select everyone instead of hosts and panelists. That way everyone gets to see what you're saying. We all get to learn from the answers, the questions and the comments. We're scheduled for about an hour here and we think we have plenty of time to get through the material plus leaving time for questions and answers. Feel free to bring up questions during the webinar or save them for the end. Either way works. If they fit in with what we're talking about at the time, I'll hand them over to Ana Maria and we'll, we'll answer them. If they're better to save till the end, please know I'm capturing those. And let's see, I'm also going to post a link here. Just put a link that's directly to the Tools and Templates section of the GTD Connect document library, where there are a couple of things that I think you might find useful today. Always the methodology guides. Those are it's. It's the. It's the most value packed into the shortest PDF. It's got the GTD models in it and so so much good stuff packed in there. It's always great to have that handy. Also, a little further down in that same section of the document library, you'll see letter and a four sizes of two PDFs they're called. They're. They're verbs. Verbs to help you name your projects and actions in a way that makes your lists more attractive. So that could be handy to have. And that's it. Here comes the Here comes the lead off. So the idea for this came from one of the several times that Ana Maria and I were talking about the weekly review and getting to the the projects review part of the weekly review. And she said more than once, and it took me a while to catch on to this, she said your projects list can kind of be reverse engineered from what you want to see when you're doing your review. When it comes to whatever day of the week or however, however often you do a weekly review. What is it you want to see when you get to the section where you're reviewing projects. And so this, this webinar is around kind of backing up from that end state and saying, how would I want to have my projects listed organized, that sort of thing, so that when it gets time to review them, I'm, I've supported myself in making that review part as seamless as it can be. So that's our setup here. And I'm going to turn it over to Ana Maria, who will run the slide deck. And here we go.
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A
Thank you, John. So, you know, today we're gonna. The way I'm seeing this and the way I'm gonna approach it is imagine we have a magnifying glass that we're just gonna magnify closer to one specific list within a component of a best practice within a step of the many steps. So now I'm gonna start with the steps. So we have five steps in mastering workflow, as I'm sure you all have read about or learned or practiced or seen or heard. So to master your workflow or to gain control over your workflow, certainly you start with capturing things out of your mind. That would be step number one, or making sure you capture anything and everything that has your attention, where anything or anything and everything that you have attention about, and you want to make sure it's captured in any one of your trusted tools, which certainly none of them will be your mind, so that then you will clarify your agreement about any and every one of those. In other words, is there anything to do about this? And if so, you know, if yes, what's the next action? And I think you know the drill there. And then, you know, is it for me to, to do it in two minutes or less, can I delegate, or does it need to be deferred into my organizational system? And of course, if there's no action, then you also have options, right? You either throw it away, you file it away, or you incubate. Any of those decisions that you make during clarify require a place in which to live or a location in where to park them, right? A repository, a bucket, a list, a folder, something. And that's what creates your, let's say, organizational solution. Or that's what creates what we refer to often as your GTD system, or what we refer to often as your life management system. It's basically whatever categories you identify that are right for you to organize the decisions that you made during clarify. And often those categories are, you know, a set number more or less, in which you have options for your actionable items and your non actionable items. You will organize them accordingly. Because obviously you don't want to mix, you know, what's to be deleted with a phone call to make that wouldn't make any sense. So at a very minimum, you're going to, you're going to organize between two categories, right? Actionable and non actionable. Within actionable, then we have best practices where we suggest the most commonly used list to be your projects list, someday maybe list, and a handful of different next action lists, options, calls, errands, computer agendas, anywhere home, et cetera. And then one other one that is you're waiting for that. It also belongs to your next actions list because that's where you're organizing, where you're keeping track of those items that during clarify you delegated. And if you have any attention on that coming back to you, you want to track it. Otherwise your mind will track it if you don't have any attention. Because whoever you delegated it to, it's more invested than you in getting, getting the answer to you that that may be fine, that may work. But if there's still small tension on your mind related to whether that's going to come back to you or not, I prefer to error adding more items to my waiting for list than adding less items to my waiting for this, because I rather give my mind that peace of mind. And then of course then you have the non actionable items, which would be whatever you filed in your reference system, whatever you incubated, whether that's in your tickler system, or your someday maybe list, or whatever you threw away or you shredded or you recycled, all of this creates your life management system, right? Or all of this creates your GTD system, which then requires that you review on a regular basis. And that's when we come into step four, which is also known as Reflect. There is a critical success factor within Reflect that it's known to be as the weekly review. But that's not the only behavior required during reflection. Because just thinking that we ought to review our system weekly, it's kind of an incorrect understanding because we gotta be reviewing daily whatever list is appropriate to be reviewed. At a very minimum, your calendar, right? So you know where to go next and whatever other appropriate next actions lists. But for sure you want to step higher from that daily reviewing and then invest the time to weekly review the whole system, not just whatever it's appropriate, given where you are, the time of the day, and how much energy you have. Or not your daily reviewing or your regular reviewing or your ongoing reviewing, that belongs to Reflect. It's designed to Give you that, that, that trust, that confidence in your decision making, which is step five. That's why you do all this work, right? To kind of increase that trust that I'm doing the right thing at the right time, at the right place, at the right moment, with the right person, etc. Etc. We like to use the word right or just trust that yes, the decisions that I'm making are the decisions for me to be making. In other words, you are clear on your priorities. That's on a day to day basis. And you may be thinking that I'm going everywhere here, but is that reflect? It's a very strategic step between within mastering workflow. Not to say that the others aren't, but it's very strategic from the standpoint that it's not only to increase our trust on our daily decision making, but also to increase our trust on a week to week basis in terms of are we getting to the right things? Do we. Are we completing the right projects? Are we moving in the right direction? So basically begins to increase your perspective in terms of your decision making as well as quarterly, because you quarterly want to be reflecting. And now that includes other horizons, let's say to be reviewed, which are known as maybe your errors and focus, your areas of focus and accountability horizon, which can also be a list or if you have any kind of routine or habit or if not good idea to consider having as a best practice. Best practice for reflect reflecting by yearly. And then that will include even higher horizons of, of commitments. And that could well be your goals, your visions, however you refer to that. In other words, outcomes that are two, three years from now, four, I don't know how far you have that, you know, kind of tracked. And then yearly, I think we all one way or the other and it's coming around that time of the year whether we want to or not. We do some kind of yearly review, right? Or annual review and we kind of look at the whole picture and am I moving in the right direction? Am I manifesting who is born to be or whatever it is that you do or however it is that you do it. There is that element, it happens. So it is part of reflection. Today specifically we're going to focus on the critical success factor of the GTD methodology. What keeps everything together and what really guarantees that this is a sustainable solution over time or in years to come. And that is the weekly review. And within that weekly review there's one list, as John was referencing earlier, that we're going to be paying attention today and not everything Else. And that list is your projects list, right? Or also known as maybe perhaps your larger outcome lists.
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Ana Maria, I'm. I'm really relieved to know that we're going to drill down and focus very closely on just one list. Because a moment ago when you were saying, am I. Am I doing everything I need to do to manifest what I was born to do, the split second of. Of overwhelm. Oh, my goodness, I. I hadn't even thought of that today. I was just trying to make sure I got my two cups of coffee in before the webinar. And now I need to wonder whether I'm manifesting my destiny or not. So I'm happy to step back into. Let's give me something small and focused that I can pay attention to.
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Yes, we're not doing that, John, today. But it is something that I know everyone it's about. It's probably considering doing around this time of the year, because that's how we are. We're funny that way. Oh, you're in your review. Let me look, let me plan. You know, like if you're not supposed to be manifesting who you are every day of the year, but that's okay. That would be a whole other conversation. But you know, yearly reviews tend to happen this time of the year and they're part of reflection. But today we're going to look at your projects list. Review that. It's. As I was saying, we're this magnifying glass. We're going into a specific list within a component of a critical success factor within a step, of the many steps. And the component that I'm referring to is the get current. Yeah, because the weekly review has and I don't know if the word. The right words component. John, if there's a better word, please correct me. But as you all know, the weekly review is broken into three components. Let's say get clear, get current, and get creative. You can think of them as in a horizontal order, not necessarily in a vertical order for purposes of sharing and facilitating to you a weekly review checklist that you all have as part of the methodology guides. Of course, we're forced to put it on a vertical presentation, but. And there's some logic to the components as in get clear, get current, and get creative, that they kind of follow a natural, let's say order. But what's within those components? In other words, the line items that we are saying. Okay, what does get clear means? Or what does get current means? Or what does get creative means, please? If you have any rule that you're running inside of yourself that you must follow the order in which they're listed because that's why they're not numbered. You don't see anywhere on our checklist. 1, 2, 3, get get clear right? Then 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 get current and then whatever. 9, 10 get created. They're just listed. And honestly in time you will want to customize your weekly review checklist. In other words, you will perhaps will add even more line items for things that are true for you that you need to put your your attention to on a weekly basis or there might be things that might be as relevant to you as what we've listed. So please use this as a template. Release yourself from any kind of rule that there is an order. Because to be honest, I think John, the review your projects list is 4, 5, 6, 7, maybe line item 8 if we start from the top to the bottom or something like that. Or seven. I'm just going by memory from where the how they're listed. That just shows you how little attention I paid to that. And I've been doing this for 25 years because I actually start with my projects list. When I get to get current, it works better for me. I'm not saying it's incorrect to do it the other way around. It just works better for me to, to put my attention first on my larger outcomes or my multi step outcomes are on my projects as we call them before I go anywhere else. For other people it works better to start actually with their net factions list, not with their calendar review or others like to follow the order in which they're listed. Do it however it works for you. Just make sure you get. Go ahead.
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Well, we have a comment here from someone who says I assumed I have to follow the order. So Ana Maria and I play Good.
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I'm not hearing you. Done.
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How about now? Are you still. Are you hearing me okay?
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Yes.
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So Anna Marie is playing the good cop today saying you can change the order around and do things. And I'm going to give you the other side of the of this, which is to say there is some thinking on David's part over the years about why things are listed in the order they're listed.
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Sure.
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Yes, you can change the order around. And I always recommend do at least a couple of reviews in the order that things are listed because there are a couple of things up there, especially in the get get clear area where it's more efficient to do them in order. For example, it's just more efficient to get your inboxes to zero before you do a mine sweep. Because if you do it in the other order, your mine sweep may include stuff that you would have handled by getting your ins zero. So that's just a kind of an efficiency thing. But once you get into as in my opinion, the later stages where you're deciding which lists to review when, switch to Anna Maria mode and customize and do what works for you on that.
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A
I'm not telling you to do that, I'm just saying they're not numbered. So you want, however you want to interpret that, interpret that. And there, there are three components and there's a logic to obviously starting with getting clear to continue with getting current, which will then as a byproduct will kind of get you to getting creative because it just happens. One thing that is true for me is that I, I rarely start at get clear. Rarely to not say never. Why? Because I get clear on a daily basis. So there's how much value am I adding to my life to look at an empty inbox? How much value am I adding to my life by going is there anything on my mind if I've been writing things down, how much value there is to adding to my life too? Well, let me look at what is out of place on my desk. I kind of do that every day by the time I end my day. So a big misinterpretation with the weekly reviews that many people wait to get clear to the for the week to the weekly review and then they find themselves running out of time to actually get to the, the core of the weekly review which has actually get current, which is to look at the agreements that you had organized throughout, you know, the week to confirm, you know, are they current, are they not that I do I need to delete, do I need to add, you know, just bring your system to current. So that just tells you another thing that I don't do with the three components. But it's only because clarifying which is to get clear. It's a best practice for us to do on a daily basis. Why not if we can? Right. And look, if you're traveling and you're going from here to, I don't know, 18 hour flight. Yeah, relax. You know, you couldn't get to your get you're clarifying on that day. But if you're sitting on your desk and it's part of your day to day activity, then just get to it on a daily basis. So when we look at the project list and because the projects list, if you want to think about it is the driver of the weekly review from the point of view that it's your thinking list. You know, I think David had a quote a while back, I don't remember word by word, John. They had to do, you know, about thinking once a week so that then he can make a spontaneous choices or something like that. Yeah, right. And that, and that's what he's referring to, you know, and, and I would, I want to say given what I know of gtd that it's. He's really talking about this weekly review because about this projects list because this is the place where you need to come to evaluate a success in there. You want to evaluate what's the status of these projects or you know, some people call them goals or outcomes on a one by one basis and really give yourself that time to understand, you know, where are you at with this project, where are you at in terms of the progress of this project, etc. Right. And, and I'm. And with that of course identifying at least one next action for each one. And that requires thinking. I mean, no question about that. That's putting your mind muscle to work different than if I'm just looking at my next actions list where the focus for me is more like is this still, you know, something that I need to do or did I already do and I just didn't believe because I was kind of moving too fast. Right. But I don't have to be thinking about is there, is there something else to this action like you would have with projects. And then of course there's an opportunity to look through your project plan support materials, you know, in other words, the vertical thinking or on any one of your projects or whatever. Maybe you have a natural planning model for your project or maybe you have something more robust, you know, organized somewhere as a Gantt chart or somewhere in Microsoft Planner. I mean this is the time when you will go look at that which is known as your project plans or support materials. Right. Because of course you want to see if it triggers new actions to add or even potentially waiting for. So this is by far the list that will take you the longest from the get current. I think I can risk to say. And the only reason I'm doubting is because sometimes when I look at my previous calendar, in my upcoming calendar, depending on what happened or what is about to come, may be also a considerable amount of time invested during my review. You know, if the weeks, if the weeks ahead are clean are easy, it could be a very quick browsing next week, next week to Next week. So that's a bit of a variable there, but for sure, the projects list I believe is the one that will take the longest because of what requires right. When you're looking at your projects list, and this is probably something that you already know, but perhaps it's good to remind you or maybe it helps you with, with how I look at my projects list or how I look or what I offer clients when I'm coaching them. Right. So it's important that for each one of your projects you kind of consider a couple of questions that I'm going to share with you in the next two slides about what has changed since your last review. We're going to assume your last review was a week ago. And I know there are moments or projects, given their nature that you may need to be reviewing more often than weekly, but let's just use weekly as a standard. So you're pretty much just looking at that list and going, okay, since my last review, you know, what has changed? And questions can be things like, you know, do I still need to complete this project? Because maybe there was a strategic meeting during the week that completely changed direction for the company and now three projects from your list are no longer projects for you and they actually need to be moved maybe to a someday maybe, or maybe to a projects on hold or maybe to a delegated projects. Because in that strategic directional change, your role also changed. Now you're no longer the one in charge of that, but someone else. So keep that in mind. It's like, do I still need to complete this project?
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B
And if you're asking yourself why would I need to ask myself that? Obviously if I put it on my list and I clarified what done looks like for this project, that won't have changed. Lots of things change. Maybe your area of focus changed, maybe your, your job description changed. Many, many other things could have changed that would affect what, what shows on your project list week to week. So give yourself the slack to have to allow your life to flow and change and have have surprises in it that may have happened since the last time you looked at your list or since the time that you defined this project.
- [24:41]
A
Yeah, and this, this are kind of the same question just asked differently because, you know, it's like, do I still own this project? Might be a better way for you ask yourself that may, you know, get you to that perspective to say, oh, I don't because this change or that change and blah. Whatever. Right. Obviously, is this project completed? In other words, can I delete it? Can I finally just Go done that it's an obvious result of doing of looking at your projects list. If you no longer own it or it no longer needs to be completed. That doesn't necessarily equals always delete it may equal to move it to another list. Right. And another list, yes, as I said before, could be your someday maybe because you may say, well, you know, we for now that's not happening, but maybe it may resurface in the future given my understanding of my role and where the company is going. Therefore, I've done enough work on this project and there are enough project plans and it's not enough support material that I don't want to risk, you know, deleting because I'm pretty sure it may come we may do it sometime in the future so you feel safe to move it to your Sunday maybe for example, or you may move it to reference period. You may say it's not even a something maybe I don't think there is even any interest in potentially doing it someday in the future. But I'm going to keep it because there's good information here that I just don't want to have to redo it if things change. So I'll keep it as reference. Right. Which I didn't add here as questions. So it could be referenced. Or maybe you're the kind of person that has a projects on hold best that this is now getting into customizing, right? Your weekly review that will include how do you want to customize your projects list? Because maybe you have a number of projects on your list that are not really all active as in needing a next action always identified no matter what, but that instead there are projects that you go it's kind of on hold because given, you know, budget we're not going to be moving on this for easily the next two or three months. And some they maybe just feels too far away from me. So you may just have that in between that some people like to call it projects on hold. Projects on hold as the someday maybe would be to listen that you're still responsible for reviewing weekly but without needing to identify a next action. So that is the one differentiator your projects list, as you see in the very last question there, does these projects have a next action or next actions? Because sometimes some of them are simultaneous have more than one action that can take place that you cannot not do as part of your weekly review when you're looking at your projects list. But if you're looking at projects on hold or if you're looking at something maybe then if you're doing that kind of thinking. You've missed organized that item. It should, should not belong to that list. It should be on your projects list. Then you can still customize projects list also by areas of focus. Some people like to organize their projects list that way. You know, given my areas of focus that has to do with quality control, here are the projects that belong to that. Given my areas of focus that have to do with training and development, here are the projects that belong to that. Given my areas of focus that have to do with staff morale, here are the projects that belong to that. That's fine. That's a very personal decision. So that could just give you a viewing point that makes more sense for you during the weekly review or by clients or by sell by business units or by sales initiative. I only have one projects list. I've never needed it to break them down to end or kind of view them by something else. One projects list works for me or something as simple as dividing it between a personal projects list and a professional projects list. A lot of clients do that at the very minimum because that just works better for them. Certainly, of course, as I said, each project will have to have a next action. And not only will each project will have to have a next action identified or next actions, if of course, more than one can happen simultaneously. In other words, calling John is completely independent from me emailing David, which is also completely independent from me browsing the Internet. All three next actions belong to one same project, but they're independent from each other. So that's part of what I need to make sure I've identified, in other words, thought through during my weekly review. And sometimes it helps. I'm not saying it's required. Sometimes it helps to add potential future actions. I mean, you may be on that kind of creative mode, planning, thinking about your project and you may go, oh, yeah, and I know probably I'm going to have to, you know, I don't know, at some point also connect with Bob. And I'm also going to have to think about, you know, how to allocate resources and I'm also going to have to blah, blah, blah. Right? So those are future actions that are, they're not yet next actions. And you may want to add that if you're having those thoughts as part of your project plan and whatever supporting information comes to mind or became surfaced during the week. Because remember, this is whatever changed from the last review, which we're assuming was last week or a week before.
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B
One of the other things that could change and I'm going back to what you said a moment ago about someday maybe one of the things that could change is let's say in your last review you moved a project Someday maybe you decided you weren't committed to finishing it, say in the next year, and it's now on Someday. Maybe if you were a little less than super careful when you did that this week, you might find that you still have a next action for that project, but it's no longer a live project. At that point, you'd want to take it off your Next actions list and store it with any kind of support notes or reference material that goes with that. Second Someday maybe you don't want to have an orphan of a next action that belongs to a project that's no longer active, Correct?
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A
And then of course, always ask yourself any new projects to add? So this is not just only about taking away projects which we love, or moving projects to another list which we love to, but also asking ourselves, are there more? Are there new? You know, the things change now in the opposite direction. Instead of me bringing the inventory count to less, it's coming up to more. So keep that in mind as well when you're looking at your projects list. So it's, it's. The idea here is, was to let you know and show you that it goes a little further than just thinking of a next action or next action for each and every project. Like we're trying to exemplify by this image, right? You have this project that will have as many actions as however many you've identified. Same will be true for other projects on your list. Some projects may only have one next action because that's all you can think or know to identify. But it doesn't stop there. It requires all these other questions so that you can for sure complete that weekly review saying, I have a complete current consistent projects list in my system that it's good to go for the next week. When you think of your projects list and, and, and as part of your weekly review, when I was saying to look at your project plans and your support material, that would be your vertical inventory. So will be anything that it's exemplified over here under this line, items either through ABC or 1, 2, 3. So it's all whatever you have thought through that needs to happen to this project to get you from here to there, which then of course gets becomes organized within your horizontal inventory within the many different locations where you may find yourself during any day of the week. So you know you will have items organized under any one of this list, as many as this or less than this. Again, up to you, how you are organizing your next actions and most likely many of the actions that are here, or I should say, I'm sorry for sure, a number of the next actions that are here came from each one of your projects. In addition to the next actions that you have here would be actions that don't belong to any project. They're kind of your standalones, you know, not every action obviously belongs to a project. You're always going to have more next action items than project items. There's about, you know, 100 to 150 next actions to 50 to 80 projects, give or take. So do know that then when you're completing your next actions on any day of the week on under any one of these lists, guess what? You are moving projects forward. Sections over here came from your vertical thinking. So day after day you're moving projects forward. The weekly review, what it does, it puts a pause on your daily doing to say, okay, where am I? How far have have I gone? How much further do I need to continue? Do I need to now remove it? Can I move it? Do I need to add? So that's that purpose. But daily you're moving a project forward as you're getting next actions done from any one of your lists.
- [35:06]
C
I'd like to give a short message to those of you who've been participating and playing with GTD Connect for a while and sort of remind you that all of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles. You know, I still go through cycles myself initially. There's kind of the inspiration and there's a lot of material to ingest and to get familiar with. And so people oftentimes when they first come onto Connect, are just potentially overwhelmed by how much information there is. In a way, it's just a huge library where we've been able to archive so much different information from so many different perspectives and people and points of view and so understood that it's like walking into a library, oh gee, where do I start? So that's oftentimes the initial phase of this and many people after a year or two probably get on some level or some plateau where they go, well, I kind of got it now, I've got my system set up and everything's fine and I'm fine tuning. And you may find yourself at that point also finding yourself saying, gee, I'm now becoming a resource of this methodology for people around me, people asking me for assistance and help in this and We've seen in the forums a number of people now sharing ideas about how to get your teams more involved or families more involved with this information. So some of that information is in there as well. But I think you'll find yourself going through cycles of this, and you may find that much like if you've ever read a software manual. I remember when I read, when I learned Microsoft Word, for instance, I read the manual, wow, this is really cool. And I started to use the tool and didn't need the manual anymore. As a matter of fact, a good example of that right here, the manual for this camera that's taking this picture right now. Initially, I read this, got it all set up. That's really cool. And that's really fine. And so pretty much everything was onto cruise control. I didn't need to go back to my library to make this really work. And then of course, as I started to get more sophisticated in terms of stuff I wanted to do, got more inspired about some things I saw other people are doing. I go, how do I do that? Went back to the manual. I went, oh, God, I didn't realize I could do that. I didn't realize I could do that. And I remember at least two or three iterations of going back to Microsoft Word back in the. In the days when there actually was a manual for that, as opposed to just all online and realizing, oh, my God, I didn't realize that, oh, I could do that now. I can do that now. And I think that's what you might find, find with Connect, too, is that it's a gold mine of stuff. Many people have read getting things done more than three or four times, and every time they read it, they get something new out of it. So I think you may find Connect the same way and probably even easier because, hey, it doesn't take much to just click on, surf around, see what might be new or what might be of interest to you, and pay attention. There's more than meets the eye in there.