+ Projects, Someday/Maybes, Organizers, Files and the Next Action

I just started Getting Things Done® (GTD) in a serious way a little over a month ago.

Unlike “evangelical” (no offence to real envangelists, whom I often like) motivation based systems where some guru tells you to live your potential and be all you can be (the problem is you are all you can be until you learn more about how to do what you know), when you get further into GTD, you don’t peter out.

Time and self-management get better. The author himself says it takes two years to really get it. Yikes!

And his staff tell him not to say this for fear it will intimidate people from even starting.

Start. It gets better every few days. Having your head clear of trivia so you can focus on the important things is worth it.

For the first time, all my email boxes are empty, my paper inbox is empty, everything is filed mostly reference A-Z, I have a 43-folder tickler file system in place (electronic, email, and hard copy), and all the projects (goals if you will) in my life large and small are defined.

What’s more, I can create new projects or “someday/maybes” in a minute or two in a spreadsheet and it’s done. Or a slip of paper.

That’s it. It’s in the system and it will get done or at least looked at every week until completion, change, or discarding.

It’s outta my head and now I can focus on the “Next Action”. Which may be to plan the project: mind map it or draw an outline in a text editor.

But often not.

Project planning can be more or less complex, but for anything other than launching the next space shuttle, the key 99 times out of a hundred is to move forward.

Mark Wieczorek puts it very well and I won’t be able to outdo him so here’s a quote:

First of all, what are Next Actions? What is GTD?

Next Actions are a concept from Getting Things Done, which is perhaps the finest book on personal productivity ever written.

Basically, the Next Actions concept says that if you have an abstract item on your to-do list (replace tires on car), you’ll never do it because every time you look at it, you’ll glaze the in-between steps. But you do have to think about what to do in order to do it. So why not think about it now? By thinking about it now and writing it down as a Next Action (the Next Action I can take to bring this project to completion), I can do that Next Action automatically the next time I see it instead of glazing over some nebulous far-in-the-future to-do. (Call tire shop for prices.)

With a to-do list you have to make a decision on the next action for each item each time you look at it. With a Next Actions list, you have that decision made and you just have to choose which Next Action to do now.

…

But by focusing on only the next action rather than all the actions, it’s not nearly as intimidating. You don’t need a complete roadmap. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and you only need to know what the very next one is.

If I had to choose between the big black box, the big black box divided into 100 pieces, or the single little gray bod, I’d choose the single little gray box every time.

(Read the rest of Mark’s article and his use of “cascading” Next Actions)

Oh the joy:

… of an empty inbox.

Don’t want to deal with it now? Then don’t. Drop it in the right day/month and you’re done. Or write a note to yourself and do the same. You’ll get to it at the right time and it’s outta your mind. Now you can get back to work or head for a night out with a clear conscience.

Note the labelled binder clips: Monday, Next (Month), and More (Months).

Originally I used clips for each day for two weeks at a time. Yet it was cumbersome moving them every day so I stopped. Now when you do your weekly review, just advance the weekly flag so you can quickly find the right day of the week to drop your item in.

As an aside on the original “two weeks” idea, Stephan Schiffman, in his book Make It Happen Before Lunch that everyone lives two weeks at a time. Commitments outside of that are worth rather less.

Do you want a prospect who will meet with you on October 19, 2024, or next Tuesday at 3? Me too.

But you and I need to be prepared to seize opportunity anytime.

And that means those binders and files at the office ain’t gonna do you a lot of good when you bump into the VP of Marketing at your dream company as you go about your life.

Which brings me to my planner.

I like paper. And I love 3×5 cards.

What I’ve standardized on is a hybrid Hipster PDA (hPDA) / Day-Timer Compact (3×5″) one-page per day calendar.

It’s in a Day-Timer tan compact leather wallet and I carry a Parker Jotter stainless steel click pen with a gold clip. (You must enter a Canadian postal code to visit this links Use mine — V8W 3Z2 — if you don’t have one.)

It’s great for a night out on the town.

I like Day-Timer because each 2-month calendar refill (here’s the one I use) comes with 4-monthly calendars including 2-in advance, 7-future appointment pages for beyond that, monthly vehicle record (removable – tear it out!), expense sheet, and a variety of other useful inserts you can put in using Day-Timer’s special “comb”.

Speaking of Getting Things Done®, the calendar is just that: only for things that must be done at a specific time, on a given day, or over the course of a week.

It works like a charm.

The hPDA clips to the flap at the top of the Day-Timer compact wallet with the binder clip as if it was my old coil notebook, but the pages can be moved around and it lays flatter than the coil notebook.

A planner works much better as a calendar than the hPDA (although people have designed 3×5″ templates for exactly that). What’s more, by having the wallet with Day-Timer calendar in there, you look totally professional when you get someone’s number and contact details on a card for processing later.

Every week there’s an extra page for notes between Saturday and Sunday, which will work fantastic for listing anything out of the ordinary that should be included in the all important weekly review. The weekly review can be done any day of the week and you just refer to this list.

This next part is the “killer app.”, and it cost only $11.84 Canadian.

What I’ve done to make my hPDA more serviceable is bought a stand for it at Staples that includes a vertical slot for my calendar wallet to slip into at the back, a larger vertical slot before that for 3×5″ cards (holds 200), and a business card ledge at the front that just so happens to hold a 1½”, 1″, and 5/8″ binder clip depending on how many cards I need to carry with me.

In the larger slot I have 3×5″ cards with matching color tabs up top. I use the Post-it® 686-RYB and 686-PGO durable index tabs. (You must enter a Canadian postal code to visit these links.)

You can get them at Staples or Office Depot or just Google it.

These divide my “desk” hPDA (or “docking station” as I’ve heard it referred to) into sections:

hPDA Organization

 blank cards  – at front

 RED TAB 

• Next Actions list(s) by context (@Office, @Home, @Out, @Jacqui, @Phone, @Internet, @ Airport, etc.)
• Waiting For list(s)
• Someday/Maybe list(s)

 YELLOW TAB 

• “Autosuggestion” card
• Physical Training cards
• Order to Do ( Dwight D. Eisenhower importance-urgency matrix popularized by Stephen Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”) / Getting Things Done® quick reference card

 BLUE TAB 

• filled in cards to be dropped in my desktop Next Actions tray and/or inbox and processed

 back cover  – hPDA Organization (this info) card with contact info on the reverse

More coloured tabs can hold additional sections to bring as and when needed.

If you have an hPDA, you want this. [Staples Metal Mesh Pencil And Card Holder, Black, Item Number 616492 -- also comes in silver.] If you’re Canadian, those links should work for you (again, you can use my postal code if need be). Otherwise, try going into your local office supply store and seeing if they have something like it.

Hmmmm… it looks good on my desk. Yet it might look better on your desk when I’m working out of your office building client relationships and earning a significant profit for you.

By Christoph Dollis at 5:15 AM on Tuesday August 14th, 2007, and filed under GTD / Productivity.

Permanent URL to this post:
http://christophdollis.com/blog/inboxes-at-zero

The trackback URL for this post is:
http://christophdollis.com/blog/inboxes-at-zero/trackback
You can leave your opinion(s) below.