A friend and I were talking recently about GTD, and some of the difficulties he was having with his own implementation. The conversation we ended up having turned out to be a good primer on some additional GTD tips, so I thought I'd reproduce the conversation here (after anonymizing my friend's input).
The initial discussion was about the difficulty of actually starting a project, even after you've come up with the next step for it. My first e-mail was a sample of what my own PROJECT folder looked like:
Adam Quiney wrote:
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If you're interested, here's what my Project folder looks like
--Adam
PROJECTS
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* Finish re-grouting bathtub
* NS: Get out grout and finish job
* Consolidate office supplies (don't need second plastic tray device)
* Next step: Talk to Bay about this, and look through the two to see what we have
* Set up RTM
* NS: Read Lifehacker's guide to RTM
* Change tagTrack script for iTunes, to allow replacing existing tags
* NS: Review code and determine where this is set
My friend wrote:
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Nice set up. Here's mine, and I encourage your criticism of the way I have it set up.
TODO
Now:
Start business - set up web site, talk to friend about his start-up
Return saw to dad - clean saw
Return clothes to friend - put them in squash bag
Soon:
Clean and organize garage - clear out garbage
Closet doors - install hardware attachments
Finish flooring - measure and cut bathroom boarding
Baseboards - caulk trim
Later:
Learn to speak French fluently - any courses available through work?
Adam Quiney wrote:
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It's pretty well organized, and I notice that you use lists proper to GTD - Now, Soon, Later. I tried this originally, but it didn't quite fit with me. Now, I just have a TODO list (included below) and a PROJECT list. The project list mostly has stuff that you've got under Now and Soon.
Your side-consulting business is a good project, but I would break that down further. The major project is "Start side business". There's another project under that which is "Set up website". The next step for setting up the website is "Meet with Adam and talk about what is involved", and the _true_ next step for that item is "Get in touch with Adam, arrange meeting". I would track the projects under their own heading, and just move over the next steps when you think you are ready to work on them. That way your TODO list is much less daunting, and this will eliminate one of the passive barriers to getting stuff done - seeing _massive_ projects on your list just makes you not want to do them. Seeing "Get in touch with Adam and set up meeting" is an easy two-minute task involving an e-mail.
You can see that my TODO items don't have next steps for them, because I usually only move a "next step" type item over to the TODO list. That way my TODO list only ever has small, easily digestable chunks of work on it.
You'll notice I also have a "WAITING FOR" category on my list - that's where I put anything that /was/ on my TODO list, that I've acted on, and am now waiting for something before I can pick it back up. Eg, your list would have under WAITING FOR: "Arrange meeting with Adam. WF: (Waiting for) Adam to get back to me".
Whenever I notice that something has sat on my list for a while and hasn't gotten done, I re-examine it and ask "Why aren't I doing this?". Sometimes the answer is "Because I don't care about it" in which case I can just delete it and forget about it. Sometimes the answer is "Because it's way too big", then I break it down further and replace thenext step on my todo list.
Thoughts?
--Adam
TODO
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* Transfer music from External Drive to Mini and MacBook
* Blog
* Prune Minibonsai
* Clear out voice memos
* Upgrade Quicksilver (on desktop)
Waiting For
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Chores
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* Recycling
* Vacuum
Download
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* Update for Firefox
My friend wrote:
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That's great input.
I agree with you - the TODO of setting up a business isn't sufficiently broken down by merely listing the two rather vague next steps I have beside it.
The notion of "setting up a web site" in itself isn't sufficient, since that isn't a task I can just sit down and complete without employing several other kinds of next steps you talked about. In addition, talking to my friend about how his business start up went also isn't a great 'next step.' The appropriate one would really be 'email him to meet for coffee.' 'Email Adam to set up meeting', and 'Email friend
to meet for coffee' are both simple stress-less tasks that I could accomplish in minutes, but both would put me well on my way to accomplishing necessary steps in achieving important input required to
achieve my goal.
I like the notion of breaking things up into both a project list, and a todo list. I could throw 'next steps' onto my todo, with a more elaborate project by project break down in a separate list.
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So that's that. Talking this over, got me thinking about implementing contexts within my system, and so I sat down and set up exactly that in my TODO list. If anyone's interested in hearing more about this, let me know. Otherwise it'll be a post for another day.