A while ago I was listening to and older podcast with David Allen where he made a very interesting observation. Very often we are building a very complex structures to support our productivity by adding layers of tags, applications et. In effect we tie ourselves up and put more pressure on maintaining this system. It becomes a drag.

Something that’s opposite should be true. A good productivity system should be light and flexible allowing to fit it into changing events and requirements.

Continuing with this thought focus on keeping your system just right and fit for a purpose. It’s very easy to spend few hours organizing everything in your system. Adding locations, tags, links, making sure everything is clearly laid out. But is such approach sustainable on daily basis? Probably not.

When you look at how people get organized more often than not everything they have is halfway done. They had some free time so they decided to organise something they meant  to do a long time ago. They put up a very nice looking structure of A-Z folders, marked with different colours and labels. After a while only half of the documents are done this way, the demands of the work took over and there is no longer a time to maintain this structure.
The same will happen with tasks. You can go full on with various application and fill every possible text box, tag, notes and links so then you can dice and slice actions, projects the way you want. After initial hurray stage this structure weighs your down and becomes a drag.

It becomes apparent that filling all the boxes and setting up all the tags and folders is too time consuming. You could do it when you had extra free time but it can’t be sustained in normal day when things are flying at speed of light.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why a short lists of tasks is so effective. It’s simple, easy and serves as a great reference point.

To conclude the tools you use should support you enough to let you maintain the control of the day and be flexible to allow you to adjust to changing priorities. 

photo by zigazou76

When I watched those videos initially there was always something worth picking up and implementing. Sometimes it was a small bit other times it was drastic and complete change to the way I’ve been working. Either way it was always worth spending sometime on it.

I’m starting with a classic. It’s David Allen talking to Google employees in 2007. Although it’s four years old I still find it useful. Enjoy.

If you can’t see the video here is the link to original YouTube source.

Sometimes it’s nice to be told what to do.  Some people prefer that and choose jobs and professions where there is fixed amount of work and it’s clearly what needs to happen when and how.
These type of jobs are becoming less and less available and popular as we choose freedom of and action.

As knowledge work expands there is no longer a simple system to decide what’s next. At any moment you can do a multiple things. All almost equally important and time pressing. Factory module of working you start with 1 the move to 2 and so on is no longer applicable.  It’s your choice to decide what needs to be done, whether it’s task A or B.
You need to know what’s important, what’s more valuable, what are the time limits to get the job done.

There are couple ways of how to decide what to do next.
First you can go with your gut feeling. Look at the items on your list and just pick one that’s most attractive. It’s is your decision to figure out what’s most attractive is, maybe it’s the easiest one, maybe it’s the most mentally challenging etc.

If you want more structured approach you can try GTD 4 criteria model for deciding your work. This model focuses on analysing tasks from four perspectives which  in turn should tell you what is the task you realistically can do.

• context – defines a place or tools necessary to complete a task. If your are running errands your focus will be on shopping list, if you are sitting next to a phone then you can review your @calls list. Consequently if you are in a plane or commuting there is no point look at your @office list because you’re not there.
• time – every once days are combination of meetings, conference calls and discretionary time. Deciding on the next action you need to look at the time available before next scheduled event. There is no point in starting a task that will take you a hour to complete if all you have is just a twenty minutes.
• energy – through out the day we go through a cycle of high and low brain activity, the events of the day will also impact your ability to concentrate and perform. As result there is only so much you can effectively do in one day with out proper re-charge. At times you might be totally drained out of energy after a long day off meetings so you will not be willing to look at anything more than low value, easy tasks just to finish the day.
• priority – the remaining criterion used when assessing the choice of the next actions is priority. It comes last on the list as it’s depends on the other current context your in and available time and energy. This is very relative and subjective category.  The key question is given all the goals, projects, responsibilities what  is the one thing which accomplished will make you feel good about the day.

There are multiple ways of incorporating these criteria into your productivity system. One way to do it is to define some generic time and energy slots and apply them to your tasks. If you use application like Remember the Milk or similar one you can tag your tasks by adding expected duration like 15min, 30min, required energy high ,low, context and priority etc.

A simpler way is do the assessment just as you go through your list.

Next time when you’re stuck and not sure what to do check how much time do you have what’s your context and energy level and pick a task that you can complete.

Do you have any system helping you decide your next action? I would love to hear about it.

Photo by: Jason McHuff

If you’re into productivity you most likely have a list, probably there is more than one list. You may have action lists, things to do at some point, lists of ideas for holidays, books, movies, music. But with setting up dozens and dozens of list it comes a cost of maintaining them, keeping up to date and relevant.

At some point you realise that there is only a handful of list that you use always.

For me there are three lists like that:

• @projects – to keep a record of my open projects.
• @actions – to stay on top of my task and to-do.
• @waiting – to keep track of things I should receive or people to get back to me.

There are times when I consider dividing these lists and expanding in subset but that never works out very well.

Focusing on keeping these lists in check provides me with biggest payoff so making any changes is like fixing something that’s not broken.

Do you have any key list? Are there any that you can’t live with out?

photo Flickr by Al Abut

Getting started with implementing GTD may be a complex thing. There are many phrases and terms to understand and to wrap your head around.

I’ve collected a list of most important GTD terms and included a little description. Hope you will find it useful in your GTD journey.

4 criteria model of work – in order to decide what to do next, GTD proposes a four criteria which should assist in making the most appropriate decision. These include following elements: context- your location, time – available/required to complete the action, energy – required/available to complete the item, priority – importance of the item.

5 stages of workflow – this is a core of the GTD system. To deal with any work, ideas, projects which you have to do Allen proposes a series of steps which will help you get more organized. There are five stages of this process starting with, collecting, processing, followed by organising, review and finished with doing. Each step is a discrete element which assist in maintaining better focus and clarity.

Areas of focus – include some key personal and professional areas for which are responsible for on on-going basis. These areas form a core of your duties. This is designed as reminder to make sure that you’ve captured necessary actions and projects so you can stay on top of your responsibilities.

Context – generally refers to a place where the action can be completed. This could include actual locations like: at shop, at library, at office or an area like at desk, at online, at couch. The number of contexts will vary from person to person and generally should strike a balance between granularity and ease of reference.

Mental RAM – it’s the short term memory of your brain. Your brain has a limited capacity to store information in that space. The more incomplete items you keep in your RAM the more difficult it’s to maintain focus and concentration.

Mind sweep – is a simple exercise which allows you to clear your head. Anytime you can’t focus and you seem to be bombarded with countless of things take piece of paper and jot down all the things you want to deal with.

Natural planning model – designed to help bring more control and clarity into projects. It’s based on the a five stage process which aims at clarifying the purpose and principles, visioning how would the wild success look like, jotting all ideas about the project through brainstorming, organizing those ideas into sequences and slots and finally identifying next actions.

Next action – is a next physical activity that can be completed as part of a project or a stand alone task.  The key element is that it starts with a verb like read, write, call etc.

Project – is any endeavour that takes more than one step to complete. Category of projects can encapsulate things from buying new printer to creating a new division in a company. The main premise for such wide interpretation of project is that this way you will track any item that needs to be finished.

Project support materials – a category of documents which have been collected as part of a project. This can incorporate things like project notes, system documentation, drawings, results of brainstorming sessions, budget calculations, presentations, correspondence, magazines etc.

Ubiquitous capture – an ability to capture ideas, information, thoughts in any place you’re. The aim is to limit the time between the occurrence of the idea and writing it down so that one can continue with the task at hand and keep the head clear.

Someday/maybe – this list is parking lot for any ideas, projects, actions that are not active but you don’t want to loose a track of those. There will be things you’re not sure about or things you would like to do at some later date. Perhaps you have some ideas for gifts for next Christmas. Someday/Maybe list is for all those items.

Trigger list – a list which should assist you in completing a thorough mind sweep. It includes reminders of different areas of your life that you may need to look. Rather than posing specific questions it’s simply a list of phases and words that could spark a thought about something you should look at. It most useful when you’re head is full of chaos and it’s difficult to find a starting point and start clearing it.

Tickler file – it’s a set of 43 folders where you store items which you need to look at or retrieve at some point in the future. It’s a place for all the items you don’t need know but will require later. 12 folders represent each month and 31 folders refer to each day in the current month. The usual content of ticker file includes tickets for upcoming events, bills to pay, leaflets etc.

Weekly review – one of the crucial elements of successful GTD system. Weekly review aims at re-evaluating your situation, it’s a time designed to make sure your system is current and up to date. Weekly review focuses on empting your head, checking your priorities for next week, looking at projects and actions, considering some of the someday items. 

Waiting for – a list designed to track all the items where you’re expecting something to be done by someone else. It can be a letter from insurance company, a response to an email you’ve sent, an item to be returned by a friend.

Below is the list of topics that I’ve covered.

1. GTD Project Series: Natural planning model
2. GTD Project series – project tools
3. GTD Projects series – software list
4. GTD Project Series – executing a project

Just to summarize in couple sentences the main concepts.

Firstly everything should be a project,  at least every outcome that takes more that two steps. Why is that? Mainly because it forces you to keep track of all your open projects and secondly in your busy life it’s easy to drop a ball when you juggle a lot of them.

When ever you finish something you can check your project list and see what’s out there. If you’ve been tracking your projects even on a simple list, it’s almost guaranteed that you will be better at completing things and following through.

We all want clarity and whether we realize that or not, we like the routines and to follow a path. By referring to the planning model and establishing the purpose, vision and actions we are getting a clear vision of what we want to achieve and how to go about it. No need to re-think what’s next, just use the plans.

You will hear that tools are not they factor to increasing productivity and that’s true. No tool will enforce the right behaviours as you rather abandon the tool then change your habit. Yet finding a good set off applications can reduce the friction of tracking projects and actions. So as long as you don’t obsess with finding the perfect tool and master what you have spending some time searching good software will payoff.

I hope you’ve found this series useful. Please share your best practices or problems you’re facing when working on projects.

Three weeks ago I’ve covered the natural planning model which describes how a project comes to life from defining the purpose to listing out all next actions. The end result of this is a project plan which outlines necessary details and action sequences etc.

The remaining element is the execution of the plan. Often times all planning and brainstorming makes us very excited about the project but when it comes to doing our energy goes down and we things falter.

How do you tie project plan with actions and make progress? There are two ways you can approach that.

Big chunks (all you can eat approach)

Since you’ve already spend some time planning your project plan contains majority if not all of necessary tasks. Make an appointment with yourself for 3-4 hours and get to work.
Use project plans as your task list to complete different elements of the project. In order for this approach to work is a very little number of dependencies and people involved to there is no unnecessary holdup and waiting for other to complete their part.

I find this approach useful when you have a relatively small project which needs to be finished quickly. The main reason it works well is that I have planned my steps and rather that think of what I need to do is just execute one after another.

Chipping away (small bites)

Majority of us have a number of open projects at one time. In most cases these can’t be completed on one sitting as we have to wait for other people to do something for us. Once that is done we can mover another part of the project. As different demands press on us it’s difficult to move things forward and often thing stale for weeks. One of the ways to overcome that is to work in small increments and finding couple minutes to 1 hour to complete a single action should be within your reach.

Rather than use project plan as your immediate task list start by reviewing your project list and establish what are the projects you want to focus on this week. I suggest that your pick between 3-5 items. This small number will be easier to fit into your schedule especially if you have a large number of meetings.

Once you decided on your key projects review the plans for these and extract 1-3 next actions per project and put them on your relevant action list.

Make sure that they are on top of your list and tackle them early in your day.

By sticking to this routine you can make a solid progress on 3 to 5 projects in a given week. It may not look like a lot but it’s definitely better that agonising over the number of open project and not making any progress at all.

As you can imagine different people will use different tools to manage their task and bigger outcomes. The actual choice will be driven by couple factor that include project needs, price, complexity of the tool.

I personally think that first three categories will be sufficient for managing any personal or small projects that require a limited degree of planning and tracking. If however you’re assigned with organising a conference or building a house then you need to consider more powerful solutions.   

My current tool of choice is Evernote and Freeplane. I also play a bit with GanttProject to better grasp concept of Gantt chars and it’s benefits.

One of the simplest ways for kick starting a project is opening a simple document dumping all the ideas and then putting them in the right order. Great way to do that is to use an outliner. The choice of applications for that purpose is massive however the more popular are:

- Notepad (free)

- Notepad++ (free and open source)

- Microsoft Word (commercial)

- Onenote (commercial)

- Evernote (free/commercial)

If visual thinking is your domain there are countless mind mapping solution available online and for you desktop. If you want to start playing with the concept and use them for managing projects good choices are:

- Freemind/Freeplane (free and open-source)

- XMind (free/commercial)

- Mind Manager (commercial)

As I noted in my last week’s post Gantt charts are fantastic way to put all the tasks involved in completion of a project into a time line. This can be further analysed for dependencies, critical paths etc. If you want to dive in and test few applications

- GanttProject (free and open source)

- Microsoft Excel (commercial)

- Google Docs (free/commercial)

- Toms Planner (free/commercial)

For big projects where you need to track a multiple things like tasks, milestones, people, resources, budget etc., you may need to refer to some power horse applications:

- Microsoft Project (commercial)

- OpenProj (free, open-source)

Saving documentation and research material can be integral part of the project so you need a tool to handle that too:

-Basecamp (commercial)

- Onenote (commercial)

- Evernote (free/commercial)

Do you use different tools for managing project? Please share your experiences in the comments section.

This is part two of series of posts focusing on GTD and project. Last week I’ve covered the natural planning model. This week I want to focus on some of the tools which you could use to make the process of managing projects a lot easier. Having the right tools around can assist in making sure that the project was fully captured and we can access the plan to review next actions and track progress.

When working on a project there are three categories of information that need to be taken care of.

• Brainstorming – this is where you collect all your ideas that are related to a project. Key element in the idea creation stage is to let them flow freely and record as quickly and easy as possible.
• Project plans – once you’re collected all your ideas related to a project you can start organising them into sections, components, next actions.
• Project support material – a major project will require a lot of research, planning, idea creation sessions, setting up new relationships, testing documentation etc. All these documents need to be kept on file and in one place so one can always refer to them when needed.

There are 7 tool types that can handle any project.

• Pen and paper – pen and paper is one of most versatile project tools. It’s dead simple and readily available. However the key of it is that it can be used for any aspect of project flow. You can use if for brainstorming, for organising your ideas into project plans. As you go on your research again pen and paper that can help you capture the stories behind things, the images, the details etc. For me almost every project starts with some scribbles captured on paper. I find it super easy and super simple to get things going. There is nothing distracting me. To kick off any project simply grab a pen and some paper that’s around you and start writing.
• Text outliners – another simple way to work your projects is to use text outliner. This application allow you to create multilevel structures that can be very easily reorganized and reshuffled when needed. For people who are fast typists using outliner can be a great way to dump all their ideas very quickly and then rearrange into a plan. There is no need to rewrite thing as you would do it on paper which some of you might find discouraging and waste of time. Due to simplicity text outliner can fulfil any purpose in project workflow. Although I’m no longer a big user of outliners I had some great results with applications like MS Onenote, Evernote and simple text file. If you’re big MS Word user the outline mode is pretty powerful.
• Mind maps – if visual representation of your projects is important for you than mind maps are definitely a place to explore. The concept of mind map is very simple and it basically describes creating a web of ideas interconnected with lines and relationships starting from one central point. If you use mind maps on paper they are a great way to brainstorm an idea, flesh things out and clear your head. However if you go a step further and start using mind map on a computer the possibilities expand greatly. You are not only able to brainstorm but you can manage the whole project from establishing the purpose to tracking next actions. You can move things around, drag and drop them between branches. There can be added almost infinite amount of detail as you add layer after layer additional points. As maps can be expanded and collapsed you can set the see only the relevant amount of information. The reason I like mind map is twofold. First I like the visual side of mind maps including web like structure, colours and lines. Second element is flexibility to organize things exactly as I want.
• Excel /Gantt charts – if you’re looking for little more advanced ways for managing projects and want to capture an lot detail associated with a task that later is analysed for various criteria excel and other spread sheet solutions might be for you. As oppose to mind maps this type of tool is most appropriate for actual tracking and laying out task rather than any creative work. It allows seeing the sequences and dependencies of various sections and elements of a project.
• Project management software – if you need to do some heavy lifting in terms of managing projects you may turn to a specialised applications. These programs allow tracking multiple steps, dependencies, resources, critical paths etc. For most individuals and smaller companies using this type of software wouldn’t be necessary and more likely would require more work to manage to system than it’s worth.
• Whiteboards - I must admit I don’t have a lot of experience with this tool but It’s inevitably great way to kick start a big project when you have to deal with a group of people. In a team or group setting the key is to make sure everyone has access to information. Whiteboard allow precisely that.During the brainstorming process every member of the group can see other ideas, build on them, purpose new solutions. Once the plan has been put in place whiteboards can become project dashboards communicating progress, current focus, obstacles etc.
• Document databases – some project require gathering a substantial amount of information and research that need to be stored and accessible by the team of kept for archiving purposes.One of the easier ways to manage this is to use already existing file and folder structure to save documents, notes etc. The key element is to make sure that information can be easily located and retrieved and act as a trigger for further idea generation or project development.

Managing a project can be an art of itself and it’s super easy to get focused on little details, finding a 20th way to organise the actions. As result you end up using project management software to keep track tyre change. The key is to use tools that are just right enough and for majority of people and project they have to deal with a simple sheet of paper or text file with ideas will bring more clarity and progress than the fanciest management tool.

Do you have projects that are stale and not going anywhere? Do you have new great idea but not sure how to implement it?

Taking on any project without a plan is a recipe for disaster. With dozens of other things coming your way and no plan to refer to it’s easy to lose a track, purpose and direction of any task.

David Allen in his Getting Things Done book outlines a five phase model called natural planning model.As you will see below many of the steps are simple common sense. Unfortunately often times we forget about them and search for new ways to get on track rather than really get back on it.

For most of us planning happens in our head quickly and effectively. Actually we barely notice it. However it’s worth to examine what are the stages of planning process.

Purpose and Principles

This is first and second step of the planning process. It’s about finding an answer to question “why do I/we do it”. It’s about defining what the purpose of the project is. It’s very simple but powerful question that brings clarity and direction to any project or endeavour. Getting this question straight acts as catalyst in defining following:

• success – if you know what done looks like you can then tell when project has been successfully finished.
• decisions- knowing why you do what you do makes the decision process a whole lot easier.
• resource allocation – there is never enough resources available, there are time limits, people limits, budgetary limits. Having clear picture of why let you find best ways to use available resources and align them in most effective ways.
• keeps your motivation – it’s not uncommon that we do things on autopilot, never knowing why we do it. “We always did that” you can often hear. Clarifying with your co-workers and employees why they do the project helps them better understand it and make the effort rather than slog through it.
• clarity & focus – it’s so easy to be distracted by feature creep, by adding new services, options, variations. You could always change something even by a tiny bit. In the end the project starts to drag on and on without end on horizon. Setting the why straight will get you focused on the core functionality of a product or service.
• more options – this is a paradox but defining purpose brings focus on one side and permits for greater creativity for designing the how element.

When setting up a new project I try to spend couple minute figuring out why I want to do it and what do I expect to deliver. Just to give you an example. I’m planning a weekend trip to London which is a gift for my wife’s birthday. Why am I doing this, first you give her the gift I promised, then to spend some quality time visiting museums, galleries etc.

Vision/Outcome

Where the Purpose and Principles describe the “why” the third element of the process is focused on defining “what”.

It’s about creating a clear picture of the success, the end state where a project is deemed finished. To make that picture more real try to see the success, smell it, feel it.

vision provides actual blueprint of the final result

Seeing yourself completing the project allows brain to create and discover new ideas, information and connections that are stored on subconscious level. Often times that lack of knowledge of how to do things is holding us back and we hope that someone will tell us what to do. Developing the skill of visioning we can bridge the gap of how by letting our creativity to do the job.

The result of outcome visioning can be a single line statement or paragraph and more. It all depends on your needs and the project you want to tackle.

Three steps of clarifying the outcome:

- view the project from beyond the end date

- envision WILD SUCCESS, total completion

- capture all features, elements, qualities of the image.

Going back to my London trip example the successful trip will be having spent 3 days enjoying the culture, sights, food and atmosphere.

Brainstorming

At this stage you know the answers to what and to why so it’s time to figure out the how.

This process is designed to allow you to fill all the blanks between where you are and where you want to get.

Brainstorming is a fantastic exercise that lets your creativity to go wild; all you have to do it note all the ideas.
Completing this in a group setting is really good as people have different experiences, knowledge, views and may contribute things you wouldn’t have come up with.

Let them flow out of your head for as long as necessary. Don’t judge or analyse go for the quantity not quality.

There are plenty of tools that can help you with brainstorming. Many people use text files and mind maps on their computer. My preference is pen and paper but I also swap it for a mind map.

Again I will use the London trip as example. As with any trip there is a lot consider, flights, time off at work, accommodation, transport, opening hours, money, places to see etc. I will jot down all these items and then use them to create a more concrete plan.

Organising

Once you’ve emptied your head you will start notice that natural order emerges. You will start to see patterns, sequences, connections between all those ‘random’ thoughts.

You can start with identifying larger parts and key elements. Than you can drill down to see if there are any sub-tasks or deadlines or other details that need to be added. The level of granularity will depend on you preferences but you should aim at creating a small enough chunks that you’re comfortable to complete in a single sitting.Once you finish organising process you will have a complete project plan.

I usually do it in a mind map or text outliner on my computer as I like the visual effects and ease of manipulating. But to be honest anything will work if you prefer pen and paper you’ll as well.

Next Actions

The final step of the planning is to decide on next actions that need to be taken to make things happen. This is a critical stage where your commitment to completion of the project is tested. There is no point in planning if you’re not intending to take any action.

When scanning your project plan for things to do you’re most likely to come across three categories of tasks:

• working on the steps – basically this is an actual thing to do like: read a book, email John, call Mike.
• doing more planning – sometimes you are still not 100% clear about the project, it’s plan etc. In such case you need to spend little more time fleshing things until you’re happy that you’ve captured everything.
• waiting for someone – some actions will belong to other people, so before you can move forward with anything you need to get an approval, receive a quote etc. For larger projects, parts of it are allocated to groups of people or outsourced and they become responsible for all next steps.

This is a basic overview of the workflow. Each time you’re facing a large task that can’t be fishing in one go try break it down in to smaller pieces. Setting up a project plan and action lists will help you keep track of things and make progress when possible.

Next week I will look at some of the tools that can assist you in managing projects.