The horror! The horror! (what I’m learning from GTD)
The numbers are terrifying.
I just finished my first real weekly review of my Getting Things Done setup, which I’m running on OmniOutliner Pro with the kGTD scripts. I’ve been doing GTD since December, but I’ve had a lot of time out of town, so up to this point, I had only done one moderately real weekly review.
The weekly review is, in large part, a survey of what projects I have going, and what things I have listed under “I’d maybe like to get to these someday.”
A project is pretty much anything that will take more than one step to accomplish, and anything I have listed here anywhere is something I couldn’t have taken care of, once and for all, in a couple minutes.
OK, then, the numbers…
- I have 23 next-items that are just single tasks, not part of any larger project.
- I have 27 projects on my someday/maybe list.
- And I have 144 projects going now (!!!), each with a next-action I’ve figured out to be the very next thing I need to do to make progress on the respective project. Remember, none of these next-actions is just a “few minutes” thing.
Geez! And some qualitative observations:
- Almost all of the 144 projects are things I’m doing for my job.
- Many, if not most, of the 27 projects being put off for now, on my someday/maybe list, are much more interesting to me than the lion’s share of the 144 projects on the live list.
Hence the title of this post. This is, however, very useful information for me - it’s quite impressive to be able to see this so blatantly available. Clearly, some changes are in order here!
January 10th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
I find myself in a similar situation, typically I’ve got a few things that simply must be done quickly because of impending deadlines, plus so many multi-step projects that I can’t decide which one to focus on first. I have a bad habbit of focusing on the quick or fun longer term projects, not prioritizing the longer term projects and then having a deadline sneak up on me. Just keeping track of my todo list seems to take up a lot of time. RSS feeds and email also seem to take up way to much of my time. I guess I’m a candidate for GTD…
January 11th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
144 is a lot for a GTD-based system. As you point out so well, just *having* that information puts you into a great position to start asking some good questions… Nice!
January 13th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
That’s funny! I think I have one thing on my someday/maybe list. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to dream? (My one item is: learn the cello). I know I have more for that list but I don’t allow myself to think about it very often.
But on the upside, my inbox is EMPTY and my mind is calm.
I’m not sure it is that surprising that the majority of your projects are work-related, I would say, however, that 144 is a lot. Some questions you might ask are: are these projects outwardly or inwardly imposed? I have to ask myself that A LOT.
I didn’t do the tickler folder system (partially because we don’t have room to allocate another file drawer for me) but I do use my calendar a lot more than I used to. I find the hardest part is actually forcing myself to write everything down. Especially the small stuff that I was so used to keeping track of in my head. But wow…when I write it down and know that it is safely stored in my PDA, it really reduces the anxiety I wasn’t even aware I had.