The Case of the Missing Projects List
February 23rd, 2007 | by GTD Wannabe |I’ve recently come to the realization that I don’t actually have a real projects list. According to David Allen, in Getting Things Done,
The “Projects” list is not meant to hold plans or details about your projects themselves…it’s just a comprehensive index of your open loops. You actually won’t be working off the “Projects” list…The real value…lies in the complete review it can provide (at least once a week), allowing you to ensure that you have action steps defined for all of your projects, and that nothing is slipping through the cracks.
Now, I have created a little checklist for myself for doing my weekly review. In it, I have an entry for going through my projects list in EverNote. It turns out that I don’t have a “list” per se. Instead, I have a bunch of categories (headings, if you will), of projects that I’m working on. I can tell when a category relates to a project, because I put my project names in square brackets, e.g., [Research]. But these category headings are buried in thousands of other headings. There is no one place for me to see all of my ongoing projects, or open loops. As you can see from the snippet below, it’s a pain to actually see what projects I have on my plate.
From the next action side, I can output a list of projects that I currently have next actions for (from my todo.txt implementation). However, this just shows where I have an NA for a project – it definitely does not show me any projects for which I have *no* NAs. And really, that’s the whole point of that part of the weekly review – making sure that you have an NA for each and every project that you’re working on. And, as you can tell from the little piece below – I don’t seem to have that many different projects in my todo.txt file – which means that I’ve obviously lost track of some/a bunch/many open loops. Ooops.
So, I need to figure out a decent way of keeping track of my projects list. I’ve already determined that I can’t keep it in EverNote. EverNote really stores all of my project support materials, and it’s not suited to keeping one particular note open (say a project list), while you wander through the rest of the database, looking for information about what has been done, what needs to be done, etc.
I’m going to spend some time thinking about what I need my project list to be able to do, what it should look like, where I should keep it, etc. After determining my requirements, then I will create the list. Of course, the easiest way would just be to (gasp) write everything down on a piece of paper. Maybe I’ll just start with that. Other simple options would be a plain text file, a simple Excel spreadsheet (then I could add a bit of information to the projects, such as personal/research/delegated). Part of me wonders if I can include this in my todo.txt file somehow, maybe by just adding in a line per project. Then I could do some Perl magic to tell me what projects I have, which projects are matched with NAs, which aren’t, etc. Already, I can see this as a great way of coding the weekly review – simply have the Perl script tell me which open loops I have missed. Of course, this coding will take time. Hmmmm.
Anyway, I’m off to see what other people do with their project lists. Wish me luck, and stay tuned for “The Hunt for the Projects List”.
4 Responses to “The Case of the Missing Projects List”
By on Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
I don’t use EverNote, but… Couldn’t you assign a “Project” category to all your Project headings and then filter on that as needed?
By on Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
I could do something like this, but it would mean that for every project, I would have to create one special note. Then, the project category could automatically gather these notes.
It’s an interesting idea, and definitely doable. Except then, my project list would actually be a series of notes in EN, which means that I couldn’t quickly zip back and forth between my project list and my support materials (EN doesn’t support keeping two separate views of your notes).
I will have to think about it some more to see if I can leverage EN’s capabilities somehow to pull off a proper projects list.
By on Feb 23, 2007 | Reply
I’ve been using Mark Forster’s ‘Do It Tomorrow’ approach and that’s also the key piece I’m missing: a very simple master projects list that tells me what I’ve committed to.
I’ve gone back and forth on this, with no real solution. My hard-copy planner doesn’t offer quick update/edit capability.
The one approach I stuck with longest was a single Google Doc called Active Projects: quick to load, easy to edit and move stuff around. Update it as needed (really, only during a weekly review, or whenever you choose to do it), print it out as needed. Low-cost, low-overhead.
(By “Active,” I meant only what I could get to in the upcoming week.)
The Google Doc was an outgrowth of an earlier PBWiki page, which had held similar material. I had the unfortuantely brilliant thought that it would be easy to simply create a wiki page from the ProjectTitle, and store my project notes there. Efficiency! But I didn’t need to do that for very many projects, and I abandoned trying to link the Master Project List to any other document. It was simply faster to just scan the list, update the wording as needed, mark my NAs in my planner book for the week, and then move on.
I should probably go back to the single page idea, though the advantage of using Word or Excel would be that you could sort the lines , if you’re into that sort of thing, and I am sometimes. For subprojects, for example, they would all begin with the same project name, like
PASSPORT-subproject
PASSPORT-subproject
I think in your text file case, it should be easy to come up with a Project Outcome code so that you could only display project outcomes, not projects with NAs. But what I like about the single page idea is that if this week is filling up and you can’t get to all projects this week, then it’s simple to move a line out from under Active Projects to a Someday/Maybe page. (For Excel, perhaps moving it to a different tab.)
What I did recently at home was to write my big project names (like TAXES or SYS ANALYSIS HOMEWORK) on small slips of paper, shuffle them, pluck one from the top, set the timer for 30 minutes, work on them, take a break, pluck another from the list, set the timer, rinse, repeat.
What was good about this for me was the novelty and variety, also knowing I would be making some progress on everything instead of no progress on many things.
But during the week, these slips also served as my active projects list, and were compact and malleable.
The key is to use more paper but keep less of it. So when a project is done, toss the paper.
Sorry for the long-winded post! But the active project list is a key idea, I’m finding.
best — mike
By on Feb 25, 2007 | Reply
@brownstudy: Thanks for such a detailed and insightful comment. It’s nice to see that I’m on the right track :)