by David Allen
Identifying the Projects You Have
This last step in getting to the bottom of “in” requires a shift in perspective from the single-action details to the larger picture—your projects.
Again, I define a “project” as any outcome you’re committed to achieving that will take more than one action step to complete. If you look through an inventory of actions that you have already been generating—“Call Frank about the car alarm”; “E-mail Bernadette re conference materials”—you’ll no doubt recognize a number of things that are larger than the single action you’ve defined. There’s still going to be something about “car alarm” to do after the call to Frank, and there will still be something to handle about the conference after the e-mail to Bernadette.
I hope you’re able to see the very practical reason for defining projects as broadly as I do: If the action step you’ve identified will not complete the commitment, then you’ll need some stake in the ground to keep reminding you of actions you have pending until you have closure. You need to make a list of projects. A “Projects” list may include anything from “Give holiday party” to “Divest the Widget product line” to “Finalize compensation package.” The purpose of this list is not to reflect your priorities but just to ensure that you’ve got placeholders for all those open loops.
Right now you probably have between thirty and a hundred projects.
Whether you draw up your “Projects” list while you’re initially processing your in-basket or after you’ve set up your action lists doesn’t really matter. It just needs to be done at some point, and it must be maintained, as it’s the key driver for reviewing where you are and where you want to be.
For now, let’s make sure your organizing setup is “all systems go.”
7
Organizing: Setting Up the Right Buckets
HAVING A TOTAL and seamless system of organization in place gives you tremendous power because it allows your mind to let go of lower-level thinking and graduate to intuitive focusing, undistracted by matters that haven’t been dealt with appropriately. But your physical organization system must be better than your mental one in order for that to happen.
Airtight organization is required for your focus to remain on the broader horizon.
In this chapter I’ll lead you through the organizing steps and tools that will be required as you process your in-basket. As you initially process “in,” you’ll create lists and groupings of things you want to organize and you’ll invariably think of additional items to include. In other words, your organization system is not something that you’ll necessarily create all at once, in a vacuum. It will evolve as you process your stuff and test out whether you have put everything in the best place for you.
I got it all together,
but I forgot where
I put it.
—Anonymous
The outer ring of the Workflow Diagram (opposite) shows the main groupings into which things will go as you decide what they are and what needs to be done about them.
WORKFLOW DIAGRAM—ORGANIZING
The Basic Categories
There are seven primary types of things that you’ll want to keep track of and manage from an organizational perspective:
• A “Projects” list
• Project support material
• Calendared actions and information
• “Next Actions” lists
• A “Waiting For” list
• Reference material
• A “Someday/Maybe” list
The Importance of Hard Edges
It’s critical that all of these categories be kept pristinely distinct from one another. They each represent a discrete type of agreement we make with ourselves, and if they lose their edges and begin to blend, much of the value of organizing will be lost.
The categories must be kept visually, physically, and psychologically separate.
If you put reference materials in the same pile as things you still want to read, for example, you’ll go numb to the stack. If you put items on your “Next Actions” lists that really need to go on the calendar, because they have to occur on specific days, then you won’t trust your calendar and you’ll continually have to reassess your action lists. If you have a project that you’re not going to be doing anything about for some time, it must go onto your “Someday/Maybe” list so you can relate to the “Projects” list with the rigorous action-generating focus it needs. And if something you’re “Waiting For” is included on one of your action lists, you’ll continually get bogged down by nonproductive rethinking.
All You Really Need Is Lists and Folders
Once you know what you need to keep track of (covered in the previous chapter, on Processing), all you really need is lists and folders for reference and support materials. Your lists (which, as I’ve indicated, could also be items in folders) will keep track of projects and someday/maybes, as well as the actions you’ll need to take on your active open loops. Folders (digital or paper-based) will be required to hold your reference material and the support information for active projects.
Lots of people have been making lists for years but have never found the procedure to be particularly effective. There’s rampant skepticism about systems as simple as the one I’m recommending. But most list-makers haven’t put the appropriate things on their lists, or have left them incomplete, which has kept the lists themselves from being very functional. Once you know what goes on the lists, however, things get much easier; then you just need a way to manage them.
I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
As I’ve said, you shouldn’t bother to create some external structuring of the priorities on your lists that you’ll then have to rearrange or rewrite as things change. Attempting to impose such scaffolding has been a big source of frustration in many people’s organizing. You’ll be prioritizing more intuitively as you see the whole list, against quite a number of shifting variables. The list is just a way for you to keep track of the total inventory of active things to which you have made a commitment, and to have that inventory available for review.
When I refer to a “list,” keep in mind that I mean nothing more than a grouping of items with some similar characteristic. A list could look like one of three things: (1) a file folder with separate paper notes for the items within the category; (2) an actual list on a titled piece of paper (often within a loose-leaf organizer or planner); or (3) an inventory in a software program or on a digital assistant, such as Microsoft Outlook task categories or a category on a handheld PDA.
Organizing Action Reminders
If you’ve emptied your in-basket, you’ll undoubtedly have created a stack of “Pending” reminders for yourself, representing longer-than-two-minute actions that cannot be delegated to someone else. You’ll probably have anywhere from twenty to sixty or seventy or more such items. You’ll also have accumulated reminders of things that you’ve handed off to other people, and perhaps some things that need be placed in your calendar or a “Someday/ Maybe” kind of holder.
You’ll want to sort all of this into groupings that make sense to you so you can review them as options for work to do when you have time. You’ll also want to decide on the most appropriate way physically to organize those groups, whether as items in folders or on lists, either paper-based or digital.
The Actions That Go on Your Calendar
For the purposes of organization, as I’ve said, there are two basic kinds of actions: those that must be done on a certain day and/or at a particular time, and those that just need to be done as soon as you can get to them, around your other calendared items. Calendared action items can be either time-specific (e.g., “4:00-5:00 meet with Jim”) or day-specific (“Call Rachel Tuesday to see if she got the proposal”).
As you were processing your in-basket, you probably came across th
ings that you put right into your calendar as they showed up. You may have realized that the next action on getting a medical checkup, for example, was to call and make the appointment, and so (since the action required two minutes or less) you actually did it when it occurred to you. Writing the appointment into your calendar as you made it would then have been common sense.
The calendar should show only the “hard landscape” around which you do the rest of your actions.
What many people want to do, however, based on old habits of writing daily to-do lists, is put actions on the calendar that they think they’d really like to get done next Monday, say, but that then actually might not, and that might then have to be taken over to following days. Resist this impulse. You need to trust your calendar as sacred territory, reflecting the exact hard edges of your day’s commitments, which should be noticeable at a glance while you’re on the run. That’ll be much easier if the only things in there are those that you absolutely have to get done on that day. When the calendar is relegated to its proper role in organizing, the majority of the actions that you need to do are left in the category of “as soon as possible, against all the other things I have to do.”
Organizing As-Soon-As-Possible Actions by Context
Over many years I have discovered that the best way to be reminded of an “as soon as I can” action is by the particular context required for that action—that is, either the tool or the location or the person needed to complete it. For instance, if the action requires a computer, it should go on an “At Computer” list. If your action demands that you be out in your car driving around (such as stopping by the bank or going to the hardware store), the “Errands” list would be the appropriate place to track it. If the next step is to talk about something face-to-face with your partner Emily, putting it into an “Emily” folder or list makes the most sense.
How discrete these categories will need to be will depend on (1) how many actions you actually have to track; and (2) how often you change the contexts within which to do them.
If you are that rare person who has only twenty-five next actions, a single “Next Actions” list might suffice. It could include items as diverse as “Buy nails” and “Talk to boss about staff changes” and “Draft ideas about off-site meeting.” If, however, you have fifty or a hundred next actions pending, keeping all of those on one big list would make it too difficult to see what you needed to see; each time you got any window of time to do something, you’d have to do unproductive resorting. If you happened to be on a short break at a conference, during which you might be able to make some calls, you’d have to identify the items that were calls among a big batch of unrelated items. When you went out to do odds and ends, you’d probably want to pick out your errands and make another list.
Another productivity factor that this kind of organization supports is leveraging your energy when you’re in a certain mode. When you’re in “phone mode,” it helps to make a lot of phone calls—just crank down your “Calls” list. When your computer is up and running and you’re cruising along digitally, it’s useful to get as much done on-line as you can without having to shift into another kind of activity. It takes more energy than most people realize to unhook out of one set of behaviors and get into another kind of rhythm and tool set. And obviously, when a key person is sitting in front of you in your office, you’d be wise to have all the things you need to talk about with him or her immediately at hand.
The Most Common Categories of Action Reminders
You’ll probably find that at least a few of the following common list headings for next actions will make sense for you:
• “Calls”
• “At Computer”
• “Errands”
• “Office Actions” or “At Office” (miscellaneous)
• “At Home”
• “Agendas” (for people and meetings)
• “Read/Review”
“Calls” This is the list of all the phone calls you need to make; you can work off it as long as you have a phone available. The more mobile you are (especially if you have a cell phone), the more useful you’ll find it to have one single list of all your calls: those strange little windows of time that you wind up with when you’re off-site or traveling—on a break or waiting for a plane, maybe—offer a perfect opportunity to work down your list. Having a discrete “Calls” list makes it much easier to focus and intuitively pick the best call to make in the moment.
I suggest that you take the time to write the phone number itself alongside each item. There are many situations in which you would probably make the call if the number was already there in front of you but not if you had to look it up.
“At Computer” If you work with a computer—particularly if you move around with a laptop or have a PC at work and another one at home—it can be helpful to group all those actions that you need to do when it’s on and running. This will allow you to see all your options for computer work to do, reminding you of all the e-mails you need to send, the documents you need to draft or edit, and so on.
Because I fly a lot, I even maintain an “OnLine” action list, separate from my “At Computer” one. When I’m on a plane, I can’t easily connect to the Web or to my server, as many actions require. So instead of having to rethink what I can and can’t do whenever I look at my “At Computer” list, I can trust that none of my “At Computer” actions require that I be connected, which frees my mind to make choices based on other criteria.
Think carefully about where and how you can and can’t do which actions, and organize your lists accordingly.
If you have a computer only at work, you may not need a separate “At Computer” list; “Office Actions” may cover those actions because the office is the only place you can do them anyway. (Similarly, if you have a computer only at home, and it’s not a laptop, you may be able to put computer-specific actions on your “At Home” list.)
“Errands” It makes a lot of sense to group together in one place reminders of all the things you need to do when you’re “out and about.” When you know you need to get in your car and go somewhere, it’s great to be able to look at the list while you’re on the road. Actions like “Get stock certificates from safety-deposit box,” “Pick up pictures at framers,” and “Buy petunias at nursery” would all go here.
This list could, of course, be nothing more elaborate than a Post-it that you keep in your planner somewhere, or a screen in an “Errands” category of the “To Do” section on your Palm organizer.
It’s often helpful to track sublists within individual “Errands” items. For instance, as soon as you realize you need something from the hardware store, you might want to make “Hardware Store” the list item and then append a sublist of all the things you want to pick up there, as you think of them. On the low-tech end, you could create a “Hardware Store” Post-it; on the high-tech side, if you were using a digital list, you could attach a “note” to “Hardware Store” on your list and input the details there.
We must strive to reach that simplicity that lies beyond sophistication.
—John Gardner
Because I travel in major metropolitan areas so much, I keep two “Errands” lists—“Errands—Ojai” (where I live) and “Errands—Anywhere,” for all those other things I can pick up even when I’m on the road. “T-connectors for irrigation” would go on “Errands—Ojai,” but “Get dress socks” would go on “Errands—Anywhere.”
“Office Actions”/“At Office” If you work in an office, there will be certain things that you can do only there, and a list of those will be a useful thing to have in front of you then—though obviously, if you have a phone and a computer in your office, and you have “Calls” and “At Computer” as separate lists, they’ll be in play as well. I’d use an “Office Actions” or “At Office” list for anything that required an Internet connection available only, or even most conveniently, in the office—for example, a reminder to download a large software program
from the Web would go on this list for me.
“At Home” Many actions can be done only at home, and it makes sense to keep a list specific to that context. I’m sure you’ve got numerous personal and around-the-house projects, and often the next thing to do on them is just to do them. “Hang new print,” “Organize CDs,” and “Switch closets to winter clothes” would be typical items for this grouping.
If you have an office at home, as I do, anything that can be done only there goes on the “At Home” list. (If you work only at home and don’t go to another office, you won’t need an “Office Actions” list at all—the “At Home” list will suffice.)
“Agendas” Invariably you’ll find that many of your next actions need to either occur in a real-time interaction with someone or be brought up in a committee, team, or staff meeting. You have to talk to your partner about an idea for next year; you want to check with your spouse about his schedule for the spring; you need to delegate a task to your secretary that’s too complicated to explain in an e-mail. And you must make an announcement at the Monday staff meeting about the change in expense-report policies.
Standing meetings and people you deal with on an ongoing basis may need their own “Agenda” lists.