Getting Things Done - Project Planning

• Maintain control in two axes

  • Horizontally - maintain coherence across all activities in which you are involved. Have a system that lets you keep track of them and easily switch from one task to another.
  • Vertically - maintain thinking up and down the track of individual topics and projects.

• The key aspects of control are that:

  • Outcomes and next actions are well defined
  • Reminders are in place for these outcomes and actions.

• Planning can be done informally - with nothing more than a pen and paper. In fact, the natural way we plan often saves us more time and energy

• Thinking in more effective ways about projects and situations can make things happen sooner, better, and more successfully

The Natural Planning Process §

• For any given task, in order to plan for the task our mind does the following:

Purpose §

• Define the purpose — Why you are doing it? and principles — what are your constraints, standards, and boundaries?.
• Learn to ask Why? because
  • It defines success - purpose serves as the metric for measuring our progress towards success.
  • It creates decision-making criteria - there’s no way to know these criteria without asking the fundamental why?
  • It aligns resources - resources should be allocated with a clear goal in mind.
  • It motivates - if there’s no good reason to do something, it’s not worth doing.
  • It clarifies focus - the goal makes things clearer.
  • It expands options - when you know the underlying why, you can come up with creative solutions to meet that goal
• Define your standards
  • What policies should apply to meeting the goal?
  • How should others approach the goal?
  • What behavior might undermine the project? Can you prevent it?
  • What defines an excellent outcome for this project?

Outcome §

• Envision the outcome — what do you want to happen?
• When you focus on something, you create ideas and thought patterns you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
• You won’t see how to do it until you see (imagine) yourself doing it. You often need to make it up in your mind before you can make it happen in real life.
• Three basic steps for envisioning the outcome:
  • View the project from beyond the completion date. “Wouldn’t it be great if …”
  • Envision what wild success would look like (suspend “Yeah, but…”-isms)
  • Capture features, aspects, qualities you imagine in place.

Brainstorming §

• Brainstorming — how can we achieve the outcome? Are there any ideas relevant to the goal?
• Give yourself permission to capture and express any idea and then figure out later how it fits and what to do with it.
• Brainstorming not only lets you capture original ideas but generate new ones that might not have occurred to you if you held back.
• If there are holes in your ideas, just figure out what you’re missing.
• The basic principles are as follows. Aim to expand not to contract
  • Don’t judge, challenge, evaluate or criticize
  • Quantity not quantity
  • Put analysis and organization in the background.

Organizing §

• Based on what comes up during brainstorming, sort things based on
  • Components - are there subprojects that need to be done?
  • Priorities - which ideas are the most important?
  • Sequences - what is the order which things should go?
• Organization can only happen when you see the natural organization that emerges — and this can only happen when you have many ideas to pool from.
• Once you perceive a basic structure, your mind will start trying to “fill in the blanks.”
• Organize to the appropriate degree — not too much or too little.

Next Steps §

• Identifying next actions.
• Answering the question about what specifically you would do about something physically if you had nothing else to do will test the maturity of your thinking about the project.
• Two principles:
  • Decide on next actions for each of the current moving parts of the project.
  • Decide on the next action in the planning process, if necessary.
    • If there is more to plan, then planning becomes the next action.
    • If the next action is not yours, then you must clarify whose it is.
• The correct amount of planning is the appropriate amount — as much as you need to get the project off your mind; where everything is clear and the only thing left to do is to do.
  • If something is unclear or you cannot determine the next action, go back to the previous steps.
    • If there is a lack of clear direction, create a new plan and organize.
    • If there is lack of clarity at the planning level, there is likely a need for more brainstorming to generate ideas.
    • If, in brainstorming, the ideas are too fuzzy, shift focus to the vision of the outcome.
    • If the outcome or vision is unclear, ask why and determine purpose.
  • If more action is needed, start from the top and work your way down until you are unstuck.
    • Define the purpose — why is more action needed? To what end does the project serve?
    • Envision the outcome
    • Brainstorm some solutions
    • Organize the solutions to a plan.
    • If there is a plan but we are still stuck, ask what is the next action and who does it?

Pitfalls §

• The main problem is that how we normally plan is not usually how we naturally plan. Common Pitfalls:
• Starting with “good” ideas. We cannot evaluate the merit of an idea without having ideas; Also, don’t wait to have a good idea.
• Planning abstractly: Writing a plan that has little to do with operational reality (i.e., putting the cart before the horse)
• Reactive Planning. Not having a plan at all, or planning stuff last minute. In fact, reactive planning is the reverse of natural planning because:
  • It starts with doing
  • Because there is little structure, there is now a need to organize
  • The ad hoc structure might be insufficient so then we brainstorm for good ideas.
  • Then we question what the goal really is.

Links §

• Getting Things Done — The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen