Ep. 322: Long Lists  ## Metadata - Author: [[Getting Things Done]] - Full Title: Ep. 322: Long Lists - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/0f3d678e-0531-4372-b5ec-6e6a9eaf69c6 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Separate Lists by Item Type** - Separate your lists strictly by item types: projects, next actions, waiting for, and someday/maybe. - Mixing these categories makes lists longer and less effective. Transcript: John Forrester Work with that and adjust if you are finding that your lists are too long. And that's what we're going to talk about. On our best practices, we have two things. It's pretty straightforward. Two things we consider to be best practices. Is distinct lists of projects and next actions plus you're waiting for and someday maybe the worst practice would be to mix those where you're looking at a list that's got a combination Of projects and actions stuff you're only waiting for stuff that you're not really committed to that kind of a mixed list is definitely going to make your lists longer and less effective And anamaria i think that's something you also teach early in the in the fundamentals course as well as the idea of not mixing lists. Is that right? Ana Maria Gonzalez Yeah, sure. I mean, the bottom line, and I think everyone on this call probably knows this, but the bottom line, if you're needing like a refresher, if you want to kind of share with someone else best Practices, you want to at the very least separate actionable inventory from non-actionable and never have those mixed up. But then within each, ([Time 0:01:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/18255626-b998-4ac7-a447-01f8e7dea188)) - **Track Projects and Next Actions Separately** - Keep projects as multi-step outcomes on a separate list and next actions as single physical tasks. - Track 'waiting-for' items separately since you cannot act on them until the other party completes their part. Transcript: Ana Maria Gonzalez Yeah, sure. I mean, the bottom line, and I think everyone on this call probably knows this, but the bottom line, if you're needing like a refresher, if you want to kind of share with someone else best Practices, you want to at the very least separate actionable inventory from non-actionable and never have those mixed up. But then within each, within the actionable inventory and within the non-actionable inventory, then there are best practices for organizing each one. So under your actionable items, let's say, you will typically have outcomes that will require more than one action step or another way of thinking about that will be multi-step outcomes That more or less will take 12 months or so to be completed. And that's what we define as projects. And that you want to have on a separate list on its own, where you're just keeping, you know, like an index of those project titles. But then you want to have an inventory of also your actionable items that are done in one sitting or what we refer to as your next actions. So those two are not mixed up because they're very distinct one from the other. One is just your index of project titles, your multi-step outcomes that will get done within a year or so. And the other one is your list of next actions, which are your one sitting items or, you know, single step items, those next physical visible activity that will either move the situation Forward, let's say in this case, any one of your given projects, or will get you to done. So they're quite different, one from the other. And then, of course, there's also an inventory of actionable items that need to be kept separately from these two. And those are all the items that you're waiting for one way or the other. Either you're waiting for a decision to be made. You're waiting for an answer to come back to you. You're waiting for products that you order online. You were waiting for a reimbursement. You're waiting for theater tickets. Whatever it is that you find yourself, I am on waiting for mode. In other words, I cannot take another action ([Time 0:02:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15d21f68-ade9-4749-9e45-b989ea84a22f)) - **Use Contexts for Next Actions** - Use context to organize next actions by where the action can be done physically or psychologically. - Consider contexts like 'phone', 'office', or even 'with person X' to narrow down your actionable list. Transcript: Ana Maria Gonzalez Because maybe just one next actions list would just not do it. And particularly today, we're talking about long lists that may very quickly result into a long list if you just have it as one next action. John Forrester Right. Ana Maria Gonzalez And context, just to kind of give it context, basically means where does the action happen? In other words, once you're clear on what your next action is, where does it happen? And then based on that answer, you start creating lists. So we use the word context to pretty much help you understand how to organize the next action in relationship to where does it happen. Does it happen at the phone? Does it happen at home? Does it happen at the office? Does it happen at the train? Does it happen when you're out and about? Does it happen when you're with John? Does it happen, you know, when you're with your lawyer? Does it happen anywhere? ([Time 0:07:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d5bb531-4eeb-4aee-bd2a-5a32e441b3e1)) - **Include Small Projects in Reviews** - Keep small projects on your projects list and their next actions on next actions list, regardless of size or timeframe. - This discipline reduces stress by tracking all projects cleanly during the weekly review. Transcript: John Forrester Before we go on too much more with context. One is distinct lists of projects and next actions. One of the comments was, what about small projects, things that are going to be done in a month or less that only may have a couple of actions? I highly recommend that you still distinguish those. You put the project outcome on your projects list and the next action or actions on your next actions lists. And don't talk yourself out of that rigor just because you think the project will finish in a month or less. I can only say I strongly recommend that you stick to this discipline for, I'm going to say a couple of months at least to give it a chance, because I think you'll find that it's very stress-relieving Psychologically to track all of your projects, not just the ones that you think are larger projects. The reason I say this is because for most of us, it's really hard to know exactly how many steps a project may have. So if you think it might only have two steps, and it'll be done in less than a month, you could treat it as not really a project. And then you find out it's got more things or it starts to morph into something else. ([Time 0:08:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b974c819-0bcf-4a8d-b897-a880b1656607)) - **Review Projects Based on Weekly Needs** - Decide project status based on whether you need weekly review reminders for moving it forward. - Simple outcomes like "pick up someone at airport" may not be true projects but direct calendar reminders. Transcript: Ana Maria Gonzalez Well, what if it's a small project as opposed to a large project? I don't even know what that means. What do you mean by a small project? What do you mean by a large project? Because then basically what I'm reading is that, well, it would take less than a month. So then is the question, is it a short time frame project versus a long time frame project? I still, I would ask, what does that mean? See, you want to use a criteria where you go, will this be an outcome that I need to review as part of my weekly review? Even if it only qualifies for one review or two reviews or three or four or 12 reviews. The question is, is this outcome one that I need to review as part of my weekly review so that I can make sure I'm moving this situation forward or I'm bringing it to the end, whether it's Because it has two actions, three, four, or 150. Eligible criteria that I can then teach anyone because then we're all going to be under the same understanding. Oh, yeah, this is something that I will want to look at as part of my weekly review. Because there are some outcomes. And as part of level two projects and priority, we talk about this difference. There are some outcomes that even though they're multi-step, they still don't, they don't qualify for your, for your projects list. And you may go, what? Now you're really confusing me. Because many times, these are things that live will remind you. I mean, they're second nature to you. There is no, you know, kind of risk of you forgetting about the next action because you didn't review it as part of your weekly review. For example, get that at the airport. He's arriving in a month. So you may go, well, a month, that kind of qualifies in terms of timeframe. Well, get that at the airport, it's more than one action step. Why is that not on my projects list? Well, how much do you need to be reminded so that you identify the next action as part of your weekly review when you look at a project called Get That At The Airport? And you may go, nothing. All I need to be reminded is the day that he arrived to get to the airport. And that's an example of something that just goes on your calendar Tuesday at 3 p.m. On, you know, whatever, March 2nd, get that at the airport, flight number, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing I need to do to get to mark that outcome done other than show up at the airport. If, on the other hand, there are things around that visit that you need to get ready for, that you need to prepare, that you need to organize, et cetera, et cetera, well, that may be the Project. You know, given that dad is coming and given that dad is visiting, you know, I need to move children from their room to another room. I need to organize that room and make it ([Time 0:09:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/165a9460-b3b1-4d43-b0df-be8fe09a31a6)) - **Incubation Defines Non-Actionable Items** - Incubation allows items to stay in your system without current action but still be reassessed later. - Someday/maybe and tickler files help manage these ideas until you're ready to commit or delete. Transcript: John Forrester Incubate and someday maybe someday maybe is a form of incubation. The other one that comes to mind for me is tickler file where you. File or a digital one on your calendar where you move something out to a future date to reconsider. You're not deciding about it now. You're putting it out in the future when you may know more about what you'd like to do and be ready to commit to it or not. Those are both forms of incubation, someday maybe, and tickler. Ana Maria, anything else to say about the distinction there? Ana Maria Gonzalez Yeah, no, that's, you know, incubate, it's a very interesting bucket, let's say, to describe because since it's not exactly black or white, incubate probably fits in the middle because It's not a non-actionable 100% bucket, neither it's an actionable 100% bucket because its nature is that it will transform in the future. So today, as I'm emptying my in, I may come across something that today I decide to not do anything about it. However, I may still want to consider in the future. So is that in between that it's often a bit like, oh my God, what is it? Is it this or is it that? Well, it's neither. But it kind of fits both based on your agreement with yourself in this moment. So in this moment, I'm not going to do anything about learning to play the guitar. I'm not. But I may want to in the future. So I will add that learn to play the guitar as a someday maybe item on my list. So that's basically me deciding as I'm emptying my in this idea that I had of learning to play the guitar that I wrote myself a note about. Now that I'm emptying my in, I'm going to go, I'm going to incubate this and a place where I can incubate it on my someday maybe list. Because my someday maybe list is something that I look at every week so every week I'm going to ask myself hey is it time now to learn to play the guitar yes or no or I could say I'm going to Incubate this and I don't want to see it until a year from now I don't even want to be bothered weekly to asking myself hey do you want to play the guitar now or not I want to put this thing out There a year from today. I'm just going to kind of make that wild guess. And then you can put it on your calendar, as John was saying, and kind of tickle yourself in one year with the thought of, hey, do you want to learn to play the guitar this year? Kind of thing. So eventually it will become actionable or not. Because in one year you may say, you know what? I don't want to play the guitar now or next year or never. I'm deleting ([Time 0:15:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e49fb200-6ca1-4b82-94a4-627299c08865)) - **Be Flexible with Contexts** - Adapt contexts flexibly since 'online' vs. 'offline' changed meaning over time. - Consider unique physical or psychological environments to organize next actions effectively. Transcript: John Forrester You're not committing to take action other than reviewing them when it's appropriate. And now let's go into the second item there, next actions categorized by context. This is getting a lot of discussion lately from people who might say contexts are out of date. If you read David's book, the contexts don't make sense anymore i would encourage you to be more flexible in your thinking about contexts and not just limit yourself to the idea that A context has to be at the computer or not at the computer because david would be the first to acknowledge that things change when he originally wrote the book, the context of whether You're online or offline was significant. These days, you're probably online for almost everything. So online, offline may not be a useful context. And you might need to refine that more about assuming I'm online. So that would be part of your where. If I'm always, if where I am is always online, then that's part of my where that I can take into account in coming up with even more granular contexts within online. On the other hand, about online one of my favorite examples of this is when i lived in los angeles years ago i would go visit a friend who lived down near the beach some very pricey real estate Down there in manhattan beach nonetheless on the beach where he lived, there was no cell service. Somehow it was down there out of line of sight or away from a cell tower so that there was no phone service, much less decent broadband internet over a Wi-Fi connection. You had to be wired in to get good service. So anytime somebody says I'm always online, I just say, maybe, but are there ever any times when you're not? Are you going through a long tunnel and suddenly you have no connectivity? So consider that. Most of the time you may be online, but think about the times when you're not and whether you're offline enough that you want to have a context where you can still be productive when you're Not online. ([Time 0:20:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/37df2a03-772e-4f5a-8a4b-a974070b79c2)) - **Adjust List Lengths to Your Needs** - Customize list lengths to fit your lifestyle and ways of working; there is no "should" on list size. - Regular reviews keep lists trustworthy; without review, long lists become overwhelming and ineffective. Transcript: Ana Maria Gonzalez One over here. How long should your list be, right? Because I think a lot of this discussion, it's leading to this next conversation. Because it's also true that sometimes we may become very creative at creating lists, feeling creative lists, feeling not creative lists, feeling sort of creative lists. John Forrester And then everyone listening or watching this is a smart, sensitive, creative, imaginative person, perhaps over creative anyway. Ana Maria Gonzalez And then i would say be careful um because if when you do your reviews you find that you know you created 25 categories because you wanted to include types of work and energy level and psychological Environment physical environment and in between and etc and then you go i got nothing on at least eight of those nix them because they're probably not needed. I always go watch out for hideouts, meaning sometimes in this attempt of, you know, personalizing our GTD system. And no, I'm not at the computer. I'm online and I'm online high energy and I'm online low energy and I'm online mid energy or whatever. We create too many lists, it's easy for things to hide out, to get lost, to lose sight, and then to potentially not being, not getting done, you know, at the appropriate time, let's say. So just be mindful of that. There's no right or wrong way of going about this. Honestly, as I think many of you know me by now, or John knows me, the word should gives me an analogy. Like there's a part of me that goes, who says should? Who says I cannot have 155 items on my calls list? If I feel, you know, in control of that list, as well as who says that I cannot have three different calls lists with, you know, 50 items on each because that helps me feel more in control Of that list. Either or it's going to work. It's really up to you. In general, and I'm going to repeat it in general, please don't them. So if you're finding yourself in that same situation, then sure, it's important to talk about what to do about those long lists. And maybe you are one of those that go 50, 50 is nothing. 50 is my short list. My list are typically 200. Am I wrong then? No. It's each one. It's very individual. So when we think about long lists, basically, as John wrote here, they need to be as long as they need to be. I mean, there's no one better answer than the other, as long as you make sure that you're reviewing them regularly. For sure. I mean, don't let these things become black holes, right? Or the hideouts, as I was saying, or become outdated or incomplete, because then more than providing a service to you, they're going to provide a disservice. In other words, the contrary effect will be created, which is you write lists to get things off your mind. You honestly don't create lists to get things done. You create them to get them off your mind. ([Time 0:27:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f66755b5-d2e0-4e5b-9cc8-1fe5d597ab05)) - **Segment Large Lists by Natural Categories** - Breakdown large lists by natural segments like personal vs. professional or time zones. - Reviewing smaller segmented lists makes decision-making easier and more efficient. Transcript: John Forrester Pay attention to what your lifestyle is telling you about what your context should be. Ana Maria Gonzalez And I think I'm going to just piggyback on something Mark just wrote. So the trade-off of chopping up lists is the difficulty of reviewing many more lists. I think I agree from a standpoint and I disagree from another standpoint. Because unless we're talking about weekly review, we're never really reviewing more lists than what we can be reviewing based on context. So that shouldn't really generate a challenge. For example, we had a client where his calls list, I think it was getting to 100 plus. So it was really becoming too long. Each time he was on, you know, I'm at the phone, I have time, I have energy, I'm going to get calls done. In order to decide which one of the 100, well, you know, it was cumbersome, it was long, blah, blah, blah. So basically what we identified was one cut could be, well, is there a, do you have a combination here of personal calls and professional calls? Will that help if you kind of separate them? Because you may say, well, I'm at the phone. I have the energy. I have the time, but I'm in office hours. I'm going to address work calls. That could be a fine, you know, additional criteria, right? And then that list of 100 may turn into whatever other number. Or I had another client where really he had different time zones that he was working with. So he worked off California, but then he had European time zone clients, and then he had Asia time zone clients, and then he had East Coast US time zone clients. So breaking the calls list by time zones was super helpful because then, you know, as he arrived in the office in California, he would be addressing the calls based on time zones so that He would find the person. So that automatically will shrink the list, which would not result on too many lists because you would only review the appropriate one. So those are just thoughts where you can go back to your list and go, oh, you know, is there another cut to this that it's going to be natural and helpful to me to shorten the inventory so That when I happen to be reviewing the list, I can get to the decision faster. It's not like the person with 100 reminders could not get to the decision. It's just obviously it would take him longer because we have to be looking at 100 items instead of 25 items, let's say, right? The same will be true with reading review. You ([Time 0:32:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e1b98042-778a-4aa1-8e5d-7f916c8fd7fa))