Ep. 333: Super Lists for You  ## Metadata - Author: [[Getting Things Done]] - Full Title: Ep. 333: Super Lists for You - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/51a642b9-13cd-413e-ad42-f0cae91ea335 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Attractive Lists Beat Amorphous Blobs** - Lists should attract you rather than repel you to increase follow-through. - An Transcript: John Forrester Hi, everyone. This is John Forrester, and we're here for a webinar, Super Lists for You. This webinar is about helping you make your GTD lists better. Just the fact that you have lists puts you ahead of 99.9999. That's an exact measure that many people in the world, because that many people in the world are still carrying things around in their head or they think their email inbox is their list Manager. You actually have lists of projects and next actions and waiting for and things like that. So good for you. This is about making those lists a bit better. Ideally, you'll see some things that you can improve. And if you're already doing all of these, it'll be just a time to pat yourself on the back and say, I am doing really well. What makes a super list? Essentially, you're attracted versus being repelled by the list. ([Time 0:00:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d4e50a3f-46e3-440d-aedc-58ea04d0e931)) - **Use A Practical Project Definition** - Define a project as a result achievable within a year that requires more than one action. - Break outcomes into one-sitting actions to decide if something is a project or a next action. Transcript: John Forrester A project is defined as a result that can be accomplished within a year requiring more than one action. Well, I have some that are 13 months. Is that okay? Sure, that's fine. So this is just to help to get things off your mind and a working definition of projects. If we start splitting hairs too much, we can get bogged down in hair splitting instead of accomplishing what we're here to do. For the moment, let's just say that it's a project is a result to accomplish within a year requiring more than one action. And again, if you want to split hairs, we can start getting into the definition of an action. Is an action something you can do in five minutes? Or if I sit here for an hour, is that considered an action? I've always found it useful to say an action is something you can do in one sitting, more or less. Of course, different people sit for different lengths of time, and most of us sit too long. So think of it as something you can do that's a very granular defined chunk there that doesn't have to extend into another day or something like that. If it requires more than one of those actions, it's a project. ([Time 0:03:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cbfd801d-2594-4a0c-a380-8b4817a55b89)) - **Make Project Outcomes Obvious** - Make each project title clearly state the desired outcome so 'done' is obvious. - Rewrite vague entries like "retirement plans" into specific outcomes you can recognize. Transcript: John Forrester For projects lists, these are some examples. What could be better? So have a look at these and think about it and consider what might be better. Get car detailed, create website for garden club, retirement plans, plan vacation to Yosemite, manage sales team. Okay, I've got a couple of responses so far. Retirement plans could be better, need a clear outcome for retirement plans. Managed sales team is more of an AOF. What does done look like for manage? I think they can all be improved. Okay. As I said at the beginning, I'm dealing with a set of pros here. So here we go. We're going to look at each one. Retirement plans. Retirement plans could definitely be better because it doesn't really say what your result is. What does done look like? As Melissa said, what does done look like? How would you know when you get there? ([Time 0:05:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1eb86fe0-a51c-487c-a2ed-966c90132c94)) - **Prefer Specific Verbs Over Catchalls** - Avoid overused vague verbs like "execute," "optimize," or "finalize" on lists. - Replace them with specific next actions that describe exactly what you'll do. Transcript: John Forrester I overuse the verb execute with my work projects, execute tasting event, execute Ohio market visit. Ah, that's a very, very keen observation. There are a few verbs like that that get overused because they're easy to say, but often there's something more granular, something specific that goes with what execute means. Similarly, I overuse the word optimize, optimize, yeah, finalize, yeah, okay. If you'll see that on your list too often, if you're looking at a list of calls and the verb is call at the beginning, you're in good territory. But if you're seeing something like execute, finalize, optimize, showing in various next action lists, when you look at it, do you know what it means to optimize, finalize, or execute? If it's not really clear to you or it's not granular enough, then that list item could be improved. Tend to accumulate smaller projects that could be lumped into one larger project, but then the specific goalposts become harder to track. The end result is that I have a really long projects list. There's ([Time 0:10:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/855597b6-68be-4965-84c6-e4133f4e8972)) - **Write One-Sitting Next Actions** - Turn ambiguous next actions into explicit, doable steps you could perform in one sitting. - If you would be seen composing an email, write the item as "email Jake about plans" rather than "figure out plans." Transcript: John Forrester Keep them coming. Again, what could be better on these sample next action items? These are not categorized by context. They're just some samples to show you kinds of things to look for to improve. Figure out plans for London sales trip. Second item is Bob. Third item is email Morton about the summit agenda. Next one is work on design project. After that is send budget to Stan when Anna sends it back. Let's see. We have a comment. One, two, and four. Okay. Items one, two, and four could use work. Yep. I actually think there's at least one more there that could use some work too. Yep. We have a comment. Five and maybe three also. Yep. All right. Here we go. Figure out the sales trip. Yeah, what does figure out mean? It's one of those that maybe you could say execute plans, finalize plans. I'm going back to the verbs you mentioned earlier. So figure out, what does it look like to figure out the plans? There's often a way to get more specific about what figure out would mean if you were ready to actually do it. ([Time 0:13:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/abeac183-5195-4f43-b7a9-341b448201dd)) - **Keep Waiting Items Off Next Actions** - Move items you cannot act on yet from Next Actions to Waiting For. - Label waiting items clearly so they don't create cognitive dissonance on your action lists. Transcript: John Forrester Send budget to Stan when Anna sends it back. Yes, there is an improvement for this one. And here we go. It's not a next action. It's a waiting for. Yes, send budget to Stan is a next action, but you can't do it yet. You're waiting for the budget to come back from Anna. Then you can send it to Stan. So it's really a waiting for item. You can't do anything about it until you're getting it back from Anna. So it doesn't belong on our next actions list. It belongs specifically on your waiting for list. And in the chat, thank you. ([Time 0:17:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eb907d82-ea4f-4cf3-b098-3d622be8a5a1)) - **Treat Dependent Steps As Waiting Items** - Ensure a next action is not dependent on something else happening first. - For dependent steps, put a waiting-for entry like "when Anna sends it back, send budget to Stan." Transcript: John Forrester For list? What's your recommendation here? I think it's a great question. It's a question that says you have a deeper understanding of what's going on here. Speaker 3 So it's a great question. Especially if it belongs in the context of, you know, say a sequential project. John Forrester Yes. So my answer for this is it comes back to a next action definition, which is a next action can't be dependent on anything else happening first. So send budget to Stan. I'm going to cut this in two halves. Send budget to Stan and waiting for Anna to send it back. You can't send it to Stan yet. So it doesn't belong on our next actions list. And I believe that will cause you cognitive dissonance. I believe that it will cause you to be somewhat repelled by, you'll be repelled by Stan. Speaker 3 Okay. I need less cognitive dissonance in my life. So anything to minimize that would be. Yes. Okay. So, so if we're writing out a project list or I'm sorry, if we're writing out a sequential next action list for a project, do, do we just keep that out? Or I mean, do we like not add it to the list just yet? Are we waiting for it, for that waiting for to kind of resolve itself first? Yes. John Forrester So here's, it doesn't go on the next actions list because that's going to cause you cognitive dissonance. Yeah. You'll look at send budget to Stan on next actions and go, but that's not really a next action because some part of you can't fool yourself by putting it as a next action when, in fact, you're Still waiting for it. It's dependent on something else happening first. So if what if you want to, one thing you could do is what we got here on the slide. Send the budget to Stan when Anna sends it back and have that as a waiting for item. You could also change the wording on that. So switch the wording so that the halves of that are reversed. When it's you're waiting for a list item could say when Anna sends it back, comma, send the budget to Stan. ([Time 0:21:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/56504223-40a4-4fbe-abc3-d379bbc64a45)) - **Date Your Waiting-For Items** - Add the date you started waiting on each Waiting For item to track staleness. - Use that date to decide when to follow up if a request has gone untouched for weeks. Transcript: John Forrester Three items here. Marcus, answer about new hire. Second item, bookstore order. Third item is Kiki. Have a little thought on those. We have a comment already. All three could be better. Yes, indeed, they all could be. We have, in the previous example, we had Bob as a project. Now we have Kiki as a waiting for. So we know there's something to do with that one. That could be a way to at all of your lists. Just scan down your lists and see, is anything on any of my lists just a single name, but with nothing else about it? And you could probably be assured that that item could be better. For all three of those, the first obvious thing here is we want to put a date on those. When did you add this to your waiting for list? That's not the due date for the item. It's the when did you add it to your list? Because it's really helpful to look when you're going down your waiting for lists to know when you added that to your list. How stale is this? So having the date that you added it to the list is very helpful. This helps me. I can tell you that I have this thing. When I put it on the waiting for list, and then I'm scanning the list, I have this sort of an impatience where I find it on my waiting for list and then I think, why is that taking so long? Why are Kiki and Marcus taking so long to get me the information I need here? And what tempers my impatience that way is seeing the date I added it to the list. If I'm looking at the list and I see that I've asked Kiki for something today, I got, John, you're being a little impatient if you haven't given Kiki even a full business day to give you The information you're looking for. But if I'm looking at the list and I see that Marcus has had two months, I say to myself, I should have been pinging Marcus about four weeks ago saying, what's up with this? ([Time 0:25:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2e542950-06ad-4778-9337-9496936dcd6e)) - **Stop Using The Calendar As A List** - Relying on your calendar as a catchall list creates clutter and reduces trust in your other lists. - Trust your lists the way you trust your calendar to keep the calendar for true date/time commitments. Transcript: John Forrester So I wouldn't only put it on the calendar. And the reason I'm saying this about the calendar is because I found that people tend to turn their calendar into a list of reminders that aren't really calendar items. They use the calendar because they trust the calendar. What ideally you get to do is start trusting all your other lists. ([Time 0:31:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aea70d4d-c8c6-4631-9d15-32d5f3e0d0e1)) - **Revisit The Library Like A Manual** - John compares revisiting GTD Connect to rereading a software manual to discover new features. - He says repeated visits reveal deeper practices as your needs evolve. Transcript: Speaker 2 And so pretty much everything was under cruise control. I didn't need to go back to my library to make this really work. And then of course as I started to get more sophisticated in terms of the stuff I wanted to do, got more inspired about some things I saw other people are doing, I go, ah, how do I do that? Went back to the manual, I go, oh god, I didn't realize I could do that, I didn't realize I could do that. I remember at least two or three iterations of going back to Microsoft Word back in the days when there actually was a manual for that as opposed to just all online. And realizing, oh, my God, I didn't realize that. Oh, I could do that now. I could do that now. ([Time 0:33:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/566e07b3-e83b-4a00-a785-3e4dd3bb4a35))