GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

parts.

There's no perfect system for tracking all your projects and subprojects the same way. You just need to know you have projects and, if they have associated components, where to find the appropriate reminders for them. 

Project Support Materials

Project support materials are not project actions, and they're not project reminders. They're resources to support your actions and thinking about your projects.

Don't Use Support Material for Reminding Typically, people use stacks of papers and thickly stuffed file folders as reminders that (1) they've got a project, and (2) they've got to do something about it. They're essentially making support materials serve as action reminders. The problem is that next actions and 'Waiting For' items on these projects have usually not been determined and are psychologically still embedded in the stacks and the folders— giving them the aura of just more 'stuff' that repels its (un)organizer instead of attracting him or her to action. When you're on the run, in the heat of the activities of the day, files like that are the last thing you'll want to pick up and peruse for actions. You'll actually go numb to the files and the piles because they don't prompt you to do anything and they simply create more anxiety.

If you're in this kind of situation, you must first add the project itself to your 'Projects' list, as a reminder that there's an out-come to be achieved. Then the action steps and 'Waiting For' items must be put onto their appropriate action reminder lists. Finally, when it's time to actually do an action, like making a call to someone about the project, you can pull out all the materials you think you might need to have as support during the conversation.

To reiterate, you don't want to use support materials as your primary reminders of what to do—that should be relegated to your action lists. If, however, the materials contain project plans and overviews in addition to ad hoc archival and reference information, you may want to keep them a little more visibly accessible than you do the pure reference materials in your filing cabinet. The latter place is fine for support stuff, too, so long as you have the discipline to pull out the file drawer and take a look at the plan every time you do your Weekly Review. If not, you're better off storing those kinds of project support files in a standing file holder or a separate 'Pending' stack-basket on your desk or credenza.

To return to the previous example of moving into a new house, you could have a folder labeled 'New House' containing all the plans and details and notes about the landscaping and the kitchen and the basement. In your Weekly Review, when you came to 'Finish new home renovations' on your 'Projects' list, you'd pull out the 'New House' file and thumb through all your notes to ensure that you weren't missing any possible next actions. Those actions would then get done, delegated, or deferred onto your action lists, and the folder would be refiled until you needed it again for doing the actions or for your next Weekly Review.

Many people who interact with prospects and clients have attempted to use client folders and/or contact- management software such as Act! to 'manage the account.' The problem here is that some material is just facts or historical data that needs to be stored as background for when you might be able to use it, and some of what must be tracked is the actions required to move the relationships forward. The latter can be more effectively organized within your action-lists system. Client in-formation is just that, and it can be folded into a general- reference file on the client or stored within a client-focused library. (I use Act! for the single great feature it offers of allowing me to cross-reference general company information and significant interactions with key people within the company. It's just a good client-centered database.) If I need to call a client, I don't want that reminder embedded anywhere but on my 'Calls' list.

Organizing Ad Hoc Project Thinking

In chapter 3, I suggested that you will often have ideas that you'll want to keep about projects but that are not necessarily next actions. Those ideas fall into the broad category of 'project support materials,' and may be anything from a notion about some-thing you might want to do on your next vacation to a clarification of some major components in a project plan. These thoughts could come as you're driving down the freeway listening to a news story on the radio, or reading a relevant article. What do you do with that kind of material?

My recommendation here is that you consider where you're keeping tabs on the project or topic itself, how you might add information to it in that format, and where you might store any more extensive data associated with it. Most professionals will have several options for how to handle support materials, including attaching notes to a list item, organizing digital information in e-mail and/or databases, and maintaining paper-based files and notes in notebooks.

There is no need' ever to lose an idea about a project, theme, or topic.

Attached Notes Most organizing software allows you to attach a digital 'note' to a list or calendar entry. If you're keeping a 'Projects' list within the software, you can go to the project you had a thought about, open or attach a 'note' to it, and type in your idea. This is an excellent way to capture 'back-of- the-envelope' project thinking. If your 'Projects' list is paper-based, you can attach a Post-it note next to the item on your master list or, if you're a low-tech type, on the item's separate sheet. In any case, you'll need to remember to look at the attachment when you review your project, to make use of the data.

E-mail and Databases E-mails that might contain good information related to your projects can be held in a dedicated e-mail folder (just follow the instructions on pages 152-53 for '@ACTION' and call it something like '@PROJECTS'). You may also find it worthwhile, if you don't have one already, to set up a more rigorous kind of digital database for organizing your thinking on a project or topic. If your company uses Lotus Notes, for example, you can create a project database either for your own private use on your PC or to be shared with others in your network.[10] It's worth looking into some of the other types of free-form databases that are on the market, too—even just for your own use. It's great to be able to cut and paste from the Web or from e-mails and drop data under a topic somewhere or type in your own thoughts. Be sure, also, to explore the technology and tools that you already have—just learning how to use all the lists and attachments in something like the Palm organizer may provide you with sufficient 'back-of-the-envelope' capability.

Paper-Based Files Having a separate file folder devoted to each project makes a lot of sense when you're accumulating paper-based materials; it may be low-tech, but it's an elegant solution nonetheless. Simplicity and ease of handling make for a good general-reference filing system—one that lets you feel comfort-able about creating a folder for scraps of paper from a meeting.

Pages in Notebooks A great advantage of paper-based loose-leaf notebooks is that you can dedicate a whole page or group of pages to an individual project. For years I maintained a midsize notebook with a 'Projects' list in front and a 'Project Support' section toward the back, where I always had some blank pages to capture any random thinking or plans and details about projects on my list.

Each of the methods described above can be effective in organizing project thinking. The key is that you must consistently look for any action steps inherent in your project notes, and review the notes themselves as often as you think is necessary, given the nature of the project.

You'll also want to clear out many of your notes once they become inactive or unreal, to keep the whole system from catching the 'stale' virus. I've found a lot of value in capturing these types of thoughts, more for the way it consistently helps my thinking process than because I end up using every idea (most I don't!). But I try to make sure not to let my old thoughts stay around too long, pretending they're useful when they're not.

Organizing Nonactionable Data

Interestingly, one of the biggest problems with most people's personal management systems is that they blend a few actionable things with a large amount of data and material that has value but no action attached. Having good, consistent structures with which to manage the nonactionable items in our work and lives is as important as managing our action and project reminders. When the nonactionable items aren't properly managed, they clog up the whole process.

Unactionable items fall into two large categories: reference materials and reminders of things that need no action now but might at a later date.

Reference Materials