Ep. 333: Super Lists for You

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. I bet at times you've had the experience of looking at a list or an item on a list and just go. kind of shaking your head and going, ugh, and switching to something else, either changing the channel literally on the TV or changing the channel in your mind or on your computer, on your phone, just...

switching away, say, because the list didn't attract you. So the idea here is we're going to see if we can improve those lists so that they attract you, so that you look at your lists and go, oh yeah. And you're called forward to do things with what's on those lists. Here's David's quote about list improvement. And I'm going to read this, not because you all don't know how to read, but...

because there are some people who will be listening to this recording audio only. David says, many lists are amorphous blobs of undoability. How do you like that word? Amorphous, without form.

We're going to see what we can do to get your lists to being something other than amorphous blobs of undoability. What we'll cover? We're going to look for some common issues with lists. We're going to look at your projects lists. Next actions lists. And again, those could be by context. Generally, these days, most people have their next actions list divided into contexts.

The assumption is that you're not always in the same place, so it's helpful to have your list split up so that you're only seeing the list that you can do at that time. Also, you're waiting for a list. And you may have those subdivided into various lists too. Some people divide personal and professional. Some people have them divided by people. If they have a lot of waiting for us from specific people, you...

may have your list subdivided in some way. We're going to start with projects and move right along. 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.

It 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. That's a pretty simple definition of a project. If it's going to take much longer than a year, it starts to move up into being a goal or an objective or a larger vision that you have. So the difference there is timeline.

And if it goes way higher up to your highest level, your life purpose, then that's something you may not ever really feel as though you accomplish. It's something you work toward your entire life. But for projects, we're saying.

within a year that require more than one action. We're going to dive right into the details here. 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. Manage sales team is more of an AOF. What does DUN 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 your result is what does done look like as melissa said what does done look like how would you know when you get there So clarify is a way to clarify the outcome for retirement plans. Plan vacation to Yosemite. I'd probably say take vacation to Yosemite. You can call me a stickler, but planned vacation is a great outcome if you're the travel agent and you're not actually going to go. Take vacation.

It's what I would want to do because I'm the one that wants to have that outcome. I want to not just plan it, but actually experience it. Manage sales team. Let's see what we do there. Yes, whoever said areas of focus a few minutes ago was exactly right. Manage the sales team isn't... a an outcome that you're likely to achieve it's more of an area that's got ongoing work in it it may spawn its own set of of projects or just next actions without projects but

You don't really complete managing the sales team as long as that's still part of your job description. Have a look at your own projects list. Anything you see there. Do a quick scan down your own projects list. Is there anything there that you look at and go, hmm, the outcome doesn't really make itself clear to me when I look at that. What you want is for your projects list to...

have items on it where when you read that project name, you know what the outcome is. It's very clear to you. You've already done the thinking before you're reading it. You did it when you created the project or caught it in a weekly review. Anything on your current projects list that you see that could be clarified or any projects that are really areas of focus.

Once in a while someone has a project that's really just an action, not a project. Once they do it, it's done. One and done. So it's not really a project. It's rare. I haven't seen that very often in many years. Much more likely is what you have there is either a not clearly defined project or something that's an area of focus or...

something that's larger than a one-year accomplishment. What can you do differently? Have a look during your weekly review or anytime you're looking at your projects lists and have that filter on that says Is the outcome clear to me when I just quickly read the name of the project? It doesn't have to be the outcome in all the most exquisite, beautiful detail.

But is it clear enough that when you just read the title of the project, you go, okay, I know what that is. I know what done looks like. Got a comment. Yes, I have a project called liquidate my inventory. This is a multi-year long area of my life. Although it's difficult to parse this goal into smaller chunks, I haven't found a better way yet. Yeah, I can see how that could take more than a year.

it's relation to online sales i have a lot of stock i've been selling off for the last 10 years slowly but surely Yeah, I agree. Unless you have something that drives you to finish it within a year or less, something where you say, no matter what, I have to have it done. then yeah it's more like a multi-year outcome and you could call it you could call it a goal or an objective and split it into smaller chunks if that's workable for you like are there certain

categories of items that you have a project of selling off and try to do that within a year or anything like that. And those divisions may get to be too artificial depending on what it is you're selling. Let's see. I have a similar example. Declutter my house. It's one big project.

That one I've heard of from other people, whether it's a garage or a house or a basement or something like that. You might be able to chunk that down into rooms or... categories of things like if I had a big house and all the money in the world, I would have books all over the place. i would have every end table side table and surface would probably have a book on it and most of them would be have a bookmark somewhere in them or be open already and

That would be my decluttering project. So I could go around and declutter just the books, or maybe there's something else that's a category within declutter that you could split it into. Let's see. 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.

I tend to accumulate smaller projects that could be lumped into one larger project, but then the specific goal posts become harder to track. The end result is that I have a really long projects list. There's nothing wrong with it wrong. Wrong with a long list, except trying to say that tongue twister of wrong with a long list. If the individual items on it are clear to you, some people find it more useful to have a larger project and sub projects.

Some people don't care for having sub projects and they'd rather just have a lot of smaller projects. That's what works for you, what attracts you to the list. It helps me to indent sub projects under the larger project. Yeah. So again, a lot of often this is comes down to what attracts you visually to the list. What does it when you look at the list?

do you see there that then says okay i want to start taking an action on this here we go to next actions and great questions and comments there by the way 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 uh i 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. If we're all there in your workspace watching you take this action, what would we see you doing? The next example there is helpful. It says,

We might see you emailing Jake about plans for the sales trip. That's more likely to be something that when you see it on the list, you can go, OK, I know how to do that. I've composed an email before. I've emailed Jake before. This isn't anything that I don't know how to do already. I can do it, and there we go. Next up, Bob. I'm not sure if that's a verb. I'm going to bob and weave, or...

Is it Bob the person? But let's just say it doesn't say very much about what the next action is. What can we do with Bob? There was a movie years ago called What About Bob? Book meeting with Bob to go over the Q4 strategy. There we go. That's more like it. That's a much more specific item to have on your list. Probably heard David say mom when he's.

taking people through a mind sweep. And then he'll come back to that and go, what does mom mean? And he uses the example of, well, I wanted to plan a birthday party for my mom. So that becomes a project with actions on its own. In the comments we have, figure out generally denotes that I have to do some research or a conversation with someone else needs to take place. That's why figure out is one of those.

If it works for you, great. If it doesn't, if you look at that and you have any kind of hesitation about what figure out means, try a better verb. Try a different verb. And next comment. Maybe they need to bob their head just once. Bob, see it's complete now. Yes, I'm on with some comedians here. Next, we've got work on the design project.

I know somebody called out four earlier. I think that was Chuck calling out number four earlier. And right you are. Work on, it doesn't really say what that is. It's not the worst thing in the world or anything like that. Again, this is way better than somebody who doesn't have the design project clarified as a project at all, doesn't have anything down on the list. This is...

fine tuning. This is subtle stuff. This is advanced productivity when you're clarifying something like this and you change an item from work on to outline the milestones on the design project.

That's a much more doable action. Next up, this is one that was a little more subtle even. Send budget to Stan when Anna sends it back. So, 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. Yes, we got. Comment Jeremy says, I'd convert that to waiting for, and you're exactly right. So next up, same deal. Have a quick look at your actions lists. What are the issues you see? And you may have...

100 or 200 or whatever number of next actions and a quick look is not a quick look so feel free to just do some sample scanning there for a moment or two and see is there anything on your next actions list where you look at it and go I don't quite know what I would be doing if you said, let me see you do that. Oh, good. We have a comment. I don't agree with that Anna waiting for exactly. Okie dokie. Say more about why.

If you'd like to say any more about Anna not being a waiting for, go right ahead. I have a list that I call catch-all. I've been fooling myself that it's a next actions with no project list. When it's really a list of projects I haven't clarified. Oops. Good for you. Hooray for you and your self-awareness and bravery about sharing that with us.

Rarely do I see a project that's actually a next action. Much, much, much more common is seeing a next action that's actually a project. We don't want to have a long projects list, so we will resist. What can I do to not call this next action a project when in fact it really is a project? All I can say is give it a try. Call a project a project. Make sure each project has at least one clearly defined next actions, next action, and then see what happens. My bet.

after watching this for a good number of years now, is that you'll find that the projects move along faster than anything like a catch-all list of unclarified next actions that are probably projects. My hunch is you'll see things moving along faster, that the flow will increase, and that your sense of ease and attraction to your lists will also increase. give it a try let me know how it goes chuck says let me know when to hop in not sure if my audio is up and running i'm not hearing anything yet

Okay, now I can hear you. And you had something about the example of the waiting for from Anna. So I'll go back to that one. So kind as to go back to that, where it said next action list, what could be better? Yep. Okay. Anna, so we talked about optimizing this, there's that word again, by putting this on a waiting for list, but it kind of seems like part of it should still stick around in your next actions list.

We are waiting for Anna to send something back. But at the same time, we are also waiting for, well, we need to send this budget to Stan. So does anything... stay in the next actions list while we wait for anna to send it back which is what we would uh physically you know put in our uh waiting for list or does this whole comment belong in the waiting 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. So it's a great question. Especially if it belongs in the context of, you know, say a sequential project. 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 it will cause you to be somewhat repelled by... You'll be repelled by Stan. 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 we just keep that out? I mean, do we... like not added to the list just yet are we waiting for it for that waiting for to kind of resolve itself first

like yes so here's um 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 you're waiting for a list item could say, when Anna sends it back, comma, send the budget to Stan.

That way you know what's going to happen after Anna sends it back. It's still a waiting for, and it handles it that way. The other way you could do it, have it as a waiting for from Anna. Anna to send the budget back. Just a pure waiting for like that. And then you could have a not next action, but a dependent action. stored in your project plan for the budget. Like Amelia wrote in the comments here, she said she would put in project support materials, which is another helpful way. OK.

Yes, exactly. Yes. So it depends on what makes sense to you there. And maybe it depends on how many dependent actions you have in that project. and where you want to see those. But I would say for sure, send budget to stand doesn't belong as a next action because you can't really do it yet. And that's the... That's the test there. Can you really do it? But yeah, Amelia has it exactly right as the other option. Okay.

Well, that clarifies that for me. Thank you very much. Yeah. When we're talking about creating super lists, this is exactly what I'm envisioning. Getting down to the nitty gritty. Yeah. And Claudia, who is a wordsmith. says, I would put it on my waiting for list, but word it budget from Anna, and then parenthetically, then send to Stan. That works. That tells you what the waiting for is.

But when you're looking at that and you get the budget from Anna, you also can see that then send it to Stan becomes the action. Yes, that works as well. Great discussion. Thank you for that. Thanks, everyone, for participating. That's awesome.

Waiting for... Again, what could be better? 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... a way to look at all of your lists just scan down your lists and see is 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 add 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.

So if I'm looking at the list and I see that I've asked Kiki for something today, 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?

Adding a date that you started waiting for it is really helpful there. Claudia says, how do you differentiate between putting the... added on date versus the actual date if you know it. Do you mean the actual, I'm not sure what you mean by the actual date as a differentiator there. I don't think you mean the due date. Go ahead. So if Marcus said he was, you know, you asked him to give an answer about the new hire and he was going to do it by Friday. So then that was like the due date.

Maybe Monday was the added, you added it to the waiting for list. So how would you note the due date? Might depend on the tool you're using. So if I were doing this on paper, I would probably have some kind of a convention for how I enter things on my list. Let's just say for a moment that I'm having... a paper system with a line to add an item. There's no column or any other field for checking anything like due date, added date, any of that.

I'd probably have a convention, something like this, what's on the screen there. Marcus, answer about new hire, the first date is the date I added it. And then I might have something in, say, parentheses that says. the due date or the date at which when I see it on my list I'm going to follow up with Marcus. I might have that in parentheses or I might have the word due and then the next date.

something like that, and that's in a paper system with no other fields. Some software will append the date you added it automatically and give you a due date field. that you can use as well so it probably depends on what tool you're using and what fields it offers you is that helpful at all yes yeah i think um i Because I think I've been tending to put the due date, like if I know I'm getting a new project from a client and they say it's coming August 30th.

uh that's the date i would put i don't necessarily always add the date adding the waiting for so and i see aj said it could it should go on the calendar but i don't know i like to have my waiting for list so i kind of see i scan that yeah I wouldn't put it on the calendar because it's not an appointment.

it's not date or time specific and this is this is getting into again some subtleties here it's not data time specific in that it has it has to be done on that date if it's due by that date then you may want to follow up before the due date so if if it's uh if it's due on the 30th and you're following up on the 30th it may be ready to blow up or turn into a bigger problem by then and you want to follow up sooner than that.

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 and you can Once you get to trusting those lists as much as you trust your calendar, I think you'll find that your calendar has less stuff on it, less clutter, and that... you actually are accomplishing just as much, if not more, than you would by putting a bunch of stuff on the calendar.

I'd like to give a short message to those of you who've been participating and playing with GTD Connect for a while and sort of remind you that all of us with this GTD methodology and this set of practices go through cycles. I still go through cycles myself. Initially there's kind of the inspiration and there's a lot of material to ingest and to get familiar with. And so people oftentimes when they first come on to Connect are just potentially overwhelmed by how much...

information there is in a way it's just a huge library where we've been able to archive so much different information from so many different perspectives and people and points of view and so understood that it's like walking into a library oh gee where do i start

So that's oftentimes the initial phase of this and many people after a year or two you know probably get on some level or some plateau where they go well i kind of got it now i've got my system set up and everything's fine and i'm fine tuning and you may find yourself at that point also finding yourself saying, gee, I'm now becoming a resource of this methodology for people around me.

people asking me for assistance and help in this. And we've seen in the forums a number of people now sharing ideas about how to get your teams more involved or families more involved with this information. So some of that information is in there as well. But I think you'll find yourself going through cycles of this, and you may find that much like if you've ever read a software manual, I remember when I read...

when I learned Microsoft Word to begin with. For instance, I read the manual like, wow, this is really cool. And I started to use the tool and didn't need the manual anymore. As a matter of fact, a good example of that right here, the manual for this camera that's taking this picture right now.

Initially, I read this, got it all set up. That's really cool and that's really fine. 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. 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 and i think that's what you might find with connect too

is that it's a gold mine of stuff. Many people have read Getting Things Done more than three or four times, and every time they read it, they get something new out of it. So I think you may find Connect the same way and probably even easier because, hey, it doesn't take much to just click on, surf around. see what might be new or what might be of interest to you. And pay attention. You know, there's more than meets the eye in there.