Play On

I don’t think it’s advertised anymore, but Merlin Mann’s great 43 Folders site has a companion Google Group. These days it doesn’t get much traffic. I’d actually forgotten it existed until I saw this question in my inbox.

My answer explains a small nugget of GTD wisdom I’ve been able to distill over the past few months, and I’d like to share it with you here.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 2:20 PM, DerekS wrote:

I have been on and off the wagon several times with respect to GTD and have finally noticed that all the things I want/need to get to are just floating around and making my head spin.

I go in cycles as well, and every time I get a little closer to something truly maintainable. Let me give you a tip from my latest go-round:

Use the hell out of your Someday/Maybe lists.

Before you put something on an action or project list, ask yourself: when I find myself in the context to take action on this, am I really going to do it? Do I really care? Have I actually committed to doing this, or is it just something which seems like I might want to do? If you’re not truly committing to doing it as soon as you’re in that context, put it on your Someday/Maybe list.

I keep a few S/M lists:

1. Someday Soon: Things I’ve pretty much decided I’ll do, but I haven’t decided to start working on yet. I consult this weekly.
2. Someday Perhaps: Things I’m not sure I’ll want to do, but which I don’t want to forget about. I consult this one weekly too, but with a different mindset.
3. 40,000ft Options: Basically career paths which I might like to shift to one day. I don’t consult this one much, but it’s good to have a place to put those ideas.
4. Way Out There: Crazy ideas I’ll probably never do, but which, again, I feel better for having written down.
5. Movies to Watch, Books to Read, etc: a series of lists of media I’d like to consume. I consult these when I’m looking for a good book, movie, etc.

All this means that my project and action lists have no noise. They’re all things that I’m ready to do at a moment’s notice.

For this to work, the Weekly Review is critical. If you don’t trust that you’ll see these things as often as you feel you need to see them, you’ll instinctively put them somewhere where you will. That will probably be your action and project lists. Once those become cluttered with things you haven’t actually decided to do yet, you’ll stop trusting them, and then you’ve got nothing. I’ve been through that cycle numerous times.

I used to put off my weekly reviews for all sorts of poor reasons. Just schedule an hour or two every week at the same time and check your lists for inconsistencies. You don’t even have to think very hard. If you just read over your action, project, and S/M lists, your brain will tell you when something’s in the wrong place, or out of date.

You can get better at the Weekly Review over time, but only if you actually do it. It’s far more important to do it than to do it well.