Note Studio GTD Refresher
9. Dynamic Lists
We know that it's A Good Thing for our actions to be grouped by context. This means that our action items need to move around from list to list. So how does this happen?
I'm going to spend some time talking about how this works in real-life. This should tie a few loose ends together.
Firstly, what are these lists I'm talking about? What form do they take? Well, they are not big to-do lists. In fact, GTD-creator Dave Allen
does not recommend to-do lists at all. I'm talking about action lists which are grouped by 'context'.
Remember I talked about context earlier? How a phone call action should be grouped with other phone call actions, which are
different from actions requiring your computer, or actions you can only do at home, or actions where you need to be out at
the shops. In GTD, your action items are grouped by context.
This means, when you're wondering what to do next, you only need to look at items which fit for your current context.
Let's take a real-life example, of a project I was working on recently. I wanted to get my property valued, by a licensed
valuer. From start to finish, it took about three weeks. That doesn't mean I spent three full weeks doing it, rather it was
only a few minutes per day, but it was something happening in the background, in addition to my usual responsibilities.
My first action was to find out who to use as a valuer. This involved sending an email to my bank, asking for a list of preferred
valuers. This was a task I could do in less than two minutes, so I did it straight away.
Now, the ball was in their court. I needed to wait for a reply. So my next action on this project became "wait for a list
of valuers from the bank." I put this in my "Waiting for" list. I didn't want to wait forever for this, so I also put an item
in my tickler file, three days into the future. It said "have I heard from the bank?". This ensured that in three days, I
would get a reminder that I was still waiting to hear from the bank. If I hadn't heard back by then, it would be time to take
another action, maybe another email, or a phone call.
Now, it turns out that it took only two days for the bank to give me this list. When I received it in the mail, my next action
changed. I was no longer waiting for something. My next action was to choose a valuer from the list, which contained about
ten different people. I put this action in my "at computer" list. The action was "research different valuers by going to their
websites, to decide which is best".
A few days later during my lunch break, I was browsing the internet. I looked at my "At computer" list, and remembered this
task. So I did my research. My next action, which was less than two minutes, was to phone the valuer I had chosen. He said
he would fax their standard form to my home. That went back on my "Waiting for" list. When it arrived, it went on my "At Home"
list to "fill out and return the form to the valuer".
After that, my next action was another "Waiting for" item: "wait for valuer to finish doing the valuation".
When this happened, my next item was "pay valuer's invoice". This was an "At Computer" item; I use internet banking.
My final action was another "Waiting for" item: "Wait for report to arrive in the mail". When it arrived, the entire project
was complete.
You can see that even organizing something as simple as this takes a good deal of back-and-forth actions. You do something,
you wait for someone else, then you do the next thing, etc. It's not difficult, but when you're managing one hundred other,
more important things at the same time, it's easy for something to go wrong. When you're really, really busy, a project like
this can be stalled or never finished, because you lost track of it. You never heard back from the bank. The valuer never
sent through the fax. You forgot to return the form. Without a good system, there are a lot of opportunities for something
to get missed. Even if you do manage to complete this project, in the absence of a good system, it becomes one of the many
things bouncing around your busy head which consumes your attention and energy. That's why GTD is so powerful.
I was able to put the project completely out of my mind except for a few minutes per day. Yet the project kept moving forwards.
Using this system, you can keep a lot more projects moving forwards with a lot less effort.
If you thought that looked like a lot of work, for such a simple project, remember this: the whole process was spread over
a three-week period. While it looks like I had to keep changing the status of the project, in fact it was only every few days,
or sometimes more than a week, that I would have to revisit the project. I guarantee that without GTD, that project would
have consumed a lot more of my attention. In summary: GTD requires you to be more rigorous, but it actually takes less real
work.
Now, did you notice that the next action kept changing? One moment, you're waiting for someone or something. Then it arrives,
and creates more work for you to do. How do you keep track of this using lists? Well, using GTD, each project always has at
least one 'next action'. So you can't actually lose track of any project - it stays in your system - you don't have to keep
it in your head.
How do you manage these lists? Well, GTD creator Dave Allen purposely avoids dictating what you should use to manage your
lists. Recognizing that people are different, he takes more of a "whatever works for you, is the right thing to use" approach. In his books and audio, which we highly recommend, he personally talks about managing his lists using a little
handheld Palm Pilot PDA organiser. But you could equally maintain each list as a paper folder, and move pieces of paper between
the "Waiting For" folder and the "At Phone" folder when the next action changes. I personally use Note Studio, which is what
this site is talking about.
The point is, it doesn't matter what you use, as long as your system works. The important thing to understand is that you
use context-based 'next action' lists, and you bounce your projects between these lists, as your next action changes. Effectively,
your lists are fluid, or changeable. This is a good thing. Every time your next action changes, it is evidence that you are
making progress on that task.
Note Studio and Dynamic Lists
Note Studio is a really powerful tool for managing dynamic lists. This is one of the main reasons why Note Studio is good
for GTD.
With other systems, it can take a bit of time to remove an item from one list, and reinsert it on the other list. With Note
Studio, nothing actually gets moved. You can change the context in-place, and it's as though the lists are automatically updated. That's why they're called dynamic lists - they should be changing over time as you get stuff done.