Horizons and Higher altitudes [7Breaths]
In my last post I can’t do it all… I began to discuss the problem I was having with my workflow - that of taking on too many projects. Jeroen commented regarding using the GTD Horizons of Focus during the weekly review to help decide what you should or should not be doing, whilst SpiKe had not found this approach useful. I’ve blogged about Higher altitudes previously and have tried to apply Davids horizons to my own life. I found the levels he used did not fit with my thinking - so have slightly adapted things to give me a little more focus - I’ve tried to represent things in this diagram.
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I began by looking at my long term goals and vision - I’ve labeled these ambitions. These are not written down - after all if you need to write down your lifes vision to help you remember it, it can’t be that much of a vision.
Next I have decided what I need to do in the next year to move me towards my ambitions. I’ve made a checklist of these so I can reward myself for checking them off as the year goes by - just “cranking widgets” on a bigger scale.
For each yearly goal I then set 90 day targets to move towards acomplishing the goal. I find 90 days long enough to get some significant work done, but short enough to allow me to see progress to my yearly goals.
Each 90 day target can have several supporting projects ongoing at the same time, and of course each project will have next actions.
When I do my weekly review I ensure that each 90 day target has active supporting projects - if not I will decide what I need to do and start a project off. This helps keep my focus on doing what I want to do. After ensuring all 90 day targets are moving forwards I then check my projects. What projects do I have which do not seem to support a 90 day goal. These are the “reactive” projects I’ve picked up during the week. I very carefully review these and ask “What’s in it for me?”. Sometimes Projects need to be done which don’t fit in with your goals, but often just the practice of reviewing them in light of your 90 day targets makes you realise that you should be re-negotiating or dumping the project.
By applying this method I’ve reduced the number of projects I have ongoing at a time. However I still find I can take on more than I can do if I don’t consider the actual time I have to spend each week working on them - this will be the theme of my next post…
Original post here: Rob
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