What do you do with your great ideas? What happens to every invention you think of? What happens to the ideas you have for a book? What happens to all those little ideas you have to increase productivity or decrease costs? Are these little stones cut and polished until they shine like gemstones or do they sit and languish until you forget that they were gems and discard them as worthless rocks? If you’re trashing these diamonds in the rough, you need to create a system to make sure that you never mistake a ruby for a piece of red glass.
The best way to make sure that no great ideas slip through your fingers is to make a tickler file. Tickler files can be pretty easy to set up. All you need is a card file and a bunch of index cards. I have a little black box that holds 3×5 cards. I also cut up a couple of index cards to make dividers with tabs to maintain some semblance of order to system that’s little more than a collection of random thoughts at this point. You can have as many or as few categories as you’d like and you can feel free to add or delete categories as needed.
Now that you have your tickler file set up, grab a stack of index cards and start writing! Write down every idea for every invention, book, or whatever you’ve been thinking about. When you’re done, go back to each card and write down the questions you have about that idea. Do you need to figure out how an invention could be put together? Do you need a more efficient system at work but haven’t quite figured out what it could be? Write these concerns on the card. Over time you’ll notice that so many questions and comments have accumulated that an action plan for your idea now seems clear. At that point you can take your idea out of your tickler file and turn in into a project. Your rock is now on it’s way to becoming a diamond!
Most people have ideas and think, “If only I could make it happen.” With this system, you have a way to make your ideas realities almost automatically! Make sure you review your tickler file every week. You’ll be surprised at all the new comments you can add!
There’s one more facet we’ve yet to cover: long term goals. What do you do with items like “renovate my home” or “buy a new car”? You can’t have a nebulous item like “get $25,000″ on an action plan. How do we organize these goals so that they can be achieved one day? Find out in Someday Lists for Fun and Profit.
The Perpetual Project War Board
By this point you’ve collected every piece of paper and task that’s been demanding your attention and organized them all into their own projects that each have their own little folder with an action plan attached to each one. You also have a “next action†list compiled so you always know what step you need to take to move your projects forward.
After following this system for a while, you’ll begin to notice that certain files get reincarnated ever week, month, and/or quarter. Every time these projects return from the dead you have to waste ten to fifteen minutes making another file and another action plan. How can these projects be organized so you still get them done without having to constantly replace the files? You create a Perpetual Project War Board.
What is a Perpetual Project War Board exactly? It’s a big white board that you use to collect all of your recurring projects. First you take a white board that’s large enough to contain all of your weekly, monthly, and quarterly projects. My white board is 3 feet by 4 feet. Yours may be larger or smaller depending on what tasks you’re facing. After you get your board take thin black electrical tape and make vertical lines from top to bottom that are space far enough apart for you to write in the white spaces. Next take thick black electrical tape and make two vertical lines to separate the board into three categories. Label the top line in each category “Weekly”, “Monthly”, and “Quarterly”. Finally, get your thin black tape again and make a vertical line close enough to the thick black tape so you have little boxes big enough to write a number at the end of every line except for you category labels. Here’s what your war board should look like:
Now fill in all of your weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks. When you’re done, create an action plan for each and every one. These plans should to look like the ones you have for all of your other projects except all of the tasks in your action plan need to have a number associated with them. Once you have all of these action plans made, get a three-hole punch and put them in a three-ring binder that’s separated into three parts (Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly). Make sure this binder is always with your war board.
Now go through all of the projects written on your war board and write down the number that corresponds with the next task you need to do on your action plan. Then add all of those tasks to your next action list. Every time you complete one of these tasks, change the number next to that project and add the next task to your next action list. Now you have a system to help you progress in all your recurring tasks!
Congratulations! You’ve tamed all of your actionable tasks. But what about the ideas you have that have yet to develop into actionable projects? Read the next article Tickle Your Way to Success to find out how to deal with these projects in the making.
Congratulations! If you’ve made it this far then you’re probably more organized than you’ve been in a long time. All of those projects floating around in your head and on your desk have finally been roped in and tamed. You’re mind should feel a lot lighter and you should feel a lot more relaxed. Now it’s time to up the ante. You have two nebulous folders in front of you that say Defer and Delegate. We need to turn these folders into action plans to make sure the projects they contain get done. Let’s deal with the Delegate folder first.
Open up your Delegate folder and take a look at each project in it. Now think about who you’d delegate each one of those projects to. Start making separate stacks for each person you want to handle you projects. You should be looking at several stacks of paper and each stack should be labeled with the name of the person you’re going to trust with those projects. Take those stacks and place them each in their own folder labeled with the person’s name. On the outside of the folder, staple a list of the projects that the file contains so you can check them off as your project manager completes them. Now you have a way to track the progress of the people you’re trusting to complete these projects.
Next it’s time to tackle your Defer folder. The goal here is to give each project its own file so we can develop action plans. Let’s take “Build a Website” as an example. Your action plan may look something like this:
1. Decide on content and product
a. research feasibility and demand for product
b. research wholesalers/drop-shippers for product
c. decide whether to write my content or outsource it
i. research sites that offer article writing services
ii. write articles or post ad for a writer
2. Decide on a domain name
a. research domain name providers
b. reserve domain name
3. Research web store hosting sites
a. research credit card processing options
b. research web development software
c. purchase hosting and/or software
d. sign up with a credit card processor
4. Decide on site design
a. build site
5. Research other ways to monetize my site
a. adsense
b. affiliate programs
c. integrate into site
6. Find ways to advertise site
a. article marketing
b. adwords
c. banner ads
d. viral marketing
e. link trading
7. Implement, Review, and Refine
Once you have one of these outlines for each of your projects, take the first step from each project and put them all on their own list. Now you have a “Next Action” list for all of your projects. Every time you complete on of these tasks, go to the corresponding project folder and write down the next task. In this way you have a dynamic list that’s constantly moving you towards completing all the projects on your list and you always know exactly what the next step forward is!
Now all of your projects are happily on their way to completion. But what about the projects that keep coming back every week, month, or quarter such as inventory or washing your car? Read the next article on to The Perpetual Project War Board to find out how to deal with these persistent projects.