Do you want to renovate your kitchen? How about a new car? Does a European vacation get your heart racing? These are the kinds of things you need to have on your someday list.

Items on your someday list are unique. These are goals that can’t be projects because their action plans wouldn’t be specific enough. For example, European vacation could become a project someday as long as you’re ready to take the vacation. However if you’re like me, one of the steps of this plan would say, get $8,000. That’s way too vague to be actionable. Who knows when I’ll have an extra $8,000 to spend on a luxury?! So until I have the money and the time, European vacation sits on my someday list.

Don’t get me wrong. Your someday list shouldn’t be a sorrowful list of all the things you want to do but can’t. It should be something to motivate you to succeed! It should be something fun; something full of exciting goals to drive you to complete your projects. After all, what good is a great organizational system that helps you get all your work done quickly if there’s no light at the end of the tunnel? Your someday list is the light.

First make your list. Write down everything that gets your hear pumping. Now make those items real. Get a piece of paper and some magazines and make a collage that depicts your goals! When you’re done, you can put all these papers in a three-ring binder that you can look at any time you’re feeling down. If you ever have a day where you don’t feel like looking at your next action list, pull out your someday binder and flip through the pages. You’ll be amazed how energized you’ll feel after you remind yourself why you’re working!

The beauty of the Getting Things Done system is that it not only gets you organized and moves you forward, but it also keeps you motivated. It truly is a self-sustaining system! But before we end this series, I’m going to take you back to the beginning. Once you’ve reached this point, you should be well organized but ideas constantly pop up and new tasks constantly present themselves. If you don’t have a way to capture and deal with them, you’ll quickly find yourself back at Collect and Conquer trying to get your life back on track. Your Talking Pad: Don’t Leave Home Without It will show you how to keep your system on track.

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.

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.

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.

After gathering all of your paperwork and tasks, you need to implement the four “D’s”. Every time you pick up a piece of paper or consider a task you need to decide if you’re going to Delete it, Delegate it, Defer it, or Deal with it. If the task is something that isn’t vital to your success or to achieving you goals, delete it. Toss it, trash it, whatever! Just get rid of the dang thing. These tasks are draining your psychic energy for no reason. If the task is something that’s important to your success but you don’t necessarily have to do it yourself, put it in a file to be delegated to someone you trust. We’ll make a file for these tasks later so we can check up on their progress. Should you decide that the task is too important to delegate and it can’t be completed within two minutes, then defer it. Put these tasks in a separate file so you can turn them into individual projects or put them on your perpetual task war board. Later we’ll organize these items and turn them into action plans. Finally if a task will take you less than two minutes to complete, deal with it now. Get it done and out of your way forever! You’ll be surprised how many of your tasks can be dealt with now.

You’ve probably accomplished a lot at the end of this exercise but we aren’t done yet! Right now you’ve got two folders staring you in the face with the generic titles of Defer and Delegate. Now it’s time to turn these folders into actionable projects. Ready yet? Then go on to the next article: Powerful Project Management.

I must admit, I fell into the old “this stuff can’t work for me” trap that snares so many others who strive to develop themselves. But I forced myself to read on and as I did, I started thinking of ways that I could adapt Allen’s system so it makes sense for my life. The beauty of the system championed in Getting Things Done is that it’s flexible enough to adapt to any situation. For example, I’m no CEO with hundreds of employees under me and a multi-billion dollar company to run. However, I do have a lot on my plate! I keep two offices. One at a restaurant I run and the other at home where I work on developing alternate streams of passive and active income. At last count I had 67 projects in play. I’m sure you’ll agree that 67 projects is quite the load for anyone. Chances are, you have that many projects in your head or more! No wonder you’re so stressed out! The question is what can you do about it?

I’ve put together a series of articles that outlines how the average Joe can adapt David Allen’s system of personal organization to become more effective. The adaptation will describe how you can use the collection phase to organize your thoughts and then make project folders and next action lists to move yourself forward. I’ve also included ideas on perpetual project war boards to keep track of tasks that you face every week, every month, and every quarter. In addition, I’ll also show you how to use your maybe/someday list to keep yourself motivated and how to use notebooks and tickler files to capture your great ideas (and your not so great ones) so you can develop them. Are you ready? Then move on to the next article: Collect and Conquer!