Someday Lists for Fun and Profit
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 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.