Incubation and Someday Maybe Lists

Hi everyone . This is John Forester and I'm here with Anna Maria Gonzalez. Hi, Anna Maria . Hi, John. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining. And we're here to talk about lists and particularly if you think your lists are too long and what makes too long a list and what you can do about any of that needs to be done. So just generally we',re going to look at lists here . Anna Maria is going to run a slide deck that will start in just a moment and that's about it. We are doing this just because in the last couple of months, I've noticed a couple of people saying in the comments as we do webinars they talk about when it comes time to review in particular , either a daily review of their lists or a weekly review where they look at their projects and all of their lists they're finding that the lists feel too long . So perception is reality . If the list feels too long to you, that means it may be too long for you. So we're going to look at ways you can work with that and adjust if you are finding that your lists are too long. And that's what we're going to talk about . On our best practices, we have two things. It's pretty straightforward. Two things we consider to be best practices . One is distinct lists of projects and next actions plus you're waiting for in some day maybe . The worst practice would be to mix those, where you're looking at a list that's got a combination of projects and actions , stuff you're only waiting for, stuff that you're not really committed to , that kind of a mixed list is definitely going to make your list longer and less effective. And Anna Maria, I think that's something you also teach early in the fundamentals course as well as the idea of not mixing lists. Is that right? Yeah, sure. I mean, the bottom line and I think everyone on this call probably knows this, but the bottom line , if you're needing like a refresher, if you want to kind of share someone else best practices that you want to at the very least separate actionable inventory from non actionable and never have those mixed up . But then within each , within the actionable inventory , and within the non actionable inventory, then there are best practices for organizing each one. So under your actionable items, let's say, you will typically have , you know, outcomes that will require more than one action step, or another way of thinking about that will be multi step outcomes more or less will take twelve months or so to be completed. And that's what we define as projects . And that you want to have on a separate list on its own , were you just keeping like an index of those project titles ? But then you want to have an inventory of also your actionable items that are done in one sitting or what we refer to as your next actions . So those two are not mixed up because they're very distinct one from the other one. It's just your index of project titles, your multi step outcomes that will get done within a year or so . And the other one is your list of next actions, which are your one sitting items or single step items , those next physical visible activity that will either move the situation forward, let's say in this case, any one of your given projects, or will get you to done . So they're quite different , one from the other . And then of course , there's also an inventory of actionable items that need to be kept separately from this two . And those are all the items that you're waiting for one way or the other. Either you're waiting for a decision to be made, you're waiting for an answer to come back to you, you're waiting for products that you order online, you're waiting for a reimbursement, you're waiting for theater ticket, whatever it is that you find yourself, I am on waiting for mode. In other words, I cannot take another action until that one it's done. So that's usually your list where you're tracking others , where you're tracking the actions of others. That's why it belongs to your actionable inventory and none your non actionable inventory because you're tracking the actions on others, the actions that you're waiting for others to complete . And then someday maybe assumes that one day, perhaps maybe someday , you will want to do something about whatever that is. So it's a commitment you have with yourself about something in the future, but that will you're not going to invest any time and energy in terms of action thinking or action doing towards that. So some day movies , you know, are very in many different ways. It could be, you know, some day maybe places to visit, some day maybe movies to watch, some day may be projects to get started with, some day may be investment ideas, some day may be fill in the blank . So they the assumption is that their nature is actionable at some point in the future . And then of course, your non actionable items are also expected to be organized at least in three distinct categories trash, if it can be throwable , reference, if it needs to be filed , or incubate , which is things that you can put as a tickler reminder somewhere in your calendar . And even a Sunday maybe so you may say, well, that's confusing because you just said Sunday maybe belongs to actionable and now you're throwing it into non actionable because it's a bit of a hybrid. In the moment when you're organizing it, it's not actionable on your end, but it may well be in the future. And then of course as we progress today or as you progress in your journey as a GTD , you know user , you will probably want to categorize your next actions by context because maybe just one next actions list would just not do it. And particularly today we're talking about long list. That may very quickly result into a long list if you just have it as one next action . Right . And context , just to kind of give it context basically means where does the action happen ? In other words, once you're clear on what your next action is, where does it happen? And then based on that answer, you start creating lists . So we use the word context to pretty much help you understand how to organize the next action in relationship to where does it happen? Does it happen at the phone? Does it happen at home? Does it happen at the office? Does it happen at the train? Does it happen when you are out and about? Does it happen when you're with John? Does it happen when you're with your lawyer? Does it happen anywhere ? So that's pretty much an easy way to remember what this context means is where does the action happen happen . I'd like to handle a couple of comments before we go on too much more with context. One is distinct lists of projects and next actions of. the One comments was, what about small projects? Things that are going to be done in a month or less that only may have a couple of actions . I highly recommend that you still distinguish those. You put the project outcome on your project's list and the next action or actions on your next actions list and don't talk yourself out of that rigor just because you think the project will finish in a month or less . can only say I strongly recommend that you stick to this discipline I'm going to say a couple of months at least to give it a chance because I think you'll find that it's very stress relieving psychologically to track all of your projects, not just the ones that you think are larger projects . The reason I say this is because for most of us, it's really hard to know exactly how many steps a project may have . So if you think it might only have two steps and it be done'll unless than a month. You could treat it as not really a project and then you find out it's got more things or it starts to morph into something else. So do yourself the favor really clean about what's a project and what's the next action . And I'm going to add another criteria because part of for me is very hard to help by being asked, well, what if it's a small project as opposed to a large project? I don't even know what that means. What do you mean by a small project? What do you mean by a large project ? Because then basically what I'm reading is that well it takes less than a month. So then it's the question is it a short time frame project versus a long time frame project? Still, I would ask what does that mean ? See, you want to use a criteria where you go , will this be an outcome that I need to review as part of my weekly review ? Even if it only qualifies for one review , or two reviews or three or four or twelve reviews. The question is is this outcome one that I need to review as part of my weekly review so that I can make sure I'm moving this situation forward or I'm bringing it to the end, whether it's because it has two actions, three, four or one hundred and fifty . So that's to me a more reliable criteria that I can then teach anyone ' thencause we're all going to be under the same understanding. Oh, yeah, this is something that I will wanna look at as part of my weekly review . Because there are some outcomes . And as part of level two projects and priority, we talk about this difference. There are some outcomes that even though they're multi step , they still don't they don't qualify for your projects list. And you may go, what? Now you're really confusing me because many times these are things that live will remind you. I mean they're second nature to you. There is no kind of risk of you forgetting about the next action because you didn't review it as part of your weekly review. For example , get data at the airport. He's arriving in a month . So you may go, well, a month , that kind of qualifies in terms of timeamef.r We'll get that at the airport more than one action step. Why is that not on my project's list? Well , how much do you need to be reminded so that you identify the next action as part of your weekly view when you look at a project called Get Data at the Airport . And you may go nothing. All I need to be reminded is the day that he arrived to get to the airport. So then that's an example of something that just goes on your calendar Tuesday at three PM on you know, whatever , march second , get that at the airport, fly number, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing I need to do to mark that outcome done other than show up at the airport . If on the other hand there are things around that visit that you need to get ready for , that you need to prepare, that you need to organize, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that may be the project . You know, given that dad is coming and given that dad is visiting , you know, I need to move children from their room to another room. I need to organize that room and make it comfortable for him. I need to make sure I get all the stuff that he likes to eat on the roof. He has a special diet, you know, whatever, you I'm making stuff up as you can imagine. And then she's not making too much stuff up because she just she just took her father to the airport yesterday, I think it was. So this is a very this is a very current situation for her . So that makes sense. And then you will make you would add that outcome as part of your project list because you will, wow, of course I will benefit from seeing this outcome as part of my weekly review because then I will be , you know, I will I'm confirming that I'm ready. Instead of di is coming today at three PM, I got nothing. I move the kids out of the room. I'm going to have to kick them out and then everything becomes crazy naked. So that to me it's a criteria that you can probably rely more for deciding whether it goes on my projects list or not. Got it . And just to back that up a little , one of the things I've heard in between the lines of you saying just then Maria is this is about your weekly review and being kind to yourself when it comes time to do your weekly review. So let's start with the idea that the weekly review is, as David calls it, the critical success factor for implementing GTD . If that's the case and we find that it is, what can you do to take care of yourself so that you can make the weekly review a habit ? One of the things you can do is consider what you want to review about projects during your weekly review and then back up from that going, I want to make my weekly review pleasurable and easy every week. What do I need to see on my project list to contribute to that? Back that up and help that inform your decision about what you put on your projects list . And let's see, a couple of other comments here I wanted to look at the difference between incubate and someday maybe Someday maybe is a form of incubation. The other one that comes to mind for me is the tickler file where you could do this either with a physical tickler file or a digital one on your calendar where you move something out to a future date to reconsider. You're not deciding about it now. You're putting it out in the future when you may know more about what you'd like to do and be ready to commit to it or not, those are both forms of incubation. Some day may be in tickler . Anna Maria, anything else to say about the distinction there? Yeah, no, that's, you know, in Giva, it's a very interesting bucket, let's say , to describe, because since it's not exactly black or wh ite , incubate probably fits in the middle because it's not a non actionable one hundred percent bucket , neither it's an actionable one hundred percent bucket because its nature is that it will transform in the future. So today as I'm emptying my in , I may come across something that today decide to not do anything about it . However , I may still want to consider in the future . So it's that in between that it's often a bit like oh my god what is it? Is it this or is it that words neither ? But it kind of fits both based on your agreement with yourself in this moment. So in this moment I'm not going to do anything about learning to play the guitar . I'm not , but I may want to in the future . So I will add that, learn to play the guitar as a someday maybe item on my list. So that's basically me deciding as I'm emptying my in this idea that I had of learning to play the guitar that I wrote myself a note about now that I'm emptying my in, I'm going to go, I'm going to incubate this in a place where I can incubate it on my Sunday maybe list because my Sunday Mbeay list is something that I look at every week. So every week I'm going to ask myself, Hey , is it time now to learn to play the guitar? Yes or no ? Or I could say, I'm going to incubate this and I don't want to see it until a year from now. I don't even want to be bothered weekly to asking myself, Hey, do you want to play the guitar now or not? I want to put this thing out there a year from today . I'm just gonna kind of make that wild guess and then you can put it on your calendar as John was saying and kind of tickle yourself in one year with the thought of hey, do you want to learn to play the guitar this year kind of thing? So eventually it will become actionable or not. Because in one year, you may say, you know what ? I don't want to play the guitar now or next year or never . I'm deleting this thought . And you know, as I thought, it may be an easier way of kind of describing it, but it applies even to this work related decisions. It can apply in relationship to acquiring a company, to a merger and acquisition. It can apply to responding to be a guest speaker at a conference. It's just where you at in the moment that you're emptying your in terms of the agreement with yourself in relationship to that item . And then every week you decide to change your mind or not . Yep. It's all about the commitment you have. If it's on your someday maybe or you have incubated it in some way, you're not committing to take any action on it . That's the difference with projects and next actions there is a project is an outcome you're committing to complete . Ne actxtion is the next action that you're committing to do to move something forward . Yeah. And here in the book because I just like to be , you know, try to be as thorough with what GTD is about based on what the book says, right? Because at the end this is what we all have and what we can all go by. So incubate to allow something to remain within a system without a commitment to take action yet , but to be reassessed at a later time , reminders are usually held within Sunday maybe lists, tickler files , or triggered for later calendar items . Then under Sunday maybe, a common category used to organize projects and actions one is committed to review only for potential action at a later date.