Please suggest how to manage this kind of project

Hi there,

actually this is a not very product-related question.
i have the following hierachicall project:

PROJ A

TASK x

TASK y

TASK z

PROJ B

TASK x

TASK y

TASK z

PROJ C

TASK x

TASK y

TASK z

PROJ D

TASK x

TASK y

TASK z

PROJ E

TASK x

TASK y

TASK z

how to manage this?l
currently in Everdo, i tried PROJ and ACTIONS and ACTIONS and LISTS. i think it may not be the best way since it creates too many items in projects or actions, hard to locate the specific things i am interested in.
Ideally, the following table might be the best for this sceanio.
image
but i believe table is not compatible with GTD concept, or is it?

any suggestions on this?
Thanks!

From your description, my assumptions are:

  1. Every project has roughly the same actions
  2. There are many actions in each project

In this case I would definitely go with a table, as I frequently do.

List-based approach to tasks is good for picking next actions based on context and other traits, but it doesn’t work so well for planning and getting a high-level view of the overall project.

When it comes to combining the table approach with GTD, I believe the table would fit perfectly fine into the project support materials.

Whether to create projects A-E as Projects or Actions in Everdo would depend on the nature and scope of work. Will you get any benefit from seeing the combined sub-actions in the single Next list and filtering that list? How much effort is one project? Maybe it makes more sense to have a single project with A-E as actions?

In other words, I prefer tables for planning and lists for execution. So my major multi-month projects are usually planned in spreadsheets, and then I move actionable bits of the overall project to Everdo (as smaller projects) when it’s time to execute. Then I divide them into next actions.

Not sure it helps much, but I hope it does.

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Hi Andrei,

thanks very much for your suggestion.

i see what i messed up here. as you described, you separated planning and execution while i combined them. for years i’ve been searching for a perfect GTD tool and i always got un-satisfied with certain point. i think separating them would be a great idea, tables for planning and lists for execution, will definately try that out.

in my specific case, PROJ A-E is not as long as multi-month. usually it is 1 week at most, all of them will be finished in a month. so how do you judge if a project/task in your table becomes actionable? what is the trigger for you to move them to Everdo?

I review projects once a week and decide roughly what I will be actually doing next week based on larger goals. I usually keep 2-3 projects active per area because i know the rest will just be ignored and distract me. So to answer your question, the trigger is that I choose to commit to focusing on those projects during the short term (a week). Everything else goes to either someday until next review, or doesn’t get added at all.

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cut and dry but simple and effective I like it. As a GTD practitioner since 2002 this scenario can get murky if clear and concise parsing of one’s actions is not taken proactively. The system needs to get oiled too as they say and using the Someday list like you do is a great practice.

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