I was thinking I would start writing first experiences with GTD. But there are many things flashing my mind currently that I am getting distracted with those thoughts. I will put down what is in mind currently before venturing to my past days.
Today Morning, as I was walking I was thinking of a problem I am facing with GTD with the delegated tasks. This is a very tricky one to me. I am interested how others handle this.
To start with you have a task to Delegate. You don't want to define the next actions for that. In this case; ideal thing would be delegate this task and set a follow up date and forget it. But what if you want to track the progress. You have to create a next action just for follow up. This could be a meeting or a mail sent for update. I feel the overhead for this is little high. Your system is getting clogged with lot of small tasks. Is there a better way?
I started thinking how I am handling now. This is surely a hole in my system. Remember, when it comes to delegated tasks I am not at my best. Here is the step by step things I do today.
1. Create a desired outcome for the delegated task, and set context as "review".
2. Set a due date I would like to follow up.
There is big problem with this. I am trying to define a next action for a delegated task. This is not good.
I tried another workaround.
1. Create a delegated task.
2. Set a follow up date.
3. In the notes field (I am using Thinking Rock) I would put the desired outcome for that follow update. The desired out come will be a obvious one to the concerned parties or it is mutually agreed.
This approach seems to be fine. I could look at the notes and see that things are on track. Does anybody has a better approach ?
Also, I have come across yet another issue with my GTD implementation. This esp with "mail context" task. I would have a next action to mail somebody. After mailing I would expect I could mark the action done. But very often the mail is some clarification I require. The other person may not be in a position to clarify my question. My task gets into a idle state. I cannot proceed. If it is on the same day; I could remember. But usually such things gets spilled to the next days. For tracking such tasks; a "@ followup" tasks has to be created . This is a overhead of maintaing a GTD system (with any other system per se). I haven't got a break through in this. Currenly I create a follow up task. One idea could be change the context, after you send the mail. Example, after mailing, the context will change from "mail" to "waiting" or "followup".
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
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