69. Managing Recurring Projects

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from GTD Nordic. I am Morten Røvik, and I'm here as always with my good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen, or as Large Rock Hendrickson Siri would like to call you. And we will take that again. Okay. Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from GTD Nordic. I am Morten Røvik, and I'm here with my good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Privet, Lars. Privet, Morten.

Lars: Good to see you as always, and looking forward to recording another episode with you. Our purpose of this podcast is to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDer. So as always, we hope that this episode supports you in that. If you're new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 to get an introduction to the basics of GTD. I just heard from a GTD Nordic Podcast listener out there that she had listened to those 100 times. So I thought that was a nice, nice recommendation. Now, this is episode 69. And today's topic is Managing recurring projects. But before we do that, I just wanted to follow up on one thing from last week's episode. We heard from one of our friends and listeners, Paul Verhoeven from Estonia, and he chimed in and, and followed up on one of the questions. He said, hey guys, congratulations on another great episode. I wanted to share with you my thoughts regarding the first question you addressed, how to organize the information generated by building a hospital. I understood the question that is about how to organize the information after the project is completed. So in essence, that is reference information and doesn't include action reminders. You gave a great answer. And what I would have liked to add is to suggest to Gerry to apply the natural planning model to this project, i.e., how to organize reference information. So walking through the steps, purpose, principles, wild success, brainstorming, etc., would have provided him and his team some clarity on the best way to organize this to fit the purpose. So thanks a lot, Paul. That's a great suggestion. Yeah, really just wanted to add that to Gerry and anyone else listening who might be managing a lot of information. Perhaps the natural planning model might be a good approach. Thanks, Paul.

Morten: Yeah. And for those who want to know what the natural planning model is, we have an episode for that as well. So look through the backlog and you will find that. Somewhere. I don't remember the name.

Lars: I'll put it in the show notes.

Morten: Put it in the show notes. Good. And for those of you who saw, we were smiling a lot before we started today's episode. The reason we did this, because I tried to, before we started our recording, before I opened the recording session or the session with Lars, I tried to write his name with the use of Siri, and I wanted to write Lars Rotskjöld Hendrickson as a part of, you know, we are looking for ways of doing things faster, and my mouth is faster than my fingers on the keyboard, so I was hoping that I can write Lars Rotskjöld Hendrickson, and what came out? Large Rock Hendrickson with a CK. So it's not perfect yet.

Lars: Well, you can just rename me in your phone address book and everything will be fine.

Morten: Lars Rock. Hello, Mr. Rock. Okay, yes, recurring projects, very interesting topic. In the pre-show, we also talked about, you know, how would we attack this, and it is the recurring project could also be at least a semi-answer for the last episode where we have the listener question about, you know, this— how do you handle recurring projects when the project comes back? And we are going to be as hands-on as we can. We will— for those of you who are not seeing this but listening to us, you might want to swing into one of our— or either Lars or my YouTube channel to see this episode, because we're going to show you our tools and how we have, you know, practically are handling this. Because we both use a way or method for copying good thoughts that we already made before, that we are just adjusting as we go along. So, so how would you like to attack this on a more, let's say, not esoteric, but, you know, on a more theoretical level before we get hands-on, Lars?

Lars: Yeah, I thought a good starting point might be for us to just clearly define the project versus the areas of focus. So Horizon 1 versus Horizon 2, because we do tend to see in seminars and coaching when we work with people that there can be some mix-ups in between the two. So it can be helpful to really distinguish the two and make it clear what we are talking about. So projects in their basic definition is anything that requires more than one action step to complete. Timeframe is up to 12 months, but can certainly be less than that, just a few weeks maybe for some projects. As opposed to the areas of focus, which are things that you don't check off. So where projects have a defined outcome, that's what you're looking to achieve, the desired outcome, and you can check that off when what is done. The areas of focus is what you are maintaining at certain standards. So this is what you're either focus on or are responsible for in your work and life. So that would be, you know, at home, it would be, you know, your finances, relationships, hobbies, things like that. At work, it really depends on your work, what you do. But if you look at your job description or you talk to your boss, what do they expect you to maintain at certain standards? And then from that area of focus, projects will spring out. I think was the way you phrased it earlier. Anything we need to add to that in relation to managing recurring projects?

Morten: No, I just want to, if we can stay a little in the areas, if you look at them as, you can give them different wording, which means different things for different people. So areas of focus might be a little, you know, cloudy, fluffy for some people. But if you add responsibility, so what are you responsible for, or what do you want to focus on? So it's what you're responsible for and what you want to focus on. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah. So, and they have no end, they have no beginning, they just are. Either you have them, you don't. So if you look at areas of responsibility and focus, it could be Lars is the managing director of Productive Denmark. This is one of his roles and one of his areas of responsibility. In his work life. Sorry, his work, not work life, because that's work-life balance. Now I'm getting my allegorical self going here. So, and another responsibility, Loris is a dad, so am I. So that's a, you know, responsibility that we have to maintain at some certain standards. And when you look at them, if you look at them on your, on a regular basis in your— for instance, your weekly review, you will be able to see if they are maintained at that standard you would like them to be maintained at, or you will look at them, you will go, you will have, you know, some kind of cognitive dissonance happening, and then the project will be birthed out of that various of responsibility. I don't know, I'm I'm, I'm using that. I don't know where I got that from. Maybe it is from David even, but I use that. That's a good phrase because an area of focus has no end, no start. It's something you have or you do not have, but that area of focus or responsibility will give birth to projects when you feel you have a cognitive dissonance, that cognitive dissonance is big enough for you to feel, I really need to do something about this. I don't feel good about this.

Lars: On that topic, I mean, diving more into areas of focus is something that we did in the first episode of this year, so 2022, if you're listening in the future. So, uh, also highly recommend go back. I refer a lot of people that are, you know, somewhat seasoned GCDers to, to maybe go back and watch that episode because that's where we, we share some of the, um, the ways to, to approach this and build your own And of course, just wanted to add that. Yeah. So we don't, you know, that you don't put a check mark next to these areas of focus. On the other hand, of course, they will change as time and life moves on. You switch your job or something else happens where things change in your life, then your areas of focus and accountability will need to be updated accordingly.

Morten: Yeah. Areas of focus, responsibility, and accountability. Now we have the full definition. I think you used accountability. I thought it might be good to add that. Okay, good. So, so, and then recurring projects. What is recurring for those of, you know, not native English speakers? What does recurring mean?

Lars: Yeah. So something that, that happens again and again, I would say in the simplest, the simplest definition. So things that happen on a, yes, exactly. On an ongoing basis, things that will happen. So, it could be things that you have to do on a, you know, recurring schedule. It could be things that you do ad hoc that, that you need to, to take care of. That would be a project in your GTD system. So let's say in my world, one of the things that I have to make sure is right now that we have everything ready for the closing of the, the books, the financial year from, from last year. I need to make sure that our accountants have all of the information that they, they need. So that's a recurring project for me that happens every year, and that's something that I need to, to deal with because that's example of a recurring project on a yearly basis for me. On a more regular basis, recurring projects for me are speeches, seminars, things like that, that will happen that, that, that I need to, to deliver, prepare for, follow up on, make sure that everything is working as it, as it should.

Morten: And just as an addition, it could be that you can use this on, you know, preparing to leave for vacation, you, or just make lists of— we use this in the home, or at least I use it in the home. I share it with my wife. She never looks at it, but it's there. But it is a checklist that I use before we leave the home. If we are leaving the home for one week, you have to look at the— is something going to smell in the refrigerator? Do we need to throw something out? Empty the garbage, close the windows, you know, check that, you know, none of the ovens are covered by something that can start a fire. Just to make sure that everything is ready for vacation. And that's also a recurring project. And for me, that's, you know, recurring projects can be called checklists, with next actions, predefined next actions. So I don't know.

Lars: Okay. Yeah, that would be one of the, you know, the key things to, for people to reflect on is to start looking for these recurring projects. So what do you know actually happens on a regular basis and really learn from yourself. So the next time you see this project coming, then you already have perhaps a checklist to support you in that. That would be a great addition and something that's, you know, at least in my experience, it shows up pretty clearly for people who typically when people attend the Level 2 seminar, because then they are somewhat seasoned GTDers. But they also, you know, there's just something that happens when you start to do GTD and you get things under control. And you want to just start to help the future version of yourself. So you want to get ahead and say, all right, well, now I learned from this. Let's not repeat that mistake. So let me set up a checklist or some other way to remind me of what is going to happen here. So that next time I do it, I'll be that much smarter and it will be so much easier for me to do.

Morten: Yeah, exactly. And then you mentioned the level 2 seminars. In those seminars, you also, or we also take you on a deep dive into your areas of focus, responsibility, and accountability so that they are mapped out, or at least you have a a draft of the first map.

Lars: Of your— yeah, so, and we do that and we do the checklists, and both of those in combination is just so a game changer from— for many people, and it certainly was for, for me. Um, and you know, just as you learn, as you start to, to have this perspective on, on life, then you will start just, you know, help the future version of yourself automatically. The most simple version— I'm reminded now because I see the nice green plant behind you, um, behind me there used to be some green plants that I would just automatically water, and then I didn't automatically water them for a while. So, so, so they are now gone. So I have on my shopping list to buy a few new plants, and on the weekly review checklist, I have expanded to check if the plants need water. So it can be, you know, on the bigger grand scale and then important things like getting the, the books closed, and it can be just Basic day-to-day stuff.

Morten: Exactly. So, so, and in, and what's, um, you know, that we, we are talking about, you know, getting things done at a, you know, a little higher level today. That's, and if you are a beginner, this might be for inspiration for you. And for those of you who's been doing GTD for a while, maybe attended a Level 2, that might be a repetition a little bit about how you can make this practically. But we are going to be very hands-on. I'm going to show you my OmniFocus templates folder, show you how that works. And the idea here is that we want to make this as practical as possible for you. So, so where do you have your recurring projects? Where do you keep them? In which I told you I have mine in— some of my checklists are in Notes for iOS and Mac. Where do you keep— and in OmniFocus. And where do you keep yours, Lars?

Lars: Yeah, split in two places as well. So, so some of them, just a few, are in Todoist, and the rest are all in OneNote. And that's really, you know, been using that for 10 years, I think, and it's just sort of started there and it has that nice flexibility of being able to add things. So now I keep them there.

Morten: Do you share any of the lists with anyone?

Lars: Yes, my complete notebook is actually, or the one for personal use is actually shared with my wife. So we both have access to this and can go in and check. So like you said, in relation to travels could be one thing, packing lists could be also closing down the summer house, opening up the summer house. I just used that one this weekend to make sure that we have everything going on. Just on that note, as an example, one of the things that I had on my checklist was to check the fire extinguisher to see that it was still valid, that, you know, the gauge was still at the green level, and it wasn't. So just an example of what you can catch, because I would never look at that by myself. I would think, let me go and have a look at the fire extinguisher to see how it's doing. But now I did because I had the opening the summer house checklist that I walked through, found that, and, you know, Yeah, so that's, that's going to go to the recycling place, and a new fire extinguisher showed up on my shopping list.

Morten: Good, then now you'll be safe again.

Lars: Which is— Exactly, yeah, hopefully we'll never need it, but if we do, we, we will have a working one.

Morten: Yes, and I, let me, let me, I have been in a fire once, not been in a fire, but I was in a fire that we need to, to extinguish ourselves, And working fire extinguishers are crucial for that job. So if not, there's going to be a lot of buckets of water and a lot of, you know, cleaning up after. You have to clean up, but water and powder is not good. So powder is easier. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so for our listeners who are in— would you like to go first, by the way? I don't know if— have you tried to share your screen?

Lars: Have you tried that before? I don't have a good section to share. So I think from my perspective, the ones that I will be— the way I can share it is probably best to just describe it, how I could do it. So like I said, I have my recurring projects or checklists, and in this case in two different places. I have some in Todoist and I have most of them in OneNote. So the OneNote things we just touched on now, which are really, you know, the ones that I will pick up and walk through ad hoc, so to speak, in the sense that they don't have any specific dates attached to them. So when I have seminars and speeches, I'll be follow-ups and waiting for and things like that that I want to do. So I'll keep that in my active system. In OneNote, I have all my checklists not that it's a project in that sense, but things like the weekly review, for example, is a good example of that. Opening the summer house, closing the summer house, all my packing lists, all those kinds of things, those are in my OneNote setup. And also my notes for coaching. So that is actually where I keep my coaching notes. I am looking into transitioning this to somewhere else, but But right now, for now, I have a set of pages about, I would say, 15 different pages for, you know, the starting interview, adjusted to whether it's with an executive or executive assistant or a normal coaching flow. And then depending on whether it's in-person or virtual sessions, I will have templates actually for, in the virtual case, for each of the the sessions. So I know that we'll cover all the stuff that we'll want to cover. And, you know, in coaching, the premise really is that we will go wherever you need to go, but I want to make sure that we covered all the bases. So it's a very, let's say, flexible checklist in that sense, in that I will work it as it makes sense for the coaching client. And also, you know, we have follow-up calls. So I have templates for that, things that I want to follow up on. Also just a placeholder for me to capture notes during the coaching session or transfer notes during the coaching session to the things that I want to follow up on when we, when we follow up. So those, those are the kinds of things that I keep in OneNote. It's very straightforward. Some of them are with tables and I have my questions and room for answers. Some of them are simply for the basic checklist, just, you know, the standard to-do option in OneNote that you can then mark next to it and then you can check them off as you, as you go along. So that one is pretty straightforward. The other one that I use is in Todoist. And Todoist really, you know, that is where I use the— for the level 1, level 2, level 3 seminars, speeches, and introductory webinars. So in Denmark, we do just a quick 30-minute introduction for free for people who are curious about GTD, want to learn more. I have a quick template for that. And the way I've done it, for those of you who use Todoist, is simply to create a project. They simplified it I think probably a year back now. In the old days, you had to— so you would create the project, not really a project in that sense, an active project. So I have a project called templates, and sub-projects to that are the specific templates for each of the seminars. So those are really, you know, have grown over the years. Every time I learn something new, I'll add that to the list. But there are some preparation that I need to do for each of the seminars. There's a packing list, there's stuff that I need to do afterwards, follow-up and so on. So they will go in there and you can set it up with the relative dates and you can, can set up some nice things. So when you go in and duplicate that project and make it, move it into the active system, then you can, can work it from there. Right now I still do it manually because I haven't found a nice way to do that. You can do it based on, so if I'm copying it today, then 7 days from now remind me to do something. But, you know, people book, some people book speeches 2 weeks in advance and some people do it 4, 6 months in advance.. So I haven't really found a nice way to integrate that in the Todoist setup. And just a note, like I said, they made it simpler because they offered now to duplicate the project. They have been for a while, but for those of you who might have come across it a while back, back then we would have to export the templates. You could export a CSV file, for example, and then you would create a new project, upload that CSV file, and then populate the fields. Today you could just duplicate the projects. And, you know, I use it, you know. Yeah, exactly. No, so I really, you know, use that feature a lot. That's, you know, all of the speeches, coaching and seminar, everything in relation to that. All of that is captured as templates that I can just copy and move into my— so I have a group called 2022 and everything that happens where I need a checklist or like a recurring project in in today's topic, I'll put it in there so I can clearly see where I am with each of them. And you know, you have no chance of, you know, if you're planning 5 speeches at once, how are you gonna know at what stage each of those are? Have we clarified where we're gonna be? Have we clarified, you know, have they received the pre-information? Have I followed up with them? Have we invoiced them? All that kind of stuff is captured in those checklists. So I think those are the sort of two key places where I have those kinds of recurring projects. And I think it works overall. It works well for me.

Morten: What about you? Yeah, I can show what I'm doing in Notes. And that is iOS and macOS Notes. I'm, I use, you know, I'm just going to show you what we do when before travel to Turkey. And I will see if I can make it this happen by doing this. Ah, you can also see this, and I will hide that. Let me see if I can find my second note here because I will have to hide this, I think. Yes. Now, now this is, um, before travel to Turkey. My wife and I travel to Turkey all the time. We have family there, so we go there often. And this is 3 days before. I have one checklist, and at the day of leaving, I have one. And 3 days before, I must remember to, to close for so we don't receive newspapers. I do still read 2 newspapers every day, keeps me connected to the world. I like paper. And then we need to, at least before, we needed to make order for something called a HES code. That is no longer needed anymore because they've stopped doing that, so I can just delete that. Now I updated it, and then I have to make sure I make an out-of-office message. I just click the links and it goes straight to my out-of-office, you know, what's the settings for the out-of-office. And on the day of traveling, I can I can then, when I've done this, I can just take them off. Oops, now I got a question if I want to have sorting. No, I do not, thank you very much. I want to have them in the order I already have them, and then as I go along, I will just tick them off. Check the refrigerator, throw out garbage, pull out the electric cords everywhere, turn down the temperature on ovens, check windows and veranda door. And then the last thing, I will now update since we are now here, as Screw alarm, which means turn on alarm. We just have an alarm system installed. So, so, and, and when I finished, I can do this, and, and this list is ready for be reused. Um, I will go back and I want to show you— this is a project I just started a few or month ago where I know this I will need to do again. Because I'm going to— I'm having some problems with my Mac. I have an elderly iMac who slowly started dying, and so I decided to buy a MacBook Air. I needed a travel, light travel Mac, so I bought a MacBook Air, and I am going to— and I, you know, I know I need to install these these apps from Setapp. Setapp is a Mac App Store outside the App Store where you can subscribe to apps. And I need to have MineNode, Renamer, iStat, Menu Screens, etc. And I know I will do this again because I will set up a Mac from scratch again when I— in the autumn, I hope to be in a position where I can buy an iMac. I hope that will be new, some new iMacs coming so that we can have that. And I want to make sure that I can use that easy and I don't have to then think about which apps I need to install.

Lars: Does that make sense? Absolutely. And it's nice to know that you can just share these. And of course, for the people listening, Morten walked through the detail, but just for those watching, it's nice and easy just to see these. And I think in a lot of cases with GTD, you might have read the book, you walk through it, you understand it, but it's just so helpful to see examples of this. And I think that's also why, you know, people, for example, appreciate the podcast in some cases where we just give examples of these things, because at least for myself and my own practice, I know that it made a huge difference once I started to understand how other.

Morten: People might want to, might want to do these things. Exactly. So the next thing I would like to show is this. This is my, this is OmniFocus. For those of you who don't know this, it's an iOS and macOS and web only. The web is, by the way, a little short of being fully featured, but this is for those of you who are using this. Here I've— I have my templates folder. I can of course close and open that, and I focus now on templates, so you can't see the rest of my system. But this is my templates folder where I have 4 templates that I use all the time.. So for instance, I have what we call a GTD Startup Kit. If you're a client of ours, you want to do a full fundamentals and an installation lab, that's called— we call a Startup Kit. It's VILT. This is virtual. What do I need to— what do I need to remember and do before engaging in this? And with OmniFocus, you can create duplicate projects very easily. It's just right-click and then, you know, duplicate.

Lars: This has been— that's what you do.

Morten: Today in Todoist as well. Yeah. So, so, but when you take it a bit further, which I have, is I use— there is, um, I think it is an AppleScript programmer, his name is Kurt Clifton. Hi Kurt, if you're listening to us, thank you so much for creating this. It's a little AppleScript that I have installed that lives up here. So when I choose one of the projects, and I can also look down in the Notes section here, I have to make— how this works is that I have to make what I want to be copied in. The way that this works is anything that's in brackets here, you know, in quotes, like "Kunde" client, "Datum" date, and, and the contact person I have. If I now trigger this script, it will prompt me for those, you know, brackets or quotes questions. So if I click here, it will ask me— I will go so you can see it— what is the date today? And since I'm very lazy, so I'm using TextExpander to create the date, of course. And what is the— sorry, what's the, the client name? Let's say this is Coca-Cola. I don't know, we don't have them as a client. I can use that as an example. And what's the contact person? Is Chris Kringle— it's a guy, I think. Kringle with, with a K. Is it? Yes, I think K. Okay, so Kris Kringle, and what happened now is that I can't show you this because if I show you, I will show you my full system. I can't do that. I'm sorry. Boring. Yeah, but what you will see is that, okay, I will go off camera for 2 seconds here and I will show you. I am boring.

Lars: Thank you, Lars, for— let me see, unfocus. I didn't share anything, so really I shouldn't complain.

Morten: No, no, no. Let me see, uh, focus. Okay, now I can share this with you. The reason I can't share the system is there's a lot of client information here I can't show you. But this is a GTD startup kit with Coca-Cola, and the name, it's VILT, that's the name of the project. And I have to create a digital evaluation form 3 days before the dates. And now I have a question for myself: do I— have I received the number of participants and contact info from Kris Kringle one week before? And this is giving myself some instructions on when do I need to have this. And then I can choose either to put them in the calendar by drag and drop, or I can just manually move them to the calendar as deadlines for myself during— so I can follow up when I need to follow up. So that's— and, and as you can see, I have created links, for instance, for creating the, the digital evaluation folder— sorry, the form. And that's in my— that's in the notes field. So if I need something, that's— and I, I will need to make— we have some, what you call that, certification of course completion We create that and print that, and I can then— I have all the links. And the reason I'm doing this, the reason I'm using this, is because I can think smart and clearly after— before I do a seminar one time, and then after I just have to maintain how smart was it this time. So how well did this work this time? Does that make sense? Absolutely, absolutely. And because you are, we are having smart thoughts all the time. You are clever as a person and capture that cleverness and that creativity and just put it on repeat. Because there are times in your life where you're not very creative, not very smart. I say Friday afternoon, anyone want to raise their hand? I think they might want to. Yes, thank you, Lars. Solidarity is a cool thing. I know, but the idea here is that you must— and getting things done is all about being really lazy about things. And, you know, how can you get more of the right stuff done using less time and effort? And this is just harnessing your creativity, harnessing your smartness, and put it somewhere where you can you know, put it on repeat or recurring, if you may, so you don't have to rethink. And this ties into, I think we had an episode where we talked about, you know, text expanders. Am I correct?

Lars: Or have you?

Morten: Yeah, we've touched on that before. Yeah, so text expanders are where you can type an abbreviation and get the snippet you want of text or images or links or whatever you need to populate wherever you need to populate. And the reason we are doing this is because you, you want to make, make reuse of something that is good. And so you think good and smart and write a long email, you can use that on repeat, and you, you seemingly are intelligent all the time when you are actually really that tired. And you know, you can, you can.

Lars: Then pull on your former performance. Yeah. Rely on the previous smart version. Yeah, exactly. So, no, but it's important to understand that kind of thinking. I was delivering a speech on Friday last week for a group of lawyers, really smart people, really, you know, an amazing organization, actually very, very focused on wellbeing. One of their clear statements was to leave the office with more energy than when they arrived. They have really implemented— yeah, I was really impressed. And they had really implemented some cool things and practices, standard Pomodoros on Friday, everybody at the office working in Pomodoros and things like that. They had really, really worked on that. And I really tried to emphasize that kind of thinking that, you know, we are smart people. They were and are smart people, but really try to capture that. And, you know, we're not that smart version.

Morten: All of the time. Yeah. And I'm reminded I also did a seminar recently last week. I did a seminar for one of the biggest music festivals here in Norway, the managers of that or the people who make that happen. And we were talking a lot about how can you use your energy level well, you know, Getting things done is about creating and being nice to the future you. Remove all the obstacles so when the future little, you know, you're a little dumber, a little more lazy and tired version of you has a runway to run instead of, you know, what you call that. I think I asked that before. Do we have an answer to this? What is hekkelopp in English?

Lars: Hedge run?

Morten: I don't know. No, I don't call that— as an athlete, you run a track and there.

Lars: Is hedges you have to jump across.

Morten: Yeah, yeah, yeah, jump, jumping run, jumping hedges. No, I don't know what that is called. So if you know what that is, please send us an email, illuminate me, because I don't know.

Lars: But it is— or Google Translate.

Morten: But yeah, or Google Translate. Yes, that's also a possibility, but I'm really lazy. Let's outsource this. If anybody has the answer, send it to us at podcast@gtdnordic.dk. podcast@gtdnordic.dk. Cell phones. But the idea of this, the runway vs. the hedge run, let's call it that, is that when you have a runway, you have no obstacles. There is nothing hindering you from running. So if you're really tired, you can just go and tick things off your next actions list where it says, I'll call Bob regarding this, talk about, mention PDF. So-and-so. And that makes it easy for you to be clever and intelligent when you're really not. You just have to do the things, you have to engage and, and do the things you've decided to do. And, and that is so much easier than having that little unclear thinking done on your next actions lists where you go, what did I really want to do here? That is when you meet the hedge. You run and then you have to stop and you have to think and you have to say, how am I going to climb this hedge? How am I going to get over this? How, what do I need to do here? And that is where a lot of people end up procrastinating or just giving up. You know, you can, you just go to your, you know, whatever is your dark playground for, you know, where you play when you don't need to play. This is, by the way, from Tim Urban. He has a excellent TED Talk called Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator. I think you have to link to that as well in here so that people can see that. Really good about procrastination, that TED Talk there. And the idea is that you should not give yourself an excuse for not doing what you've decided to do. But to be able to remove the excuse, you have to be really clear on your clarification and organization of your with stuff. You can't just organize unclear stuff and think that Getting Things Done is going to work for you. So, yeah. And this recurring project ties into that very easily because then you don't have to think again. You've done all the thinking in advance. You just have to make a copy dummy. And I'm talking to myself now. Copy dummy. And you can do this. You don't have to think. A lot. And you don't have to make new decisions, you just have to populate whatever you need to populate. And then for those who— I just remembered, we— I didn't mention that there is this AppleScript. We will make a link to that page where you will find that, Kurt Clifton's page about populate template. What did we call it again?

Lars: Something, something. It's not important.

Morten: Templates placeholders. Yes. Thank you. It's an OmniFocus AppleScript that you can install. So anything we need to add to this episode? Are we, are we at the end?

Lars: No, I think we covered everything. The only thing I don't know if we specified clearly enough was in the beginning to take us back to the, the, the defining of projects versus areas of focus. We started off by defining that just because we see people sometimes mix these up. So I just wanted to reiterate that and make it clear to people that we don't wanna mix these, you know, projects will maybe come from the areas of focus. But be careful that you don't have an area of focus which you see as a project. So make sure that you actually define a project for that area of focus instead of just throwing it all in there, especially if you have, for example, grouped your next actions or by areas of focus, for example. Then you just throw everything in there and it'll be one big mushy thing that you don't really see what you're working on. If these are recurring projects, create a project for that. Create a project for, you know, publishing that article or getting that, you know, all the finances done or whatever it might be. Make sure that you do still create projects for these and don't just mix.

Morten: Them into two areas of focus. Really important because I, and I, very good point, Loris, because I also see that when I coach people going to their lists, they have, they have, instead of having, projects, they have areas of focus like budgeting, economy, legal, and I ask, okay, where's the verb? Where's, where's the finishing line? How does, how does done look? And they go, I will never be done with this. And exactly, this is not a project, this is an area of focus or responsibility. So, exactly. So if you don't have a verb defining when you're finished and it doesn't have an end, It's an area of focus. So, and you don't have recurring areas of focus unless you are reincarnating and can.

Lars: Remember what happened. Okay. No, but I think we can wrap it up otherwise. Yeah. No, I think, I think we can, we can wrap it up and we always do. With a quick reminder to head on over to gtdnordic.com to have a look around, because on that website you'll find links to each of the country websites for the Nordic countries. And on each of those sites, you can find articles about GTD, newsletters, groups on social media, all of our offerings, coaches, speeches, coaching, and seminars, both virtual and physical. And you can find a lot of things there. Clearly, if you're outside the Nordics, gettingthingsdone.com is the place to go to find your local partners. And I think one last plug for the GCD Summer Camp. We are now approaching 35 participants from 10 countries. It's amazing to see, and we're really excited. We had planning meetings last week to just finalize the schedule. It'll be so much fun, and yeah, really looking forward to it. So gcdsummercamp.com. We'll hopefully see some of you, some of you there. Morten and I will be there. It'll be a great weekend. And lastly, as always, we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. If GTD has made a difference in your life, please do help us share this podcast by giving it a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. It really helps the discoverability of the podcast, which will help more people learn.

Morten: GTD, which is why we are here. Exactly, exactly. And until next time, people, Stay safe and stay productive.

Lars: Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And voilà.