8. GTD Project and Action Support Material

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi and welcome to episode number 8 of the Getting Things Done podcast from the GTD Nordic. I'm Morten Røvik and I'm here with my friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Hello, Lars.

Lars: Hi, Morten. Happy to be back again and looking forward to doing another episode with you. For those of you new to this podcast, our goal is to support you in using the GTD methodology to clear your mind, to stay present with whatever you're doing, and to achieve stress-free productivity. We hope that you find these episodes valuable regardless of your experience with GTD.

Morten: And today's topic for this episode is projects and support material. And to start off with a distinction that many people don't know that there is a distinction and that this leads to a lot of stress for people is that there is a difference between what we call reference material and project and action support material. So, Lars, can you take us through what's the difference of reference material contra project and action support material?

Lars: Sure. So if we take a step back and maybe go back to your inbox and start processing using some of those things. So let's say you come across a thing that is something that is not actionable for you. As you may remember from a previous episode where we discussed the clarifying workflow, the first option is to simply throw it out. It's not something that you want to refer back to and ever need again. But the second option for non-actionable items is to simply archive it, to put that in an archive that you can refer back to if you need it in the.

Morten: Future.

Lars: So the samples from my, my own archive will be some, some receipts that I bought that I want to refer back to, and also the, the manual for the vacuum cleaner that I recently bought. I don't trust that I can necessarily Google that and find that, that as a PDF somewhere, so I decided to keep that in my archive as well. So it's not actionable stuff, stuff that I want to be able to, to to refer back to. When we talk about support material, we are in the actionable category. So it's material that you need either relating to a specific action or a specific project. So when you need to perform a certain action, you might want to have some kind of material supporting that action when you go through some stuff. Let's say, for example, in my system right now, thinking of what's in my support folder, or support inbox at my office now. I have a printout of all of the activities from our accounting system from 2018 that I need to dive into and look to find receipts. So that's fun activity. That's part of the support material that I have in my inbox right now. And also— not in my inbox, sorry, in my support material folder. And also thinking of it now, there's also a button that fell off my jacket that I need to have sewn back on. So that is actually a support material as well for, for the next action called sewing the button back on. So that's relating to a specific next action. You can certainly also have support materials relating to projects. So in a more general sense, that could be, you know, an MS Project plan for more complex, maybe work-related projects. But it can also be specific notes that you've written to yourself, drawings that you made of how you want the garden to look like, or, you know, any kind of material that relates to the project that you want to have handy when you need to.

Morten: So it will support your project and your next actions. The material put there will support that. If I look at my action support folder, I have one physical one that's just single action support. In here I find tickets for a concert by the very famous and very good Norwegian artist Thomas Dybdahl. You should listen to him at Spotify. Somewhere. You know, well, he's really good. So really, then my girlfriend and I, my fiancée and I, we are going to see him some in May. And not to be fiddling around trying to find that later, I have one place where I put everything that's for single action support, easy to find. And it's, um, when we, uh, it's very fastly retrievable. And some people will of course say that, well, you can have it on your phone. Yeah, I could, but then I have to search my phone and try and find it. This is a lot faster for me. Maybe you're different, but for me this works really well. And I also have on my desk some project support materials that pertain to projects that are active now. One of that I'm looking at now is called the GTD Summit 2019. There's a summit in Amsterdam this summer, this Every 10 years, or every 10 years, it's been before one time in San Francisco, the GTD Summit, Getting Things Done Summit. This summer it's also making its way then over the pond to Amsterdam where there will be a summit where a lot of people will meet. And I have a lot of information there for tickets to get in, voucher for the hotel, flights, tickets, everything that's in the paper. I also have digital reference material, sorry, digital support material that resides in my digital tool either as files attached or as texts inside a note field, or I use Evernote for my digital notes for things I need to pertain to in a project. Like I make a seminar, I will make a new folder for the new client for the seminar and where my meeting notes will reside, all the things we agreed upon, everything that's signed and, you know, don't have any changes to it will go in there as a support material that I, I need to finish this project. So, and that's how I do it digitally. And do you have anything to add on your on your end for digital tools?

Lars: Or— yeah, so I primarily use, yeah, I use 3 different places actually, come to think of it, depending on the item at hand. So it, as many of you listening, those of you who are experienced GTDers will know that you can be more comfortable using different tools. Maybe if I was starting out with GTD, I would focus on one specific tool to start with if you can.

Morten: Now we must focus on not getting arrested, or— I think we will try.

Lars: To avoid focusing on the ambulance that just passed by outside. So I use my desktop. So the desktop on my Mac is for support material for projects. So that's one place that I would put it. So that could be different files that I'm working on. If I look at it right now, I have some natural planning model brainstorms that are currently on my desktop. So I have some projects, I have a natural planning model. I think we will get to that in a future episode, Morten. But that's certainly support material for some of my projects. I also have some InDesign files that I am working on right now. So that's stuff on my desktop. And similar to you, I use just OneNote rather than Evernote more for, I think, historical reasons for me. But that's where I would keep various support material I look at that right now, I have some ideas for my next newsletter in Denmark. I have my notes regarding my certification for coaching and for training to make sure that I maintain those certifications. I have some ideas that I'm working on regarding marketing for this year. So that's all captured in there. And for just the basic notes that I want to be sure that I have at hand, I just put that in my, in my current list manager, which is in Todoist. I use the comments field for that.

Morten: Okay, good. And one of the things that I think is important, I mentioned earlier, the difference between reference material and project and action support material is that when you make the decision in the GTD clarify process, you make very clear distinctions on what you commit to do and what you do not commit to do. And therein lies sanity and mental health, I think, because a lot of people get a lot of stress from things they haven't decided on. In the seminars, we talk about stacks of ha. Stacks of ha are stacks of information you haven't decided what it means for you and decided upon if you're going to do something about it or not. I see a lot of people in our seminars and that we coach after. I meet people, we talk about their system. I look at their system. I see a lot of unprocessed things that sneaks its way into their task management system. This is the recipe of don't feel good about GTD. Because if you're unclear on what you put in your lists, you're going to be unclear when you try to do them. If you're unclear when you try to do them, then you have to rethink. And try and reimagine what you decided the first time, if you decided at all. So, make sure that you don't get them mixed up. I remember when I started with GTD, this was one of my first pitfalls was to fall into the, "Oh, I need to take care of everything in the same place." But if you make real hard distinctions between what have I committed to do and what is just support material,, and, and then what is then, only reference material is going to be a lot easier for you. I don't know, did you fall in the same pitfall when you started?

Lars: I think maybe, maybe slightly differently, I think, because I, I started out with my, you know, I, I got an inbox set up at the office, at home, et cetera. Uh, I found some, you know, let's say I had dropped my, uh, clothes off at the cleaner and I had that small risk that I needed to bring with me and on Friday. I would tend to put that back in the inbox because I didn't want to mess up my desk. I had a nice clean desk and everything was fine, so I would put that back in my inbox. And of course, that then, you know, puts the wrong stuff in your inbox. It mixes the stuff that you need to process with stuff that you already know you've processed. So really, for those of you listening and don't already have a place for support material, just, you know, a separate tray. Perhaps you have a stackable in-tray, then maybe get one that you can, can, can just have below that. That's what I I have right now, and it works, uh, works fine for me. Um, that would be the— that's where I— that was the pitfall for, for me. Um, but it's also something that, that developed over time. So, um, we, we, we have a summer house, and I think I've mentioned on this podcast before as well. And, um, you know, we often, almost every time when we go there, we have a lot of stuff that we need to bring there. I don't know how that stuff shows up, but it just does. There's stuff that we need to, to bring to the summer house. So that's— where do we put that? Because that's also really, you can say, that support material for the action of going to the summer house. So recently we have set up a specific, you know, we always create a small bag with the things that we need to bring with us, and that bag goes on a specific hook. So that's actually recently became labeled as the, the Dyrbo hook. So whenever we need to bring stuff We just go in there and if there's a bag, we just drop it in. And if there's not, we just set up a new bag and throw the stuff in there. So whenever we leave for the summer house, we know to just check if there's anything on that hook. We'll bring that with us.

Morten: Yeah, that's genius. It's— and this is pure GTD, as you know, make reminders of what you need to do when you need to do it. Make sure that you are— make it easy for yourself. The future you to remember things. And this is physical things. And this is genius. You gave me an idea what I will make. I probably don't make a hook, but I will probably have a little foldable box, but I will label dad because I bring things to my father all the time. And I go to him once a week and to remember actually, to bring the things could be in a dad box.

Lars: That's a good idea. You remind me where I may have heard about this from because actually a seminar participant in one of the Copenhagen seminars came from Sweden. And she lived in Denmark, but there was always some Danish stuff that she needed to bring back for her father who lived in Sweden. So she actually had a Sweden-specific place or bag as well that she would bring with her.

Morten: Yeah. And make it easy for yourself. This is GTD in a nutshell. Think as little as you can get away with, enough to get things done. Park reminders of what you've committed to in a place you will see it later. Reflect on the different things you've committed to. Make sure you're on the right track. And then do. Use the least amount of effort as possible and get the maximum results. So this is— I like this. I'm triggered by this. So, okay, good. Um, I think we've emptied this subject so far and we are on the, around the 14, 15 minute mark. So we'll make this a little shorter episode. So Lars, can you say.

Lars: Goodbye? I'll do that by saying, just briefly reminding people where you can find more information, and that is of course at gtdnordic.com, where you can find all of the information about GTD in the Nordics, uh, the articles that we write. The, uh, press things that we have done, also the activities that we do on various social media— Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. You can find it all there. And as mentioned in the beginning, we hope that you find these episodes valuable, and if you do, then we'd really appreciate if you can share the podcast with a colleague or maybe rate it on iTunes.

Morten: Good. And until next time, we hope that we've given you some added value, that you are getting something out of this podcast, please write us, talk to us. If you want us to raise a specific topic, send us an email or tweet us or reach out to us wherever you can find us. And until next time, have a good two weeks.

Lars: Bye-bye. Bye everyone.