I’m guessing that after the new year, I’ll make a post in a separate thread that I will link to in this discussion. I’ve been contemplating trying to figure out how to at least get progress by doing one task in each active project that I have while still having my 3-5 Big Rock projects.
I will be experimenting with some new perspectives to handle @OogieM’s situation where we’re trying to make sure we get through each active project and get at least one next action completed. Currently, my workflow is mostly:
Take care of Admin work (admin/routine/maintenance)
Work on one of 3-5 Big Rock projects
But this does leave me dangling with having too many active projects that aren’t necessarily Big Rocks. I am intrigued by this discussion and has gotten me thinking about at least making small progress in several other active projects.
Don’t hold your breath but I will be getting there after the Christmas holiday workload lightens up. Cheers.
LOL. It’s not about quantity… I’m sure there are many tasks that were thrust upon you by bosses, co-workers, friends, family, etc. That part we have no control of. My life is simpler (intentionally) and that may be why I have fewer available actions.
I’m just struggling along like all of us here. ;-P
I have a little time now for a quick follow up. @Kourosh’s post is a good example of handling multiple projects. Google for “kourosh Simi land sea OmniFocus” to get an idea of how to handle this.
It took me a while to get my head wrapped around it but it works.
When I typed about having 3-5 active projects, I think I should’ve stated that it is 3-5 Big Rock projects that I am really focused on. I have quite a few single action lists for the office, house, and personal that are always active. I also have some administrative projects that have weekly and monthly next actions to deals with. I also have several other projects that are active but not my big rocks.
Using the land and Sea method is a perfect way to handle having the big rocks plus trying to make sure that I make progress in some of the other active but not urgent projects.
I’ve been playing with my own variation but involves using a spreadsheet outside of OmniFocus. You can use Apple Numbers, Microsoft Excel, or Google Docs to create a daily or weekly checklist to make sure you do one next action from each project.
I have read Kourosh’s book on Omnifocus and also was reading his blog for a long time but found that for me it was too rigid. There seemed to be too much flagging and due dates and the maintenance of the system overwhelmed me when I tried to implement it. I used his ideas for about 3 weeks before tossing in the towel and going back to my way. Similarly I’ve tried MacSparky’s perspectives and they get closer to what works for me but still don’t quite reflect how I like to see my actions and projects.
My way of removing the noise is to have nearly all my projects sequential. If a project can have parallel actions I usually try to create a separate project for that piece. I like flat structures, for my work, my databases, my filing, and my Omnifocus system. I don’t like deep hierarchical structures. I find them harder to navigate for reference, harder to keep clean when it’s tasks and harder to pass on to someone else if I want to delegate a project.
For me the focus of big rock type projects is enforced by the seasonal nature of my work. In any given season there is a limited set of my big why am I on earth at this time and place projects that can be worked on due to external constraints. That seasonality also gives me peace when the season’s change. I can put the remaining big rock projects into hibernation until the next year in that season.
As I’ve said before I am also very comfortable with projects that come in and out of my system and take a long time to complete. As an example I have been working on my year end review, a slightly larger version of my quarterly reviews, and when I got to the reflect on big things that you accomplished this year section I realized that one big project that I’ve been working on for the last 19 years and that was on my mother’s list for probably another 15 years before that, got finished this year. I just kept plugging away at tiny actions on it as the seasons allowed and it’s now done. As far as I know I am the only person I’ve ever talked to how has implemented that sort of long timeframe project planning and execution in Omnifocus. Before Omnifocus I had all that sort of project in paper files.
