When a GTD-Style Weekly Review of Your Projects and Tasks Takes Too Long
This is the second in a series of posts about my search for a simple, lightweight approach to personal productivity.
If you've ever had a personal productivity system, has your list of tasks, to-dos, or whatever you call them ever grown so long that it's become unmanageable? I think I know the answer.
Did it make you uncomfortable even thinking about it? Don't worry. You're not alone.
I imagine most people who have ever tried to collect and organize a list of tasks in some system or app have seen it grow to a dispiriting length all too quickly. And why does that happen? When you first adopt a new system to keep track of your work, it feels so good. A clean slate. An opportunity to finally get your work and life under control.
So much promise. If you can only get everything you're working on into the system or app you're using, then you'll have a single source of truth that will enable effortless prioritization. You'll be on top of everything and never miss a deadline. Never.
There's one big catch. Once you collect all of your work and the related tasks into whatever system you're using, you have to review it. Regularly.
The ever-expanding weekly review of projects and tasks
I'm not going to make a big case for a weekly review of your personal productivity system, whatever it is. David Allen made a case for the weekly review as part of Getting Things Done. Many others have written about it, too. Perhaps I'll add to the conversation someday, but not today.
Suffice it to say, that if you don't regularly review whatever system you use to manage your work and its associated tasks, your system can quickly fall out of date and get out of sync with your priorities. You'll start missing deadlines and dropping the ball. And you won't necessarily be able to look ahead to the coming week with the confidence of knowing that you're focusing on the right tasks at the right time.
You'll be playing it by ear.
That may work well enough some of the time, or even a lot of the time. But for most of the people I work with, given the demands they face, most of the time just isn't good enough. And it doesn't do the trick for me, either.
So for as long as I can remember, I've conducted a weekly review of my tasks. And what I've noticed is that the longer I've used a system or app, the longer it takes to conduct the review. What starts out as a quick scan over a cup of coffee can steadily grow over time into a marathon session that even a full pot of coffee, or two, might not see me through.
Not good.
The allure and familiarity of projects, folders and areas
In my experience, the basic structure at the core of many approaches to personal productivity is generally the same. You divide your work up into projects or areas of responsibility, or some combination of the two.
Areas of responsibility often represent the larger structure of your life and commitments, like Work, Home, Personal and Community. Within those areas, you might have any number of projects that are composed of individual tasks. You may also have standalone tasks that aren't associated with any particular project but fit into those areas of responsibility.
It all seems to make sense. The structure reflects how life actually works.
For example, in your "Work" area of responsibility, you may have a project called "Launch New Product." That project will have a deadline and will be composed of potentially many tasks, each with its own discrete deadline. Also in the "Work" area of responsibility, you may have some non-project-related tasks, like "Review the weekly sales report."
Most task and project managers will gently or not-so-gently nudge you in the direction of creating and populating the type of structure I just described. They usually feature, at a minimum, 'projects' or some analog of projects. And often, there is a higher-level structure of 'folders,' 'teams,' or 'areas' to ensure there is some order or categorization to the many projects you ultimately create.
Organizing your work in this way can feel good. It can take a little (or a lot of) time to plan and set up. But once you do and you've emptied your mind and inboxes into your highly-ordered new system, you can exhale and relax. It feels a lot like giving your home a good cleaning and then settling down on a comfy sofa to admire your work.
Big exhale. You feel at peace and convinced that you can tackle anything that might come your way.
On second thought, tackling your priorities might have to wait until tomorrow. Building out your new productivity system probably took more time than you had expected.
You'll tend to grow your system in size and complexity until managing and regularly reviewing it will become a full-fledged project in and of itself.
And the inevitable heartache
All that organization does feel great. At first.
But as you work with your highly-organized and likely effective productivity system, your projects and tasks will tend to multiply, and you'll start adding due dates, tags, colors, custom fields and other bells and whistles to keep your ever-growing lists manageable. And what once seemed like a calm, freshly-cleaned and organized living room can easily transform into the biggest junk drawer you've ever had.
It's not like I've experienced this.
Okay, calling it a junk drawer is going a bit far, but I think you get the picture. Egged on by the structure and capabilities of your personal productivity system, whether it's digital or even analog, you'll tend to grow your system in size and complexity until managing and regularly reviewing it will become a full-fledged project in and of itself.
And this is when things start to fall apart.
The weekly review of your projects and tasks — which you definitely need to do — will grow from a quick 15-minute scan to a multi-hour slog.
So you'll start to skip your weekly reviews, or not do them fully. And your system will progressively become more and more out-of-date. You might lose sight of your priorities, and the risk of seriously dropping the ball will increase. Once you get into this cycle, it's harder and harder to get out of it, because the time required to get your system current could easily take a full day.
Is there an alternative to projects, folders and areas?
Honestly, I didn't think there really was an alternative to the project and area of responsibility structure for personal productivity. I've used OmniFocus, Things, Todoist, Asana and a few other apps. They all encourage you to file your tasks into a structure that features some form of projects and areas of responsibility.
But I had arrived at a point where I needed to find an alternative. I wouldn't say I was desperate, but I was highly motivated. Managing my work was starting to occupy too much of my time. It's happened now and then in my career — and it's a sure sign that something in my personal productivity system needs to change.
Having added an additional component to my business — content development — it was just enough of a change or evolution in my work to push my own personal productivity system into junk drawer territory. This blog is an example of the content I've been developing. I'm also working on a training or two based on the approaches I've been teaching over the past 10 years. As a result, my areas, projects and tasks began to multiply.
I mentioned in the first post of this series that a productivity system can start to show signs of failure when its creator takes on a new role, or their job evolves. That's what happened to me. My job evolved. It grew. And my productivity system grew with it and started to show signs of failure.
It was starting to feel unmanageable, and I needed a new approach.
A renegade approach to personal productivity
I happened to be in an impressionable mood, and I was coming to the conclusion that my own highly-evolved and once-reliable personal productivity system was showing signs of failure. I had just completed a weekly review of my projects and tasks that had lasted close to two hours. I needed to relax, so I was watching a few productivity videos on YouTube.
Yes. I know. I watch productivity videos to relax as opposed to videos of kittens and puppies. No apologies.
So I was watching one of Carl Pullein's countless videos focused on personal productivity. Carl is one of the many productivity gurus I regularly follow, and I've written about him before. In his video, Carl described a new approach to task management that he had come up with after years of evolving his own system. This new approach, which he calls the Time Sector Method, dispenses with projects and any other approach to grouping tasks that resembles projects or areas.
Heretical. But intriguing.
And why did Carl devise such a countercultural productivity system? Because he had come to the conclusion that the standard practice of sorting tasks into projects or project-like categories takes unnecessary time and decision-making effort. And a system based on that structure ultimately will grow to the point that it will take "a ridiculous amount of time" to review.
He was speaking my language, and I was listening.
Carl's new philosophy is that the only thing you should really be focused on in your approach to task management is when you're actually going to do the work. Make that decision, and be done with it.
A productivity leap of faith — deleting projects, folders and areas
I did more than pay attention to Carl Pullein's case for abandoning projects, folders, areas of responsibility, or anything that even sounds like it. I committed to trying it.
Risky? Yes. Potentially a solution to my personal productivity woes? Maybe.
So I signed up for The Time Sector Course. And I'm giving it a try, even as I type. I'll report back on my experience with the Time Sector Method and the abandonment of projects, areas of responsibility, folders and teams in the coming weeks. I'll also write a little about what you might need to maintain information specific to projects if they're currently a part of your approach to task management. After all, your projects won't disappear — they just won't be in your task manager. I know some of you were wondering about that. It's a reasonable question to have.
While I'm taking that leap of faith, you can check out Carl's course if you'd like and try it for yourself. At $49.99 it's not an especially heavy lift. If you do try it, let me know what you think. BTW, the link to Carl's course isn't an affiliate link, so I won't be compensated if you do decide to give it a try.
I'll be reporting back in a few weeks to let you know how my experience with the Time Sector Method evolves.
