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writing a book and have too many next actions
chadgr | Oct 14 2006
Hi. I'm just getting started on GTD while part way into writing a book. I've gone through the collection process and most of the things I wrote as tasks on my mind (and now in my inbox) relate to the book. Perhaps I don't understand how to process the inbox correctly, but I'm wondering whether the whole book should be my one project (with a ton of action items) or if I should break it into subprojects in KGTD (e.g., gather information on issue A, collect photographs for Chapter 5). If I keep it as a single project, it seems I have an unmanageable number of actions each of which could be eligible for a "next action." I hope I'm making sense. Any suggestions would be appreciated. 11 Comments
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 all of these tasks...Submitted by rollasoc on October 19, 2006 - 4:35am.
chadgr;6279 wrote:
all of these tasks (call this person, email that person, buy this reference book, check at that library, etc) How many of these are mutually exclusive? Call this person goes on @phone The problem would only lie if one task dependent on the completion of another. e.g. if Call person depended on you having received the email or bought the book first. I'm not writing a book, but am writing an album. I have a project with the album title, which has subprojects for each song, and a list of other tasks in a project list and NAs for any task that doesn't require others to be completed first (like brainstorm album titles, brainstorm cover ideas). Each song, then has a list of things I need to do to complete it (like Research lyric idea, write lyrics, Create new project file etc). I only add one or two NAs depending on the state of the song. e.g. I might have a brainstorm lyric ideas as a NA and a record guitar part NA. (if I had written the music first). I've done a quick count of the steps I've written down for the 11 songs and overall project and there are probably around 150 items in the project lists (which will grow / shrink as things progress), but I only have around 15 actual NAs on the go. There would be no point me adding a "mix song" NA until I had completed recording all the bits, so it stays on the list of tasks for the project. When I finish one NA, I look at the task list for that (sub) project and choose the next appropriate NA. It is quite fluid, since part way through the song I may change the instrumentation, or rewrite something or scrap the song so the project task list only needs to change and I don't need to find and change a bunch of NAs. Regarding the Novel thing. I might try the write a novel in a month thing next month. (http://www.nanowrimo.org/). I think that will be a project with one NA. "Write more stuff". Hope that helps Chris » POSTED IN:
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