How I Plan

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I’m a longtime user of the GTD methodology of David Allen. I do a weekly review most weeks, and the credit goes to David Allen.

The most important part of the weekly review for me is deciding what I’ll do over the next week. A couple of things have helped me maintain my sanity.

• Think at the weekly horizon rather than daily. I have a number of things that I feel I have to work on at any point in time. When I try to think only at a horizon of one day, I don’t have any way to do all the stuff I’ve decided needs to be done, and then I’m stressed because I might let it slip through the cracks. At the start of the week I make a list of the things I will do over the next week. That works well because I can focus on doing one important task each day (which, on top of all my other work, is the best I can do). It removes the stress if I can forget about all my other tasks.
• I think in terms of areas of responsibility rather than projects. This is because I have way too many projects. For example, one area is teaching and another is research. There is a lot of correlation between projects in one area but less so across areas. I can think about teaching and all the associated projects at one time. I can think about all of my research projects at another time. I can focus on one area (teaching) and put the other (research) out of my mind. I have ten or fewer areas of focus at any time. I’m sympathetic to reviewing all of your projects regularly. I follow that practice. By splitting into areas, I don’t have to review all projects at the same time. It’s usually a particular area of my life that needs attention, not individual projects. On the weekend, I concentrate on home projects, and rarely even think about teaching.

8 February 2022