#2. What do you do with....

[roakleyca]

"Practice yoga more regularily"

Assumptions: you have all the gear and space at home for the practice and you already know how to practice yoga.

[kewms]

NA: Define "more regularly." Does that mean once a week? Three times a week? Daily?

Once you have the definition, block out time on your calendar and/or put it in your Tickler.

Katherine

[Gameboy70]

There's not much you can do to structure recurring actions into a system without becoming overly familiar, and therefore numb, to the action triggers. One way to stay conscious of regular practices is to stage irregular reminders in a tickler file. Ask yourself when you think you'll need a reminder to practice more regularly, and drop a note in the appriopriate file.

[cornell]

For repeating actions to be ritualized, some folks like to keep a weekly matrix form in which you check off whether (or how many times) you did yoga that week. This kind of "information radiator" can be helpful when kept in a prominent place. Other options include rewards, pairing with someone, blocking out regular time in your schedule, or finding accountability partners (e.g., "bookend" sessions by calling each other before and after). I'd like to hear other suggestions as well.

[Scott Moehring]

Couple simple thoughts.

1) Use a 3x5 card in your Tickler file (see the reference section for easy instructions) to remind you. Plan it forward a couple days. When it shows up, keep the card out to remind you, then put it back in the file for the next day you want to be reminded.

2) Make sure you are thinking in terms of Very Next Actions. Writing "Practice Yoga" on the card is not really a Very Next Action. "Put yoga mat on the floor" is. "Put on yoga clothes" is. The difference is subtle, but important. You are shooting for the absolute minimum resistance. There should be no thinking required to act.

3) Use David's "put it in front of the door" technique. If you have the space, and have the clothes and mat, then put the clothes or mat someplace that you have to touch them in order to do other things. Force yourself to touch the tools, and you will have gotten past the reminding as well as the first level of resistance. Tie it to the time of day you want to exercise. Where will you usually go at that time of day? Where can you put the mat so you will have to interact with it at that time?

Best,
Scott

[Borisoff]

Why you need to practice yoga regulary? -> Define outcome first otherwise your "regular" can disappear in a week or two from your calendar :)

[roakleyca]

Why you need to practice yoga regulary? -> Define outcome first otherwise your "regular" can disappear in a week or two from your calendar :)

I like that. Project Yoga is one of the only projects in my life where I really understand why I'm doing it!

- It leads to my larger life goal of "Become a Yoga Guru"
- It fullfils my values of Peace, Freedom, Happiness, Balance, Strength, Flexibility, Hope, Playfullness, Calmness in MIND BODY AND SPIRIT
- It connects me to my own divinity and the divinity in others.
- It heals my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wounds
- It enhances my relationship with my wife (we often practice together)
- It may lead to a career change - Yoga teacher before Yoga guru.

Wow, that felt good. I'm going to practice tonight -- wether it's in my calander, tickler, project or NA list or NOT!

Good feedback. It's nice to see we have different ideas for what to do on something that should be so easy!

Ryan

[rangi500]

For tracking things you want to do every day (or every x days), I highly recommend http://www.joesgoals.com/

It's really simple to use and it's free. I've got some things I'm trying to do "more regularly" as well - language study, stretching, taking photos. Having these all on my goals page lets me at a glance look over the past week and see what I've been doing and what I've been neglecting.

[gtdlater]

I made a list of projects that occur on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. So far there are 42 of them. Here's a partial list:
1. clean bathrooms (monthly)
2. pay electric bill (monthly)
3. pay water bill (monthly)
4. Hygiene (daily)
5. Tennis (weekly)
6. Basketball (weekly)
...
42. Pay HOA bill (monthly)

I really don't want to review these everyday. I don't want to process and decide on a next action every day either. I do want to complete an NA for most of them everyday though.

The next action, "pay for electric bill" changes throughout the month. Before the bill arrives the NA would be in wait for. Once it arrives an NA would go on @Internet, and then once I pay it the NA moves to wait for again to see if it goes through.

Also I don't want to tickle it because most NAs related to these projects, which have to be decided daily (yuck), should all be done ASAP and not on a specific day.

Changing outcomes you are committed to are managed in the weekly review, right?

Also bills can be paid anytime before a certain day. Would you just tickle it for tomorrow and then keep tickling it for the next day until it wets its pants or worse?

[Cpu_Modern]

gtdlater:

Well, I think in general, whenever you have a "series" of items it is worthwhile to install a sub-system, a process or however you want to call it. For example you batch next actions in contexts lists.

So IMHO what you have here is a real oportunity ( :-)) to enhace your system. This would be a project in itself: find perfect/good-enough sub-system to deal with recurring action.

I don't have such a system myself, but I want to repeat a warning that people dealing with this tend to overlook: If you check the same list everyday, you will become numb to it.

[Trish]

gtdlater:
I don't have such a system myself, but I want to repeat a warning that people dealing with this tend to overlook: If you check the same list everyday, you will become numb to it.

Boy that is so true, but you sure feel good and fired up when you are writing it down though---but it doesn't last...at least for me. :o

[kewms]

I made a list of projects that occur on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. So far there are 42 of them. Here's a partial list:
1. clean bathrooms (monthly)
2. pay electric bill (monthly)
3. pay water bill (monthly)
4. Hygiene (daily)
5. Tennis (weekly)
6. Basketball (weekly)
...
42. Pay HOA bill (monthly)

I really don't want to review these everyday. I don't want to process and decide on a next action every day either. I do want to complete an NA for most of them everyday though.

Bills live outside my GTD system. As they come in, they go in an envelope sorter on my desk. Once a week, I batch process everything in that sorter into Quicken, and write any checks that need to be written. (Quicken tells me which ones.) This system predates my use of GTD and works well: why change it?

Hygiene lives outside my GTD system. I don't need to be reminded about it, it just happens.

I track all other recurring tasks in Sciral Consistency, a nifty little matrix that lets you set fuzzy intervals for tasks and uses colors to show you what is due or past due.

Katherine

[MzUnderstanding]

Do you need an NA before the bill arrives? Would the bill not serve as a tickler to add the NA to your list?

When I have items like this I put them in the date folder of my system. During my weekly review I go through the folders for the dates that fall on that week and add those things to my daily calendar or next action list and then move the folders to the back of the box again.

[tnoyce]

Hmmm. I think that your positive outcome is:

the habit of practicing yoga weekly/daily is firmly established.

Bunches of useful NAs have been suggested, take your pick, whatever speaks to you, but make it an appointment in the short term, keep it and reward yourself.

The psychodynamics answer is of course that you need to use GTD to handle the 21 days it takes you to establish the habit:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=786165

[gtdlater]

I want to repeat a warning that people dealing with this tend to overlook: If you check the same list everyday, you will become numb to it.

How do you reconcile that with, "review your lists as often as needed to keep them off your mind"

It seems to me you are saying that people will become numb to GTD since it involves reviewing mostly the same lists everyday.

[madalu]

Hmmm. I think that your positive outcome is:

the habit of practicing yoga weekly/daily is firmly established.

Bunches of useful NAs have been suggested, take your pick, whatever speaks to you, but make it an appointment in the short term, keep it and reward yourself.

The psychodynamics answer is of course that you need to use GTD to handle the 21 days it takes you to establish the habit:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=786165

Yes! I think it's crucial to define the successful outcome of such projects as the establishment of a habit. Use GTD and next actions until you begin to do something automatically. I've always been very bad about flossing my teeth, but I made it a project and begin to put the action on my daily list--and lo and behold, I now floss my teeth daily without even thinking about it. Same with running--I feel gross now if I go a day without running--all because about a month ago I made it a project to start running. The 21 day time-span sounds just about right.

On a related note, I think it can be really helpful to create a daily checklist each day--of the stuff you MUST do that day. You're motivated to do the stuff (e.g., floss, run, etc.) because you want the satisfaction of checking it off your list.

[madalu]

gtdlater:
I don't have such a system myself, but I want to repeat a warning that people dealing with this tend to overlook: If you check the same list everyday, you will become numb to it.

That's why it's important for the lists to keep changing. You actually have to do and check off stuff on the list--then it changes. If you let a list stagnate and never check anything off, you will become numb to it.

If you're talking about recurring actions here, then my recommendation would be to write the actions down anew each day and check them off as you do them. This will give you the satisfaction of getting things done and checking them off. If I were to stare at exactly the same list and never act on it or mark anything as done, I would indeed become numb to it. But if I'm doing the stuff on the list and gaining a sense of accomplishment, there's no way I become numb to the stuff on the list. Rather, it's empowering to think, "Wow, I've been really disciplined and doing all this stuff each day!"

Lists become "numbing" only if you're procrastinating.

[gtdlater]

Project lists don't change that much, but no one is warning others about them. That's exactly what I have, a recurring projects list.

What's this about 'Bills aren't in my system'? If you're doing GTD everything that has your attention is in your system or you are not using GTD, but you are making lists and things so maybe that's good enough.

[kewms]

What's this about 'Bills aren't in my system'? If you're doing GTD everything that has your attention is in your system or you are not using GTD, but you are making lists and things so maybe that's good enough.

*shrug* Works for me, so I don't care whether DA approves or not.

Katherine

[Chicagoan]

*shrug* Works for me, so I don't care whether DA approves or not. Actually at the Roadmap class in Chicago yesterday, he said (paraphrasing) that if you have a system for your bills that works, then that's fine because it means that you have a collection method, a way of looking at NAs in context (look at the top of each bill..), and a project reference system.

Nobody says that every list has to be in the same technology. I'm using a 70-page college bound binder for my NA/WF contexts, but 3x5 cards for my SMs. So far, so good.

[mavakil]

"Practice yoga more regularily"

Assumptions: you have all the gear and space at home for the practice and you already know how to practice yoga.

I was struggling with how/where do I track my "going to gym" too. I use Outlook and a PDA (Blackberry in my case) for my GTD system. My system to track my physical fitness has nicely evolved over time.

In the begining, I would treat my Going to Gym as a task that I can do anytime of the day. So for the days that I would go to the gym, I would create an appointment, and make it an all day event so that it would appear on the top of my calendar in Outlook as well as my Blackberry.

The downside of doing the above is, that because I did not firm up when I would like to (& would be the best time to go to the gym) hence each time I'd look at my calendar my mind would instantly be filled with thoughts such as...hmm should I go to gym now, Maybe during my lunch break after a few hours? Or after work... or how about first thing in the morning? on and on and on.

That made me realise that gyming for me is not really an activity that I can easily do any time of the day, but it's something that's most efficiently done when I have an assigned date as well as time to it.

So an effective workout regime would be one where I can work out 4 to 5 times a day. Therefore I've sat and thought through, the days that would be best for me to workout and also the time when it would most suitable to do so also. I've gone ahead made calendar entries for all of these and making a habit of keeping that appointment with myself. I have also created an Area Of Focus note to maintain Health and Vitality, which I'm supposed to review every few months or so. Ta da. There you have it :)

Keep smiling :) ,
Arif

[A2JC4life]

For repeating actions to be ritualized, some folks like to keep a weekly matrix form in which you check off whether (or how many times) you did yoga that week. This kind of "information radiator" can be helpful when kept in a prominent place.

Does anyone have an example of such a form?

[Cpu_Modern]

Does anyone have an example of such a form?

http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2007/01/do_you_have_a_l.html
http://www.diyplanner.com/templates/official/hpda/addons/franklin
http://www.joesgoals.com/
http://davidseah.com/archives/2007/01/01/concrete-goals-tracker-2007-updates/

[A2JC4life]

Thank you!