I have been a project making machine

I spent a good chunk of my day REALLY getting things done. I had some things that had been stuck and I just sat down and cranked through them. That freed up some mental energy to really look at some of my other projects and what was holding them up and in most cases, there was STILL another project lurking inside of another.

I'm just amazed with as much time as I've spent with some of these projects that I'm still realizing that they are really two or three projects that I've lumped together. Once I get them pulled apart I can, almost without fail, complete one of them.

Can you relate? Is this 'expected'?

Sometimes taking the time to think about a project - getting clarity about outcomes and next actions - can help overcome your resistance to it. Often this is a "hidden" but obvious next action for many projects - i.e. @Office "Natural planning for project X".

I think this has happened to a lot of us.

In my experience one of the failures of a lot of the traditional models for project planning is the idea that all the project planning occurs up front, and then you complete it and you're all done with project planning. It seems more natural to be regularly revisiting and re-evaluating the project and the plan.

The scale and resolution for projects can vary greatly between people and between projects. It can also change during the course of the lifetime of a single project. So, yeah, break them down or merge them together in whatever way seems useful to you.



Cheers,
Roger

Yep! This is one of the great powers of GTD - being able to put one's head down and get the right things done, then surface and regard one's work strategically.

Even better, that can happen in short bursts or long ones.

In my weekly review I ask myself if any of my projects need better clarity. Then I'll open a task to apply a more in-depth NPM to those that just don't seem to be moving, but that I want to keep on my active project list. It's amazing how much a clear and well-defined project can help.