Open ended projects

[Oogiem]

Not wrong to wake it up at all.

In some ways I already do what you suggest. For long term things like the weaving example, as long as at weekly review time I am satisfied with the progress I am making on the overall project I don't bother to split the actions down further. But I sometimes have ones that are stuck. When that happens I catch it at weekly review, realize I am unhappy with the progress I am not making and rethink the project and next action.

My current one is my scrapbooks. I am working on my 2008 Family Book. I had as a next action, Lay out all 2008 pictures. Nothing was getting done on that at all. It was too large. So I broke it down to Lay out 1 months 2008 pictures. That seems to be working and I have it set to start up again so many days after I check it off. I actually use a project template for scrapbook projects. Lay out pictures is one step of several. The coarse granularity works for most scrapbook projects but this one for some reason was different.

For the vaccinate sheep and toe trims type stuff I do exactly what you have said. I have a project Vaccinate Sheep with actions, in sequence of vaccinate pregnant ewes 2 weeks before lambing, vaccinate rams, vaccinate ram yearlings, vaccinate ewe yearlings, vaccinate pet sheep, vaccinate early lambs first shot, vaccinate early lambs 2nd shot, vaccinate late lambs 1st shot, vaccinate late lambs 2nd shot. The entire series kicks off keyed on the expected first lambing date which is keyed off the date the rams go in with the ewes. This sequence repeats every year. There is always an active vaccinate sheep project because I am always waiting for the next instance to start. I do much the same thing for other recurring sheep management tasks.

Which is my point, those are projects, they are never really done although I guess you can think of a single set of them being done, but they are not areas of focus, they are projects.

Some sheep management tasks are not as well tied to dates. Deworming is much more fluid. We have to deworm 24-48 hours before going out on pasture in spring and then as needed during summer and sometime after a good hard frost in winter. Those are fluid dates and I may not know the turn-out date until just before we actually do it.

[larea]

I was reading this and have had the same struggle with what to do with areas of focus where I want or need to track what I have done and/or look at the actions together. This could include ongoing things I have or things I do multiples of that are a task that I need to track. I have set them up basically using the same structure as a project in the Project Central list, but they are all up at the top as @Tracking - Name.

Examples - I have @Tracking - Birthdays where I have corralled all my recurring annual birthday tasks. I have some tracking categories for work where each item is just a task that falls into a particular area of responsibility - example is receiving a request for endorsement of a farmout - each farmout request is just a task rather than a project, they are generally simple and I just need to send a quick recommendation to my manager - if one turns out to be more complex I might set it up as a "subproject" - but the reason I need them grouped is that I need to have a record at the end of the year of how many of those requests were handled.

So in effect I am handling a few of these (less than 10) exactly like a project but at the same time recognizing they are not exactly a project....although on the farmout example I guess I could say there is a project of "handle all the farmout requests I receive this year" etc.

[alsa]

in short, the OP describes an Area (of responsibility) and NOT at all a project

One of my areas is Learn German (I will never finish learning German -- possibly, I will continue to master it in the after-life ) so it's a life-long activity.

I am not going to say, at 60, for instance, that, "Wow, I am done! I have learned German! "
Most of us haven't even fully learned English!

Anyway, yes, if there are a variety of recurring actions or recurring mini-projects, then they belong in an Area.

[annewalsh]

This has been a really interesting discussion..because I would not have put something like "website maintenance" into an area of focus. I will be re-visiting all my focii (focuses?) after this.
It has really helped clarify this because I found myself struggling with the stuff I do every day...e.g. social media stuff...daily/weekly tweets, FB postings etc. I now see they are now part of an area of focus called "marketing" and I need to treat it as such.
Also have to say about the granularity thing....I have to get it granualar to work for me. "do social media stuff" gets left on the list (because of course it's not a NA) whereas: write 5 scheduled tweets...does get done.
Useful learning all around!
Thanks to everyone for contributing their knowledge.
Anne

[malisa]

This has been a really interesting discussion..because I would not have put something like "website maintenance" into an area of focus. I will be re-visiting all my focii (focuses?) after this.
It has really helped clarify this because I found myself struggling with the stuff I do every day...e.g. social media stuff...daily/weekly tweets, FB postings etc. I now see they are now part of an area of focus called "marketing" and I need to treat it as such.
Also have to say about the granularity thing....I have to get it granualar to work for me. "do social media stuff" gets left on the list (because of course it's not a NA) whereas: write 5 scheduled tweets...does get done.
Useful learning all around!
Thanks to everyone for contributing their knowledge.
Anne

I agree. I'm just starting to use OmniFocus again (moving back from paper in small steps) and as I entered each project I wrote (as a note in the project heading) what the successful outcome would be. I had that written on the paper that was the support material for the project, but when I entered them into OF, I realized that the title of the projects weren't indicative of them being projects with outcomes. They were blobs. Now that I've more carefully defined them, I can envision them being completed AND I can be more honest with myself which should be active, which should be waiting in the wings (on-hold), and which are being held up because I'm waiting for something (waiting for a response, waiting for a check to clear, etc.).

I'm keeping my Areas of Focus in an outline for now (OmniOutliner) and reviewing that will be part of my review process. I'm feeling much less overwhelmed with my system now. They still need some work, but they're 'down' and they're not preventing me from getting things done on my current projects/actions.

[Gardener]

Which is my point, those are projects, they are never really done although I guess you can think of a single set of them being done, but they are not areas of focus, they are projects.

Yep, I largely agree. I just can't handle the idea of a project that never ends, so for me there would be a repeating series of identical projects, whereas for you it's the same project. But functionally, it sounds like essentially the same thing.

I think that it may be about the farming mindset, as I think you suggested in one of your posts. I think that mindset may mean that long, _long_ term goals feel infinitely more natural for you than they do for me.

My maximum comfortable planning unit of time is about a month, maybe less - if a project that I'm actively working on is going to take much longer than that, I'm likely to break it into subprojects. In place of that month, sounds like you're perfectly comfortable with multiple years, and reasonably comfortable with a lifetime.

[Oogiem]

My maximum comfortable planning unit of time is about a month, maybe less - if a project that I'm actively working on is going to take much longer than that, I'm likely to break it into subprojects. In place of that month, sounds like you're perfectly comfortable with multiple years, and reasonably comfortable with a lifetime.

Probably is a farming mind. I grew up on a farm, dealing with seasonal things then got jobs in a high tech world, where you measured things in terms of nanoseconds. Now that I'm back farming I find it much more relaxing.

Very few of my projects finish in a month. I do tend to think in terms of years for most of them. And yes, even lifetime projects are not a big deal, I just try not to have too many of those at one time.

My biggest initial frustration with GTD was trying to fit my life into the timeframes suggested in the various books. When I let go of the timeframes and just focused on the behaviors, clearly defined projects, clear next actions, context based and complete capture I finally made progress in my GTD practice.