Reference, Checklist or What is this?

[vintres]

Hi there GTD-friends,

I have these seminar notes, and I am not sure where they belong. Here are my considerations:

Reference: If I put it here, then I am worried, I am not implementing any of the tips of that seminar. Since it feels there IS still an action attached? But how do I do that with seminar notes? Hmm,.......perhaps I need to put it to..

Project Support Material: If i put it here, then the GTD flowchart says (review for action). I will know that I need to check out for actions, is that correct?

or am I missing out on something? Perhaps I can put it the input as a checklist, so I make sure I implement the information from the notess? or...

I put the notes to my Reference (A-Z) but strip out actions to somewhere else (where, though?). .

Please help, I am rather confused, although I spend a lot of time brainstorming and checking the GTD book as reference.


Kind regards
Vincent

[Roger]

Project Support Materil: If i put it here, then the GTD flowchart says (review for action). I will know that I need to check out for actions, is that correct?

That's how I do it. Once the project completes your notes might become Reference files, or they might not.


Cheers,
Roger

[Gardener]

I feel that I need more information about what material came out of the seminar?

But I'll tentatively assume that the result was a bunch of notes that might spark a lot of different ideas relevant to your job. But that they're big ideas, or a lot of ideas, so you don't have time to just act on all of them right now.

If so, then I might organize this as:

Project: Incorporate information gathered at Seminar X into my daily work
- Next Action: "Digest" seminar notes into a list of possible actions and ideas.
- Next Action: REPEATING, MONTHLY: Review Seminar X list and select one item to act on, or clarify and add to Someday/Maybe, or discard, this month.

Alternatively, you could tuck this into a structure designed for all sorts of ongoing, "bite at a time", efforts.

Example: Imagine that in my project material I have lists titled Things To Read or Things To Learn or (on the personal side), Perfumes To Review or Recipes To try. And in GTD, I have a list of one-off Actions, which includes weekly repeating Actions like "Select an item from Things To Learn and act on it".

So once a week or month or quarter or whatever, the action pops up and I'm supposed to act on it. If the action is simple and quick - say, spending ten minutes reading the Thing To Read - I'd just do it. If it's simple but unquick, I may add another action to that one-off action list, like a daily action to "Spend half an hour reading GiantManual." If it's not simple or quick, I may create a project - for example, if I want to review vintage Chanel No. 19 eau de toilette (and I do, I really, really do), I first need to find a source where I can get some. (And Perfumed Court _doesn't have any_! Whine. Sob.)

I babble on confidently about this system, and I think that structurally it works, but in reality if I don't want to do the task when it comes up, or I feel too busy, I just check it off that week or month. In the end, I never got around to reading any of the Things To Read, and the Things To Learn only happened when a project needing that skill became urgent. The Perfumes To Review get done, but that's because I want to do them.

But that failing is, I think, a failing in me, not the structure - the action did come up like clockwork and sit around in my lists for a couple of days, ready to be acted on, before I shrugged and skipped it.

In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I suspect that the problem may have been failing to chop the task into sufficiently small chunks. For example, most of the Things To Read had been sitting around for a while before I looked at the list, so I didn't know where any of them were, so I shrugged and skipped. I could have created a project "Read Bureaucratic Manual 6" and started it with an action of "Ask manager where Bureaucratic Manual 6 is located".

Hmmm. That might work.

Gardener

[Brent]

Those notes go into your inbox. You then process those notes normally.

The notes may spark Projects, Next Actions, Someday/Maybes, etc. as you process them. The notes themselves will then probably be filed in Project Support or long-term filing.

[mackiest]

If the seminar was more inspiration/personal development stuff then maybe extract the key points into an "intention reminder system" (like the intention journal on GTDconnect), setting appropriate intervals to be reminded of the good stuff.

[ellobogrande]

Hi there GTD-friends,

I have these seminar notes, and I am not sure where they belong. Here are my considerations:

Reference: If I put it here, then I am worried, I am not implementing any of the tips of that seminar. Since it feels there IS still an action attached? But how do I do that with seminar notes? Hmm,.......perhaps I need to put it to..

Project Support Material: If i put it here, then the GTD flowchart says (review for action). I will know that I need to check out for actions, is that correct?

I put the notes to my Reference (A-Z) but strip out actions to somewhere else (where, though?). .



Kind regards
Vincent

The seminar notes only become pure reference material after all of the outcomes and actions have been identified and added to your trusted system. That reference material can then be used to support projects and actions. There's not a strong dividing line between project support material and general reference material; they are both filed the same way. I might put project support material in the standing tray on my desktop instead of my file cabinet, but in my world that's the only real difference.

When you pull those notes out of your inbox and your brain says "I need to read and review these notes to define the work embedded in them", decide if it's going to take longer than 2 minutes to do just that. If the answer is "yes", then by default your next action is a "Read & Review" action. Put the notes in your "Read and Review" folder or basket. If necessary, put a sticky note on it to remind you why you need to read it and that there's work embedded in it. This can help you to choose which item in that basket is most important to read first in any given moment.

When you're reading those seminar notes, be ready with a separate pad to capture all of the work that you discover. At that point it's still collecting--don't try to process and organize while you read. Once you finish your review and are sure that you gleaned all of the work from it, process the work you've captured and organize the outcomes and actions you define.

Does that help?

-Luke

[vintres]

Oh wow, so many great points of advice. they were ALL very helpful and I solved my problem that way. Thanks so much again!