Commitment management vs Project management

[sarahg]

I thought I'd quickly share a "happy gtd moment"...

Work is starting a new project; and armed with my new insights about GTD that I gained while I was a Connect member I've found the interface between the "project plan" and "my GTD system" much simpler to see this time around.

The "project plan" is just breaking a big project down into sub-projects. It doesn't get fine grained enough to have any real "next actions" in there.

As I claim these subprojects as tasks I'm taking on right now, they become projects in my GTD system. There I keep bookmarks that help me keep the parts I'm working on moving forward. Some parts I can sit down and do in a session. Those only ever have one next action recorded for them. Other parts require back and forth communication; those get a next action any time I stop working on them, as a bookmark.

I don't know if this is clear but for me it's really all come together and I'm seeing the difference between managing a project and managing my current engagement with it; and I'm comfortable that the two kinds of management use different systems.