What's Everyone's Profession Part II What's Everyone's Biggest Challenge?

[troy]

http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5327
In the above thread everyone discussed their professions. In this thread I would like to talk about what everyone's biggest challenge is at work / personal / both.
Be it interruptions, organization, etc.

Hopefully through communicating our challenges and hardships we can come to a common consenus as to solutions that maybe we haven't thought of. One person's challenge might be another person's victory. I'd like to see if we can get this thread as big the other one.

Someone start off, please.

[vatark]

Title says it all really...

...the desperation I feel when I realise that I have put off, through simply wanting to do something more exciting, something (probably several things) that now needs to be done last Friday!!

GTD's helping, but I have a long way to go.

[StuGib]

Didn't reply in the professions thread, but I'm a software requirements analyst (amongst other things).

My main challenges with GTD is keeping track of the sheer number of little things that come my way, and deciding what needs to be shared with colleagues and customers.

For one big project of 'define requirements for feature X' I'll have to keep track of cusomer requests, my own ideas, design suggestions, problems I need to resolve, questions to ask other people, changes to documents, status of those issues, plans, answers to pass on to people, as well as the tasks I need to do. All of these change all the time as I work on resolving issues, customers pass on info to me, developers raise problems or missing requirements etc. This is what I find hard to keep up to date in a system.

Added onto that is the fact I need to keep track of what I need to do personally, but also communicate the status of the project and issues to customers and colleagues and keep those status systems up to date. It's difficult to know where to draw the line between a personal and public system and to avoid duplication or inconsistencies.

I can identify where in GTD all these issues should go (e.g agendas, project support) etc but haven't really found a system that solves my challenges for long. I've also had problems trying to fit everything into projects, sub-projects, sub-sub-projects, ... (e.g. every issue or problem could be a sub-project) in my main action lists, but am trying to simplify.

[Brent]

My biggest challenge is in "finding the time" for the cool, important projects that I want to do.

[mcogilvie]

http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5327
Hopefully through communicating our challenges and hardships we can come to a common consenus as to solutions that maybe we haven't thought of.

I think my biggest challenge is to maintain an "everyday mind" attitude. The water heater is leaking all over the basement. What's the desired outcome? What's the next action?

"To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders"
Lao Tzu

[Vramin]

I think I'm in the group where just capturing all the minutae can be a bit daunting. I have these little thoughts and I think, oh I need to capture that. Then I think but if I capture I'll actually have to do it, so then I don't want to capture it. But then I think that if I capture it I might not necessarily have to do it, just knowing it has been captured, or at the very least my mind will remember that I didn't capture it and start tracking that, so then I capture it. I would like to advance to where I just do the capturing and get to avoid the mental arm wrestling match.

[Scott_L_Lewis]

My biggest challenge is balancing functionality vs. simplicity and capacity in my system. I tend to create systems that are very functional, and as a result, tend to be complex. As a result, the systems can be overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I need to keep track of.

Like StuGib, I work in information systems, and the decomposition of projects into sub-projects and sub-sub-projects is a key problem area.

[flexiblefine]

I've become fond of saying that GTD is not a motivational system. Once I got over the novelty of having complete, updated lists of the things I should be doing, I saw that they weren't actually getting done.

I did (and do) get great organizational benefit from GTD, and I have stuck with it much longer than any other organizational/productivity system I have ever tried. But GTD brought my procrastination into sharp focus.

For the past 6-8 months, I've been fighting procrastination much more than I've been fighting disorganization. GTD works well for me, and now I've moved on to the next roadblock on my path to stress-free productivity.

If it weren't for GTD, and the models of useful GTD discussions I have found online, I never would have started my procrastination group -- see link in my signature.

[Brent]

I've become fond of saying that GTD is not a motivational system. Once I got over the novelty of having complete, updated lists of the things I should be doing, I saw that they weren't actually getting done.

I did (and do) get great organizational benefit from GTD, and I have stuck with it much longer than any other organizational/productivity system I have ever tried. But GTD brought my procrastination into sharp focus.

Yes, same here.

[altruologist]

My biggest challenge has been largely internal. I am always struggling to juggle the computer with the paper planner and frankly the pda has always been a real problem for me. I like to catch my thoughts and ideas and in reality I was most productive when I was able to plan completely in a paper system. Now I work with a Filofax and Outlook with the Franklin Planner add-in. Despite some horrific stories about Franklin Covey (Agilix) software, the Franklin Planner Outlook software is working without a single hitch. I can use the GTD methodology with tasks and projects in a way that links the two perfectly. The Filofax is my duplicate and 'out of office' tool for journalling, brainstorming,note taking and all the other things I could not perform well on a pda.