Last week I talked about how I spent the weekend figuring out my next steps. I wanted to dig into that a bit more and discuss how I organize all these projects.
I’ve always been very goal oriented along with writing down the goals, outcomes, and accomplishments. Documenting everything gave the goals more weight, more meaning. It helped me stay focused and complete them.
About six months ago, my wife asked if I wanted to do Merrill Lynch’s Life Priority assessment. I felt useful, but at the same time, I thought it was a bit overwhelming. The evaluation focused on seven categories with two goals each. 14 life-goals. Damn. We then needed to prioritize them. We sorted out the first couple pretty quickly. Things broke down when we couldn’t agree on the priority order for anything past Life Goal 5.
We went with the 14 goal list even though I had reservations about its effectiveness. After we defined what the 14 goals would be and prioritized the top batch, we set about knocking them off. I quickly went towards writing them down in a trackable manner. Each goal had several subtasks; most had research that was needed; some had dependencies. For example, buying our home was one of these goals. That’s not something we can walk out and do in a day. There’s a lot of prep-work, research, and organization that’s needed.
In writing this down, I tried to utilize Google’s suite of tools. In my personal life, I’m a heavy user of gMail, gDocs, and gCalendar for all things productivity related. I found out a Google account has a Tasks feature. Awesome. I could have my checklist of tasks right there whenever I was getting things done. I converted the 14 goals into a Life Goals List. Then I created a Milestones List which contained the various milestones for every goal. Then I created an Efforts List, essentially a project, which included the individual checklist for each milestone. All of these multiple lists were needed because Tasks only lets you embed a list one level deep. My system started seeming convoluted, but I just kept pushing forward hoping it would all clear itself up.
Besides the limitation on how deep lists can be embedded, Tasks also doesn’t hold enough information. When researching a project, sometimes more information is needed than just a checklist. I’ve used Trello before and think it’s a handy tool. So I busted that out. I converted each complex project in the Efforts List to a Trello Board and then created Lists and Cards in each Trello Board. The simpler projects stayed in the Tasks Efforts List.
At this point, you’re probably like WTF. Goals, Lists, Boards, Milestones, Tasks, what? Yeah. I ran like this for probably six months. Sometimes managing all of this was more complicated than actually working on a project. Plus with 14 goals, it was easy to start too many at once or feel guilty when neglecting some. I was making progress, but the overhead was impeding more than assisting.
My system had to change so last weekend I revamped everything.
Step 1, consolidate the 14 goals. The goals were more short term based. I needed long term on-the-horizon goals. Looking at the 14 goals I had, they consolidated down into three different Focuses.
Next up is to consolidate tools. Using Google Tasks and Trello is just silly. Since Google Tasks isn’t feature-rich enough to satisfy what I needed, it had to go. So I created a Trello Board for each of my three Focuses. Once that was done, I merged in the 14 different goals under the appropriate Focus as a Card.
Here is an example:
Whew. Down to one tool now. I now had my Focuses organized in Trello into three Boards. Next up was defining the Projects that would push each of the Focuses forward.
Next up was to create a standardized Board for an actual Project. That was easy enough. I already had a template I had been using. Three columns: Queued, In Progress, and Completed. Then all tasks fit into one of the three columns and contain any number of checklists, notes, or attachments as needed. To create a new project, all I have to do is Copy Board.
To wrap things up, I just had to create Boards for each of my Projects and throw some color coding into it. Behold the final result.
This system lets me keep my energy on three main Focuses and helps limit the number of ongoing Projects I have. The Boards with “(1)” in them are the Focus boards which contains all the various goals and notes to help channel future energies. The colors help make it easy to see where my attention is going.
Going from an overly complicated system into a sweet and straightforward Boring organization lets me put more energy into the projects themselves instead of the overhead.
(Written 2019.02.26)
I’ve always been very goal oriented along with writing down the goals, outcomes, and accomplishments. Documenting everything gave the goals more weight, more meaning. It helped me stay focused and complete them.
About six months ago, my wife asked if I wanted to do Merrill Lynch’s Life Priority assessment. I felt useful, but at the same time, I thought it was a bit overwhelming. The evaluation focused on seven categories with two goals each. 14 life-goals. Damn. We then needed to prioritize them. We sorted out the first couple pretty quickly. Things broke down when we couldn’t agree on the priority order for anything past Life Goal 5.
We went with the 14 goal list even though I had reservations about its effectiveness. After we defined what the 14 goals would be and prioritized the top batch, we set about knocking them off. I quickly went towards writing them down in a trackable manner. Each goal had several subtasks; most had research that was needed; some had dependencies. For example, buying our home was one of these goals. That’s not something we can walk out and do in a day. There’s a lot of prep-work, research, and organization that’s needed.
In writing this down, I tried to utilize Google’s suite of tools. In my personal life, I’m a heavy user of gMail, gDocs, and gCalendar for all things productivity related. I found out a Google account has a Tasks feature. Awesome. I could have my checklist of tasks right there whenever I was getting things done. I converted the 14 goals into a Life Goals List. Then I created a Milestones List which contained the various milestones for every goal. Then I created an Efforts List, essentially a project, which included the individual checklist for each milestone. All of these multiple lists were needed because Tasks only lets you embed a list one level deep. My system started seeming convoluted, but I just kept pushing forward hoping it would all clear itself up.
Besides the limitation on how deep lists can be embedded, Tasks also doesn’t hold enough information. When researching a project, sometimes more information is needed than just a checklist. I’ve used Trello before and think it’s a handy tool. So I busted that out. I converted each complex project in the Efforts List to a Trello Board and then created Lists and Cards in each Trello Board. The simpler projects stayed in the Tasks Efforts List.
At this point, you’re probably like WTF. Goals, Lists, Boards, Milestones, Tasks, what? Yeah. I ran like this for probably six months. Sometimes managing all of this was more complicated than actually working on a project. Plus with 14 goals, it was easy to start too many at once or feel guilty when neglecting some. I was making progress, but the overhead was impeding more than assisting.
My system had to change so last weekend I revamped everything.
Step 1, consolidate the 14 goals. The goals were more short term based. I needed long term on-the-horizon goals. Looking at the 14 goals I had, they consolidated down into three different Focuses.
- Financial Independence
- Health
- Philanthropy
Next up is to consolidate tools. Using Google Tasks and Trello is just silly. Since Google Tasks isn’t feature-rich enough to satisfy what I needed, it had to go. So I created a Trello Board for each of my three Focuses. Once that was done, I merged in the 14 different goals under the appropriate Focus as a Card.
Here is an example:
Whew. Down to one tool now. I now had my Focuses organized in Trello into three Boards. Next up was defining the Projects that would push each of the Focuses forward.
Next up was to create a standardized Board for an actual Project. That was easy enough. I already had a template I had been using. Three columns: Queued, In Progress, and Completed. Then all tasks fit into one of the three columns and contain any number of checklists, notes, or attachments as needed. To create a new project, all I have to do is Copy Board.
To wrap things up, I just had to create Boards for each of my Projects and throw some color coding into it. Behold the final result.
This system lets me keep my energy on three main Focuses and helps limit the number of ongoing Projects I have. The Boards with “(1)” in them are the Focus boards which contains all the various goals and notes to help channel future energies. The colors help make it easy to see where my attention is going.
Going from an overly complicated system into a sweet and straightforward Boring organization lets me put more energy into the projects themselves instead of the overhead.
(Written 2019.02.26)
