If you like to work with a loose-leaf notebook or planner, it's good to keep an inventory of fresh note paper or graph paper that you can use to set up a page on a theme or project as it shows up. While some projects may later deserve a whole tabbed section or even an entire notebook of their own, they don't start out that way. And most of your projects may need only a page or two to hold the few ideas you need to track.
If you don't have a good system for filing bad ideas, you probably don't have one for filing good ones, either.
Software Tools
Software is in one sense a dark black hole to explore in search of good "project management" tools. For the most part, the applications that are specifically designed for project organizing are way too complex, with too much horsepower to really be functional for 98 percent of what most people need to manage. They're appropriate only for the very small percentage of the professional world that actually needs them. The rest of us usually find bits and pieces of applications more informal and project-friendly. As I've noted, I have never seen any two projects that needed the same amount of detailing and structure to get them under control. So it would be difficult to create any one application that would suffice for the majority.
Digital Outlining Most of what anyone needs to structure his or her thinking about projects can be found in any kind of application that has a simple hierarchical outlining function. I used to use a Symantec program called Grandview, and now I often use Microsoft Word for just this kind of project planning. Here's a piece of an outline I created for one of our own planning sessions:
The great thing about outlining applications is that they can be as complex or as simple as required. There are numerous soft-ware programs that provide this kind of basic hierarchical structuring. The trick is to find one that you feel comfortable with, so you can rapidly get familiar with how to insert headings and sub-headings and move them around as needed. Until you can stop focusing on how to use the program, you'll resist booting it up and using it to think and organize.
It doesn't really matter where you put this kind of thinking, so long as it's easily accessible so you can input and review it as needed.
Brainstorming Applications Several applications have been developed specifically to facilitate the brainstorming process. "Inspiration" was one, based on the mind-mapping techniques of Tony Buzan. It had some useful features, but me, I've gone back to paper and cool pen for the kind of rapid, informal thinking I usually need to do.
The problem with digitizing brainstorming is that for the most part we don't need to save what we brainstorm in the way we brainstormed it — the critical thing is the conclusions we develop from that raw thinking. The slick brainstorming-capture tools, like electronic whiteboards and digital handwriting-copying gear, ultimately will probably not be as successful as the manufacturers hoped. We don't need to save creative thinking so much as we do the structures we generate from it. There are significant differences among collecting and processing and organizing, and different tools are usually required for them. You might as well dump ideas into a word processor.
Project-Planning Applications As I've mentioned, most project-planning software is too rigorous for the majority of the project thinking and planning we need to do. Over the years I've seen these programs more often tried and discontinued than utilized as a consistent tool. When they're used successfully, they're usually highly customized to fit very specific requirements for the company or the industry.
I anticipate that less structured and more functional applications will emerge in the coming years, based on the ways we naturally think and plan. Until then, best stick with some good and simple outliner.
Attaching Digital Notes
If you are using a digital organizer, much of the project planning you need to capture outside your head can in fact be satisfactorily managed in an attached note field. If you have the project itself as an item on a list on a Palm, or as a task in Microsoft Outlook, you can open the accompanying "Note" section and jot ideas, bullet points, and subcomponents of the project. Just ensure that you review the attachment appropriately to make it useful.
Just as your "Next Actions" lists need to be up-to-date, so, too, does your "Projects" list. That done, give yourself a block of time, ideally between one and three hours, to handle as much of the "vertical" thinking about each project as you can.
Clear the deck, create a context, and do some creative project thinking. You'll then be way ahead of most people.
At the very least, right now or as soon as possible, take those few of your projects that you have the most attention on or interest in right now and do some thinking and collecting and organizing on them, using whatever tools seem most appropriate.
Focus on each one, one at a time, top to bottom. As you do, ask yourself, "What about this do I want to know, capture, or remember?" You may just want to mind-map some thoughts on a piece of paper, make a file, and toss the paper into it. You may come up with some simple bullet-point headings to attach as a "note" in your software organizer. Or you could create a Word file and start an outline on it.
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and — planning.
— Winston
The key is to get comfortable with having and using your ideas. And to acquire the habit of focusing your energy constructively, on intended outcomes and open loops, before you have to.
Part 3. The Power of the Key Principles
11. The Power of the Collection Habit
THERE'S MUCH MORE to these simple techniques and models than may appear at first glance. Indeed, they offer a systematic method to keep your mind distraction-free, ensuring a high level of efficiency and effectiveness in your work. That in itself would be sufficient reason to implement these practices.
But there are even greater implications for the fundamental principles at work here. What follows in the next three chapters is an accounting of my experience, over the last twenty years, of the subtler and often more profound effects that can transpire from the implementation of these basic principles. The longer-term results can have a significant impact on you as an individual, and they can positively affect larger organizational cultures as well.
When people with whom you interact notice that without fail you receive, process, and organize in an airtight manner the exchanges and agreements they have with you, they begin to trust you in a unique way. Such is the power of capturing placeholders for anything that is incomplete or unprocessed in your life. It noticeably enhances your mental well-being and improves the quality of your communications and relationships, both personally and professionally.
How did it feel to go through the collecting and downloading activity? Most people say it feels so bad, and yet feels so good. How can that be?
If you're like most people who go through the full collection process, you probably felt some form of anxiety. Descriptive terms like "overwhelmed," "panic," "frustration," "fatigue," and "disgust" tend to come up when I ask seminar participants to describe their emotions in going through a minor version of this procedure. And is there anything you think you've procrastinated on in that stack? If so, you have guilt automatically associated with it—"I could have, should have, ought to have (before now) done this."