Back to Basics: Waiting For Someday/Maybe
I mentioned earlier that I don't use contexts as recommended by David Allen. However, in that location are 2 kinds of lists he recommends that I exercise use, and get a ton of use from. These are the "Anytime/Peradventure" list and the "Waiting For" list.
Did you always think that anytime…?
The Anytime/Maybe list is a take hold of-all for all your crazy ideas and whacked-out plans that yous just don't accept fourth dimension to pursue today. Have an idea for a neat novel, just need to larn how to write a novel first? Put information technology on the Someday/Maybe list. Notice that your kitchen is looking a little "retro", and not in a good way? Add "remodel kitchen" to the Anytime/Possibly listing.
Someday/Maybe acts as a record and as a set of triggers. As a record, it helps you hold onto ideas that are a trivial scrap (or a lot!) outside the range of your normal mean solar day-to-twenty-four hours life. You aren't going to become remodel your kitchen right this instant. Yous aren't fifty-fifty going to start planning to remodel the kitchen right this instant. It's just an thought, something you thought about that might be prissy to exercise, anytime. Maybe.
As a set of triggers, the Someday/Peradventure listing gives you lot something to think about when you have a few minutes gratuitous to consider your goals from a "wider picture" perspective. Mayhap you've just finished a big project and are trying to think of what yous might take on next. Or maybe you just came into some money – like a big tax return or a slot machine jackpot – and you're trying to figure out how to spend it. You scan down your listing and detect that, a few months agone while you were preparing the avocado dip for your Superbowl political party, y'all thought well-nigh remodeling the kitchen. Now that yous've got some extra cash in your pocket, you lot tin can start thinking about how y'all'd like your kitchen to look.
Although this isn't "orthodox" GTD, you tin also work a picayune from your Anytime/Perhaps list. In theory, you're supposed to movement things from Someday/Maybe to your agile projects list and showtime creating adjacent actions when you lot "activate" a Someday/Maybe item, but as you lot browse your listing, you might well outset coming upwardly with ideas – a plot point for your imagined novel, a color scheme for your future kitchen. Go ahead and write those ideas into your Anytime/Maybe listing with the original idea, or suspension the detail out to its own page in your notebook (or the equivalent in any system you're using to keep your lists) and start brainstorming.
If you detect yourself planning steps that are actually immediately doable, or that you've already washed, then it'due south time to move your ideas off the Someday/Perhaps listing and into your active projects. But if you're still daydreaming about the future, keep them separated – psychologically, you lot'll know these aren't goals, these are merely things to think about now nad again, and someday, maybe, they'll exist goals.
Wait for it…!
Waiting For is likewise a future-oriented list. It'due south a place to record all the things you are, as the proper name suggests, waiting for. Anything you're waiting for, especially things you lot need to move to the next footstep of a project, goes on the list – a book y'all ordered online, a report from a colleague that you need to finish your own report, anything that y'all're expecting and demand to keep runway of.
The reason to listing this stuff is that if you're waiting for something, it shouldn't exist on your listen. There's nothing you can practice well-nigh it until it gets to you, right? And yet, they shouldn't be totally forgotten, either. What if that volume doesn't make it inside 10 days? What if your co-worker goes on a three-solar day drinking rampage instead of compiling the data you lot need for your stop-of-quarter report?
Having a split up list of this stuff tin can free you from keeping it on your mind while besides giving you the opportunity to periodically browse through your list to see if there's anything you should, in fact, exist worried nearly. If it's been 10 days and that book isn't at that place nevertheless, you demand to bank check your order condition – perchance it's back-ordered. Or mayhap it's lost and you need to contact the bookseller.
A expert Waiting For entry has several elements:
- The thing you're waiting for,
- The source of that matter,
- The project you need it for,
- The engagement that you put it on the list, and
- The date that y'all expect information technology.
And so, for example, you order a book for an essay you're writing on August 12th; it ships in 2-three days and yous've requested 2-twenty-four hours delivery. And so you can wait to receive information technology by the 19th (accounting for the weekend). Y'all're Waiting For entry might look like this:
- "Things You lot Need to Know About Salamanders" from Amazon for salamander essay. eight/12, due 8/19.
That gives you enough information to know a) when to mutter, b) when not to worry, c) what project you can't work on until the book comes, and d) what to do with it when it arrives.
What I do
Considering I don't keep contextually-organized lists, I don't actually proceed split up lists for Someday/Maybe and Waiting For. Instead, I preface every Someday/Maybe item with "S/M" and every Waiting For item with "West/F". In my online job director, I can easily sort those items together by alphabetizing the listing.
S/M items aren't dated, and so they sort to the bottom of the listing when I'chiliad looking at my list by date. Westward/F items are given a due date matching the day I expect to get information technology, so they'll come with the rest of my actions on that 24-hour interval and I tin follow upwardly, if necessary.
Although I add stuff to both lists every bit I think of things, I also pay special attention to them when I do my reviews. I strike off West/F items that I'm no longer waiting for, and add new ones I might accept forgotten to add during the week. I likewise have a wait at my Someday/Maybe items to come across if there'south anything I've started paying a lot more than attention to, or anything I'd similar to start working on. And I think of new things to put on in that location – since Someday/Maybe is a "no-pressure level" list, I experience comfortable putting things down that I very probable won't exercise. Often the ideas feed into something downwards the road that I couldn't have foreseen, even if the original idea never comes into fruition.
Don't expect for someday!
Start setting up a way to keep track of Someday/Maybe and Waiting For items at present. Even if you're not sold on the idea of task lists for everyday apply, having a place to keep track of stuff you're waiting on and another to proceed rails of your wildest thoughts can be a nifty help on their own.
Maybe some of our readers have their ain means of keeping rail of this stuff that they'd like to share? Drop us a note in the comments!
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/back-to-basics-waiting-for-somedaymaybe.html
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