Gearing up for working across lots of projects, all at once
I’d been planning to write about my struggle with the vertical integration part of the GTD system. Thank you to everyone who commented suggesting helpful resources: the post is still in draft and it’s on my list.
Some recent changes at work have meant that I’m now facing a much more immediate challenge than getting vertically integrated with GTD.
I work in communications/public affairs, and we provide services for a number of clients within our own organisation. My director is keen to make sure that we have plans in place for every one of the programs we promote, and has asked me to manage the process of developing and finalising these plans.
The delivery of what we come up with will be handled by different teams, but my task (with one person working for me to help) is to get from a blank slate to finished plans.
At a rough count we’re talking about around ten plans in two months.
This is going to mean a number of things straight off:
- The other parts of my existing job need to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible to keep the decks clear for this new process.
- Milestones are going to be important to make sure we don’t get to the end of the two months and suddenly realise nothing’s been done.
- The balance between meetings and solo work-time is going to be tricky to achieve: a lot of the development process is going to necessarily involve meetings, but that leaves very little time for actually, you know, writing.
- I’m going to need a bigger whiteboard.
This last point is an interesting one, because it reflects how I handle multiple concurrent projects.
Visibility
My stress levels increase as immediate information about the status of everything I’m working on vanishes. I don’t need to have details available, but I do need to know exactly where things stand.
So, when I have this many projects to manage, I need to have things stuck up on the wall, or on a whiteboard — anything that means I can at a glance know where everything’s up to.
This isn’t just for me, either. It helps when my director (and colleagues) need a quick update: no more flicking through folders and compiling an answer, because there it is, up on the wall.
And on those rare occasions I’m off sick (two days in the last twelve months), anyone covering for me can get an instant brief without needing to ring me and hear me coughing into the phone.
Setting things up
This new project gets announced on Monday, so I’m taking a couple of hours to go in to work today and get things set up.
Each plan that’s being developed will be its own project — the final goal being delivery to the implementation teams. Although the task of getting these plans developed is, in a sense, the ‘project’ I’ve been given, there’s much more to be gained, I think, from organising them at the next level ‘down’.
I don’t know how successful I’ll be in introducing my colleagues to the idea of GTD, but I’ll certainly be doing a formal ‘weekly review’ with them on top of whatever casual meetings may spring up along the way.
Getting started
So, that’s the concept. This evening I’m going in to clear my desk and get things ready for Monday morning — and I’m planning to write up how this project goes in some detail for this site.
Got any other suggestions about working across lots of different projects all at once?
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Best of luck with the challenge. Longer-term planning like this is a personal opportunity for improvement, so I’ll be looking forward to how you handle it.
— Matthew Cornell · Jan 15, 13:01 · #