GTD Problem: Knowing When Things Will Get Done

This is the second post in a series on Extreme GTD.

Part of GTD's power is having a complete and exhaustive list of everything that you need to do. Even though that list is usually huge, it's still very comforting to know that you aren't forgetting something while you get your stuff done.

However, one big problem I've found is that even if you trust that you will eventually get these tasks done, the reality is that most of the time, it is necessary to tell people (or at least to know) when they will be done.

GTD itself doesn't offer a solution for this. There is the Weekly Review, which in theory should give you the opportunity to figure out what will be done within the next 7 days, but most of the time I find that knowing when I will complete a task is most useful at the moment that I make the commitment to do it.

The solution I have been using for this is to schedule all my actions onto my calendar, effectively blocking out the time I will need to do it. This goes directly against David Allen's advice about treating the calendar as "sacred territory", but I have actually found it to be very useful.

The first and obvious benefit is that I know exactly when I will do the task. It also blocks out the time required to do it, so that other people (or myself!) cannot book meetings during that time, which protects the action.

Another, more subtle, but extremely important benefit is that it forces me to be realistic about how much I can do in a week. In my Weekly Review, after I have collected & processed all my stuff, I go through my actions list and one by one schedule all of my actions into my calendar. I usually leave a couple of hours a day open so that people can schedule some meetings with me, but this will depend on how many actions I have to complete during the week.

If I find that I completely fill up a whole week and still have actions left over, I am forced to make some tough decisions about my commitments. The choices are many: I can leave less time open for meetings, delegate some actions to others, re-negotiate or refuse some actions, or just simply decide that some actions can be left for the following week (a kind of mini-Someday/Maybe).

Re-negotiations can be made on-the-fly as the week goes on. If something unavoidable or urgent comes up, I schedule it as normal in the calendar, and then move the displaced action somewhere else. If there is no free space left in my week, I have the same choices as above.

An even more subtle benefit is that it removes the need to check my actions list during the day. Instead of completing one action, then having to scan through my very large list of actions to try to figure out what to do next, my calendar just tells me what to do. Zero thinking - which is ultimately the whole point of the GTD philosophy. At the end of the day, I am exhausted, but I have crammed all the "Doing" that is possible in a single day.

I actually find this is an important trick to help me to trust my system. The "trusted system" phrase in GTD is really key. If you don't trust your system, you will be reluctant to put your actions into it and truly forget them. For me, knowing that the action is on my calendar, and a little reminder will pop up when it's time to do it, gives me the level of trust I need to move on and think about the next piece of stuff.

One word of warning however: This trick doesn't work very well when I haven't done the Processing step properly - ie. I haven't really boiled down the stuff to the very next physical, visible action. If my calendar pops up and tells me to do something like "approval for software purchase", it trips me up. So far, I've been dealing with this by doing the real processing then, but if I have committed that the task will be done by then to someone then I also have to re-negotiate with that person, which uses up more energy.

I highly recommend this technique to anyone who has to tell people when things will be done. Do not ever tell someone that something will be done by a certain date/time until you have verified on your calendar that it can actually happen. Tell them you'll get back to them with an estimate if you need time to brainstorm/process. Otherwise you will just get stress for yourself and disappointment for the other person.