(Draft, Robert Danberg, PhD-- Do not reproduce)
You need to have a clear picture of your destination and, most days, she points out, forget about it: you need to concentrate on the tasks, each day, each week, that moves you closer to your destination.
So while you intend to produce a dissertation, over the next twelve weeks, you’ll be completing a draft of chapter one.
You want to get to a place where you have a clear picture of the destination, the final product, as you see it today in mind as you plan. In that place, you define the many smaller projects that feed the overarching project (a product, like a proposal, a prospectus, exam or dissertation). Things happen in a certain order and some things go on side by side. You need to address your priorities-- you can’t do everything at once. Those priorities become choices you make, each day to act, acting in each in the interest of a later day, when you hope the work will be finished.
Take out a piece of paper and label it “My Project.”
Keep this open and nearby. Come up with a list of one hundred nouns that come to mind for your project. Keep it nearby and open. We’ll work on this for a few minutes. Leave it nearby and add nouns as we go. See if, over the next few days, if you return to it routinely, you can get to one hundred. Think freely about it. Just get to one hundred over a few days. Notice whether categories or connections emerge and whether those categories have stories in them that are part of the work and how you explain the work.
Set a timer. Write for ten minutes without stopping to explore the following: how your thinking about the project process and your ideas have evolved over time.
Use the generative sentence “I used to think... but now I think...” to get you started. To get started, you may write versions of the sentence and when you get stuck, you might return to it and rewrite it to clarify or extend your thinking.
Most importantly, keep your hand moving. This is “stream of consciousness” writing, so the goal is to produce text, not pretty sentences or thinking for an audience.
Reflect, ask questions aloud, talk to yourself, but be concrete and particular as you explore your thinking.
You’ll need three sheets of paper. Label them, My Destination, Where I’m at Today, How Will I Get There, Questions to Answer
My Destination
Label this page “My Destination”. Take a few minutes and describe the product as you envision it currently. Be as concrete and detailed as you can be, even if it means using your imagination to describe what you haven’t quite pinned down yet. You might consider the following:
Describe the problem your work addresses or will solve
Describe the form it will take, such as the number of chapters or sections
Describe the method involved and the data you’ll be using
Describe your stance and point of view
Describe who you intend its readership to be
Where I Am Today
Describe where you are currently with respect to that final product. You might consider some of the following:
What have I written? Don’t be shy about including notes, journals, drafts, seminar papers, proposals for conferences, conference presentations-- use any documents you think will contribute to the work you intend to do.
What have I read? What data have I collected? Academic writing, especially dissertation writing, but also journal articles and other professional writing, situates itself in a body of current work. What is the status of your research in this respect?
Where am I in the process? Consider the process with respect to your discipline and your department’s requirements, of course, but also with respect to the work as it is your own. That is, this is your project, you are the creator of something new: what is your current thinking? What problems have you solved or identified?
What is the current status of your thinking? Where do you currently stand on the issues or problems you’ve identified?
Generate a list of questions to answer.
What questions do I need to answer about the process itself, with respect to the institution, the department, or, if it’s pertinent to the project, publication?
What questions do I need to answer about the form of the final product? Consider this from two angles-- your goals for it as your creation, and genre or departmental requirements (for example, the form of other dissertations or the style used in publication)?
What are the next steps in my research? This may include reading, data collection, data coding and collation and so on.
What questions are open in your thinking? What problems do you have to solve? While you may be certain of the main claim of your piece, you may also have questions and “open loops” that must be addressed. What are they?
Rely on the standard, Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How to help you.
Review the three exercises. Make changes or notes as you see fit. Then, free write for ten minutes in response to the question, “What do I need to do now to end up at my destination by the end of the semester?
The idea of a Project List comes from David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”.
I treat Project and Next Action Lists as both an activity and product. As an activity, it’s part process, practice and routine. As a product, it’s a place to hold a dynamic list of tasks that change and get updated, but also a tool for orienting me. I use these lists when I’m setting out on a project, along the way to keep me oriented and organized, and when I’ve lost my way-- perhaps because I had a long break from the work or because I feel overwhelmed in the task.
No matter where I am-- whether I’m at the trailhead, or on the way, or off the path the destination is the same: some piece of writing, some part of the project.
I take out the same tools to orient myself.
I start with the calendar and the clock.
Then, I review the actions I need to take-- those are the steps along the path.
The routine of using Project Lists and Next Action lists is simple. I check, cross off, and add.
It’s always very surprising to me how a list can have a lot of energy, I can feel the list during a period of time when all the elements are active. Then, I hardly glance when I transfer a few remaining items to a new list, and tear the sheet that I’d made with such resolve a month earlier
The process of setting up the lists, which for me happens again and again as projects finish, semesters close, and also, as I try to run in my usual way, from one thing to the next. And weeks go by and I need to start again. Here’s where I use the process to help.
David Allen defines “projects” in the following way
Projects are any and all those things that need to get done within the next few weeks or months that require more than one action step to complete.
“A PROJECT LIST is a master inventory of your Projects” while a “next action,” is “the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.”
So, imagine your binder has one list at the front, Project Lists. Then, for each of the projects, you dedicated a page-- underlined, along the top, the name of the Project.. Those pages are Next Actions Lists.
David Allen, from Getting Things Done
One of the most common questions we get, as people begin to implement the GTD method, is “Why do I need to have a Projects list?” In other words, people want to know if they can get away with simply creating and looking at lists of Next Actions.
A current, clear, and complete project list is the key tool for managing the horizon of our commitments that, in my experience, has the greatest improvement opportunity for anyone leading a life of any significant complexity.
Projects range all over the map, and most people have between thirty and a hundred such commitments, at any point in time. Each one of these agreements with ourselves needs some sort of “stake in the ground” anchored in such a way that we revisit it frequently enough to trust nothing is being missed or falling through the cracks about it, and that forward motion is appropriately happening. If you only tracked Next Actions, then once you finished the action, without a trusted placeholder for the final outcome, you would have to keep track of that desired result in your head.
Next Action lists work in tandem with your Project List.
Merlin Mann, whose blog 52 Folders is popular with freelancers defines next action lists this way:
Next action lists only hold your next actions. For example, a classic old-school to-do might be something like “Plan Tom’s Surprise Going-Away Party,” “Clean out the Garage,” or “Get the Car Fixed.” But, as Allen cannily notes, these are each really small projects since they require more than one activity in order to be considered complete. Learning to honor that distinction between a task and its parent project may, in fact, be the most important step you can take toward improving the quality and “do-ability” of the work on your list.
Next Action Lists
Contain the actions for each individual project on your Project List
Are concrete steps you can cross off a list (not work on chapter but “spend an hour drafting new text” or “check citations for chapter one”. Although you might not finish the action in a sitting, when it is complete, you can cross it off the list.)
Often works best when you express it along with a verb-object structure, rather than a topic. For example, “Check format of citations” rather than “citations”)
Draft A Project List
Since we are just setting up this notebook, consider this work a drafting process that results in a definitive project list for this stage of the project you’re working on-- the semester ahead, for example.
Take out a sheet of paper and write, Draft Project List at the top of it.
Make a list of projects that you need to complete to complete the product you need to produce. Remember that a project is anything that takes two or more actions to complete-- see above.
Next action lists enable you to keep putting one foot in front of the other, ensuring that you always know what to do next, instead of half-assing your way through a badly-defined pile of fuzzy nouns. This physicality and functional piece-work act in concert to make the planning and execution of your tasks as stress-free and un-intimidating as possible.
Merlin Mann
Merlin Mann suggests that you articulate your to-dos in terms of physical activity--even when they require only modest amounts of actual exertion.Then, you can envision undertaking the task and what it will actually feel like to do. Then, you will find it easier to visualize the tools you’ll need, along with, perhaps the setting for the work. So, it’s essential we try to get the verbs right. a better-defined chunk of activity suggests a task with clear edges; it has a beginning and an end.
Mann writes,
You might theoretically just keep “preparing” your presentation until some arbitrary alarm bell goes off in your head, saying “Yeah, okay, that looks like a fully-prepared presentation, so you can stop.”
Select a project from your list and write its name at the top of a sheet of paper.
On this list, generate a list of next actions. Try phrasing your task in a form like:“verb the noun with the object.”
Not “work on diss chap 1”
But “edit pages 1 to 4,” “incorporate exam answer into introduction”
Choose another project and start another list on another page.
When you sit down to work, create an entry for the session. Keep track of the following:
When you start
Date
Time Started/Time finished
Location
Want to Do
When you finish
What I Did
Mood
Additional Notes (optional)
Review/Reflect/Plan
Create a Review/Reflect/Plan Page in your log to summarize what you learn through this process.
Review
Remind yourself of your 12 week goals.
Read over your log from the previous week.
Scan your previous week’s calendar.
Check your previous week's “Weekly Top Three”
Review your Project and Next Action Lists-- Update them
Look at the month ahead-- look at the next month or two
Look at your weekly grid for the week ahead.
Get a sense of your week. Add appointments. You’ll find your priorities easier to choose if you have a sense of the demands on your time
Reflect
Summarize your answers to these questions in your log Update your Project and Next Actions lists as things occur to you.
What were you able to do this week?
What may have gotten in the way?
What behaviors helped you get things done?
Are there changes you might make next week?
Are there tasks you need to carry over from the previous week?
Are there adjustments you need to make ?
Plan
Look over your weekly calendar and be sure to identify all of the times you can’t devote to your project.
What 12 week goal(s) are your priority this week
Check your next action lists. What are you “Top Three”? Do you have a task to complete? Or do you have a “process” goal-- time spent, for example, on an aspect of the project that is ongoing, like editing pages. Be sure to look at the week ahead and think about what is possible, realistically, given the demands on your time. Consider what kinds of tasks fit the time you have. What tasks require the most concentration? What tasks require very little concentration?
Make a decision about your week ahead.
What are you weekly “Top Threes”
Look at your calendar for the week and identify time-- or days-- you plan to work. Think about the time you have, as well as the time you need to devote. Try scheduling appointments for your work. Try aligning tasks with days.
Answer the question, “What behaviors will help you?” What can you do to help facilitate your work this week? Can you anticipate obstacles from last week that you can plan to address? Try leaving the house this week; Be sure to have all materials; take a walk during breaks.) These are reminders to use those behaviors.
Write up your plan in your log.
Post your weekly top threes.