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Project Clarification Needed

Hello fellow GTDers!

I have recently devoted myself to the GTD system after listening to the seminar audio recording, and spending a lot of time reading most of the book/43folders.com/other personal productivity blogs.

However, I still am not quite clear on everything. Here is an example:

After processing, let's say I have a new project, so I put it in the projects folder. It is "Clean Apartment". I realize that that could easily be broken down into sub-projects of Clean Kitchen, Clean Bathroom, etc.

Do I write out all the sub projects and just put them in the projects folder? Do I write one next action for each project?

Then let's say I have everything out of the inbox and processed in its appropriate place. I look around and tell myself that a cluttered house is a cluttered mind, and I really want to start to work on cleaning up. So, what do I do now? Grab one of the sub-projects and do the next action? Then what will I do? Come up with another next action on the fly?

Basically, do I limit myself to one next action for projects? The real problem I have is whether you take the next actions from the projects and put them then in your appropriate NA folders. But if you did that, how would you know what you were really working on, if everything was all jumbled and you were working on multiple projects simultaneously?

Questions Asked:

  1. Do I write out all the sub projects and just put them in the projects folder?

  2. Do I write one next action for each project?

  3. Do I grab one of the sub-projects and do the next action? Or do I come up with another next action on the fly?

  4. Do you take NAs from projects, and put them into context folders? If you do that, aren't you working on multiple projects simultaneously AND wouldn't that give cause for a lot of confusion?

Thanks!

cmr924's picture

Thanks!

Thanks for the replies so far!

Augmentedfourth, I think I understand, but I still have

So, let's say you wanted to clean your apartment. After breaking that down, maybe even just in your head, Clean Bathroom becomes a project.

Do you then just make a list of next actions that have to do with cleaning the bathroom, and put them in the At Home folder (for example)?

I am going to probably start out pretty low-tech, so how would that look on my end? Do I take all these scraps of paper from the folder, and just start? Or when I process, do I write down anything from the inbox, into a list of NAs in the appropriate folder?

Sorry for all the questions, but I think I am close!

 
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