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wilsonng: When you say you "just pick three big rocks for the week and make them my active projects," do you mean you mark all your other projects as 'on hold' until the next review - Hence your context views only show items from those 'big rocks'? So most of your projects are "on hold" at any given time? Interesting... |
I only have two hands so I can't "do everything." Most of my "big projects" are in my Someday/Maybe folder which have the "on hold" status.
I use The Someday/Maybe folder as my Master Task List of potential projects that I want to take up in the future. Then I can pick and choose which three Big Rocks I want to work on this week.
I do have my usual suspects of active tasks that range from routine chores, the current items due for this week, etc. These are the small rocks. Everybody has them. Unfortunately a lot of people fill up their lives with small rocks and don't get around to the Big Rocks.
Each week I'll choose three big projects (Big Rocks) that I'll turn into active of status and move it out of my Someday/Maybe folder. I can focus myself into working on those three Big Rocks until I either complete them or get as much progress as I can until I lose interest or have to delegate it to someone else who has the better resources, skill set, and time to handle it.
My context view will be populated lots of small rocks but it will also have the Next Actions for my three Big Rocks. If I were to have every big project in active status mode, I would get overwhelmed by it. My context view would be overwhelming with lots of Next Actions. I would probably be working on a next action in this project and a next action in another project. Yes, I would be slowly inching myself towards completion. But it might be better to just focus your energy and attention towards advancing the Big Rocks. By using the power of limitation, I can focus myself on finishing three Big Rocks for the week.
I'll feel better for spending time and effort in completing three big rocks rather than still having twenty projects that are at various stages of completion. We have time for the small rocks but we also need to make time for the Big Rocks as well.
Of course, I have to work on my small rocks, but I know that I'm progressing along on my Big Rock projects.
Check out this article:
http://zenhabits.net/2007/04/big-roc...ity-this-week/
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If your week is seven buckets, and you go into each bucket without planning ahead, and you fill it up with little pebbles and grains of sand and whatever other debris comes your way … soon there will be no room for the Big Rocks. Your buckets fill up faster than you know it, and once your buckets are full, you’re done. You can’t get bigger buckets. What you can do is put the Big Rocks in first, and fill in the pebbles and sand around them. The Big Rocks are the major things you want to get done this week. A report, launching a new website, going to the gym, spending time with your spouse and kids, achieving your dreams. These Big Rocks get pushed back from week to week because we never have time to do them — our days fill up too quickly, and before we know it, weeks have passed and the Big Rocks are still sitting on the side, untouched. |
If I spent all my time doing just small rocks, I wouldn't have time for the Big Rocks.
I also throw in a little bit of Mark Forster's mantra to "do a little and do it often." A Big Rock project like scanning my family photo album is a daunting task. This week, I schedule it in to just scan photos every night for anywhere from 30 minutes to 1-1/2 hours. Depending on how I feel each night, I'll nibble away for 30 minutes for suddenly get into the zone and spend 2 hours on it. At the end of the week, I'll see if I still have the desire/motivation and determine whether to keep it on as my big rock for next week or put it back into Someday/Maybe status and choose another big rock that captures my interest. At least I made a concentrated effort on advancing it further.
Use OmniFocus to "focus" your attention on three Big Rocks instead of scattering your focus on too many Big Rocks. There's only so much room on my plate to hold everything I want to do. I already have tons of small rocks in my context view. So I pick and choose from the buffet line all the Big Rocks I think I can handle (usually three) and then work from there.
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P.S. Sometimes I will have a Big Rock that gets thrown at me by the boss. So I would have to set aside one of my three personal Big Rocks and schedule his Big Rock into the week. That's life....
Last edited by wilsonng; 2009-03-15 at 02:38 PM..