<\/a><\/p>\nEver seen a pinball machine? Great, then you\u2019ll have a mental image of a metal ball pinging around under glass, side-to-side and up-and-down, flippers flipping and lights flashing for as long as you can stop it from disappearing down the hole.<\/p>\n
I sometimes use this odd metaphor in GTD\u00ae coaching and training to help people see how a project\u2019s next actions \u2018travel\u2019 around a GTD system over time, and to illustrate this, I\u2019d like to share the story of a personal project that began in 2016 and finished just recently.<\/p>\n
That year, here in the UK at least, the future suddenly changed, and, irrespective of how you voted in the Brexit referendum that I\u2019m referring to, things have been unclear for everyone since.<\/p>\n
For me, personally, the realisation also gradually dawned that clouds had appeared in the cobalt blue skies of my Mediterranean retirement dream, so a project that had been languishing on my \u2018someday maybe\u2019 list for ages got promoted to my \u2018Projects\u2019 list: \u2018Get Trinidad Passport\u2019.<\/p>\n
Trinidad & Tobago is a Caribbean nation off the coast of Venezuela. I\u2019ve always been entitled to \u2018Citizenship by Descent\u2019 there through my dad, who came to the UK in the Windrush years, and suddenly a second passport in my back pocket felt like it would be a very nice thing to have indeed.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s turn to GTD. And pinball\u2026<\/p>\n
The desired outcome of the project was always the same. Every week, during my GTD Weekly Review\u00ae, there it was, reminding me: Get Trinidad passport<\/em>. And every week, the next action was the metallic ball moving from list to list.<\/p>\nMy GTD lists saw all of the following next actions come and go as I slowly trawled the paper trail of my dad\u2019s life over the course of two years, locating all the necessary bits and pieces of bureaucracy from the UK and Caribbean. Here\u2019s a simplified snapshot:<\/p>\n
2017<\/p>\n
\n- Call Shaun about passport application process (@Calls)<\/li>\n
- Check with Embassy about dual citizenship (@Calls)<\/li>\n
- Print TT passport application forms (@Office)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
2018<\/p>\n
\n- Trinidad High Commission \u2013 referee professional status (@Agendas)<\/li>\n
- Email Lisette \u2013 Legal contacts in Port of Spain (@Computer)<\/li>\n
- Email Jeannie re passport reference (@Computer)<\/li>\n
- Call Mum \u2013 give marriage certificate to Nick this weekend (@Calls)<\/li>\n
- Nick \u2013 11\/3 \u2013 dad\u2019s old TT passport (Waiting for)<\/li>\n
- Search loft for dad\u2019s birth certificate (@Norfolk)<\/li>\n
- Mum \u2013 18\/3 \u2013 dad\u2019s death certificate (Waiting for)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
2019<\/p>\n
\n- Call Trinidad High Commission \u2013 clarify 1988 citizenship rule changes (@Calls)<\/li>\n
- Mum \u2013 clarify timeline of dad\u2019s naturalisation (@Agendas)<\/li>\n
- Google public notaries in Manchester (@Computer)<\/li>\n
- Call Home Office re original copy of naturalisation cert (@Calls)<\/li>\n
- Copy dad\u2019s naturalisation certificate (@Office)<\/li>\n
- Book train tickets to London (@Computer)<\/li>\n
- Get passport photos taken (@Errands)<\/li>\n
- TT High Commission \u2013 1\/8 \u2013 Passport ready! (Waiting for)<\/li>\n
- Buy recorded delivery envelope (@Errands)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The pinball has landed on virtually every one of my GTD lists at some point or another over the course of this journey. Ping. Ping. Ping.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it kept moving forward (\u201cWe\u2019ve found dad\u2019s birth certificate!\u201d) and I was ready to fill out the next form, take the next trip to London or pick up the phone to a distant relative to figure out the next missing piece.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it sat still. (\u201cSorry. The woman who types affidavits is on vacation. Come back in October.\u201d) I\u2019d hit \u2018Pause\u2019 and the next action would be a \u2018Waiting for\u2019 or a calendar trigger (a.k.a. \u2018Tickler\u2019) to call back and try again in a few weeks.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the ball and the project felt like they were going down the drain – that\u2019s the technical name of the \u2018game over\u2019 hole on a pinball machine, by the way \u2013 and there were hairy moments. Who knew that my dad\u2019s middle name didn\u2019t match other official records? The Trinidad High Commission in Belgravia did, as it happens, and, to my great chagrin (but not my surprise), they weren\u2019t open to just letting it fly \u2018on this occasion\u2019. Not at all. Next action: Google \u2018Government archives in Trinidad\u2019 and hunker down for another delay. Damn it.<\/p>\n
The ball pinged around my lists for over two years as the quest ground forward. The thing is – and this is where I thank GTD – the project took as long as it had to take, but not longer. Like pinball, much of it I couldn\u2019t control, and I had no idea how long it was going to go on for, but I had as much control as was possible and for most of the time it was neither on my mind very much nor stressing me out.<\/p>\n
For two years, it just ticked forward week-by-week, always on the radar, sometimes edging forward, sometimes not, until finally, a couple of weeks ago, the daft picture above of me with a passport and a giddy grin appeared in the family WhatsApp group. Woohoo!<\/p>\n
I chose to tell this story as a blog for a couple of reasons; one is because I hope it helps show how the moving parts of a project and its next actions work together over time, tied together by the Weekly Review. I\u2019ve noticed when teaching GTD that this dynamic between projects and next actions doesn\u2019t always \u2018click\u2019 immediately for people, so hopefully a post-coaching pointer to this blog will help in future.<\/p>\n
Secondly, to be honest, without GTD this project would probably never have got done (and several previous decades of it not getting done attest to this). It was unclear, it was complicated, there was no deadline and no urgency, nobody else pressing me for it, and even if I had that elusive passport, I probably wouldn\u2019t do much with it in the short term anyway.<\/p>\n
It was, basically, the kind of project that was ripe for disappearing down the back of the psychic sofa, re-appearing every August at Notting Hill Carnival as a fleeting \u2018Oh yes, and I must remember to\u2026\u2019, and then gone again a few days later once back into the daily grind.<\/p>\n
But, as I hope this blog suggests, it doesn\u2019t have to be that way. <\/em>GTD helps you get things done.<\/p>\nSo, citizen of wherever-you-are, what\u2019s languishing on your<\/em> someday maybe list that could be calmly and steadily moving towards successful completion with the help of GTD?<\/p>\n“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single next action.” – Lao Tzu (ish)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever seen a pinball machine? Great, then you\u2019ll have a mental image of a metal ball pinging around under glass, side-to-side and up-and-down, flippers flipping and lights flashing for as long as you can stop it from disappearing down the hole. I sometimes use this odd metaphor in GTD\u00ae coaching and training to help people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":132299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_eb_attr":"","gtp_columnspro_styling":"{}","gtp_paragraph_styling":"{}","gtp_heading_styling":"{}","gtp_spacer_styling":"{}","gtp_video_styling":"{}","gtp_group_styling":"{}","gtp_cover_styling":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[321,319,300,311,323,320],"tags":[51,53,948,662,69,307,288,80,1719,109],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132298"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=132298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}