This is the final post in the Getting Things Done for SEs series. As a reference point, here is a list of all the previous posts in the series:
I also created a product list of all the products I’m using, hopefully it ends up saving you some time.
Case Study
To conclude the article, I thought it would be really helpful to see this system in action. It’s less important that you follow and understand each discrete task from start to finish. The main goal is to get a sense for how various inputs flow into the system and are tracked. If you decide to implement a similar system, this is where you can come back and spend some real time understanding the nuance of dealing with SE-specific types of input.
To frame the story I’m going to use a case study of an SE persona. I’ll call him Dave in honor of Mr. Allen. Dave works for large enterprise software company, supports 2 sales reps, and has about 60 customers total. Here’s a typical day for Dave:
Day 1
Dave wakes up and begins his morning routine including some time on the treadmill. During his exercise he thinks about an upcoming product release about Enterprise Reporter 2.0 and has an idea that the ascii conversion widget would really help his customer Acme Corp. He has a pen and paper at is treadmill and jots down the idea and gets back to working out, free from this thought for now. As he finishes, he drops the note into his home In Basket. Before he heads to work, he clears everything out of that home inbox and inputs the idea from the note into his laptop as an uncategorized task for later processing.
Dave gets to work and opens up his inbox. He’s got about 20 emails and 2 voicemails. 16 of those emails are not important and he scans and deletes them. 2 are from his reps and 2 are from customers. For each of those 4 emails he must do something about them. 1 of them takes less than 2 minutes and he responds on the spot. He drags and drops the remaining 3 emails onto the Outlook Tasks folder, which instantly creates Tasks. He also looks at each of the hand written notes, including the one about Acme corp and he enters that into a task as well. He doesn’t bother to think about them at this point other than to just get them into his system.
Once he has entered all of his raw data comes time to Process them. Dave goes to Outlook->Tasks->[Process] and sees the five items (from 3 emails/2 notes) and goes through them one by one. The tasks are as follows:
- New opportunity for DataView at Dynacorp
- Need to schedule product demo for BBGE Group asap
- Ascii widget for Acme
- Update CRM before end of month
- Pick up home office supplies
Note that in the current state, these aren’t actionable for the most part. They need to be further refined. So we Process each one.
DataView at Dynacorp
Because it’s a new opportunity, Dave needs a way capture it so that daily or weekly he can review progress and take action. Because this is a multiple-step activity, we consider it a Project. Dave goes to the [Project] task view and finds Dynacorp and adds Dataview to the list which already has 2 other product opportunities currently going on at the company. He will now see this entry weekly. He also decides that he wants to talk about the opp with his sales rep the next time they connect, but it doesn’t warrant a separate meeting, so he creates a new task called DataView at Dynacorp debrief and categorizes it as an agenda item @@Paul (his rep) for the next time they speak.
Demo for BBGE Group
Dave needs to coordinate with the customer to go out and demo a product. His other rep, Mark, wants this done today because the customer has a short runway to make a buying decision. Dave already has a project for BBGE so that’s covered, but setting up the demo will require scheduling the meeting, reviewing the latest product manual, updating his demo data, and customizing the demo for the customer after a debrief with Mark. Because it’s more than one Next Action it is definitely a Project, but he’s also got to move on it quickly. He decides that the first step is sending his customer a couple open dates on his calendar to get the meeting scheduled. He stops what he’s doing and sends the email right away copying his rep and himself. When he gets the email from himself he drags that email to the Tasks folder and labels it as .Waiting and saves the task. He then decides he needs to schedule a debrief meeting with his rep right away so he sends a meeting request right away for later on in the day. He then makes a .Waiting task for the meeting response from Mark. He decides he doesn’t want to take further action until he hears from Mark, but because it’s urgent he doesn’t want to wait until the end of the day to followup, so he makes a 0 minute reminder in his calendar for 2 hours from now to revisit the project.
ASCII for Acme
Because this would be a new opportunity, he appends ASCII to the master project list for Acme. He also decides that he should also review this with Mark next time they speak, so he creates a new task called ASCII for Acme and labels it as @@Mark.
Update CRM
This isn’t an urgent, but does have a definite due date 2 weeks out. Dave creates a task called Update CRM, labels it @Computer and also adds a Due Date to the task 2 weeks out. The day before it is due, he also adds a day-specific entry in his calendar called Verify CRM Updated. This gives him a safety net if he gets too busy to work out the task. Because it’s a single event he doesn’t create a project, but he thinks that he should maybe be setting aside an hour on his calendar every month to update the CRM, that way he never needs to react and try to squeeze it in next time. He creates another task and calls it Schedule Recurring Monthly Calendar Slot for CRM Updates and labels it @Computer.
Office Supplies
Perhaps the simplest task to complete, but one of the easiest to forget. Dave knows that he will be leaving a customer site at 4p and will want to be reminded to stop at the store around that time, so he adds a calendar event for 4p to pick up office supplies. He needs to go to a specialty store he’s never been to before, so he takes the additional steps of adding the address to his task so that when it pops up on his phone, he can enter it right into the GPS before he starts his car.
He then prints off a copy of his [Action] and [Agenda] list.
—
Let’s pause at this juncture for a moment. Although Dave has completed a few simple tasks, he really hasn’t begun his day in a discretionary sense. He has been reacting with the help of his system. He’s processed several inputs ranging from simple and mundane to very complex and important with a mix of urgent and non-urgent activities. Dave has had a place and mechanism for dealing with each of these criterion which means he hasn’t wasted a lot of brainpower dealing with them. At this point, maybe 20 minutes into his day, he now has a complete record of all his open loops and his mind can let go of the forces tugging at him from many directions.
He now has all his committments in front of him and he can use sound judgment to knock tasks out without mental distraction.
Doing
Dave is now ready to get to business. He scans his [Action] list and sees about 50 tasks spread across @Computer, @Calls, and @Office. He has an @Office category because there is a computer lab he needs to use frequently where specific tasks must take place. He sees 2 @computer, 1 @call, and 1 @office task that are high priority and he completes each of those in turn. After they are completed, he looks back to his list and proceeds on the next office task.
While in the middle he gets a call from Paul, one of his reps. While on the phone he breaks out the Agenda printout and goes to the Paul section. As they’re speaking Dave takes some notes including a couple action items. He then brings up the couple agenda items he wanted to discuss including DataView at Dynacorp. They decide that Paul needs to do some further qualification before they can go out do a technical presentation, Dave notes this as well. As soon as Dave hangs up, he looks through his notes for actionable items and enters them as uncategorized tasks. He then enters a couple pertinent notes in a simple text file in their respective project folders and throws away the paper.
Dave then returns to his office task when he gets an Outlook reminder to check on Demo for BBGE Group. He checks his email and verifies he got a confirmation from Mark on the meeting later in the day. He goes back and knocks a couple more tasks off his list before lunch. Before heading to lunch Dave does a Process again and opens his inbox and gets it down to 0 items including processing the input from Paul earlier in the day. Because Dave needs to wait for Paul to connect with Dynacorp before he can begin to create a presentation, he creates a .Waiting task called “Paul to Qualify Dynacorp and get back to me”. With that completed he can head to lunch.
Upon returning he meets with Mark to discuss the BBGE meeting. Before the meeting he scanned his email looking for a response to the calendar invite, but nothing received. He and Mark discuss the account and a strategy for the demo. Dave captures the main customer points of interest until he is comfortable he can tailor the demo to the customer. Finishing up that conversation, Dave can also bring up the Acme account and several others. Mark thinks that Acme would indeed benefit from hearing about the new product and asks Dave to send him some good qualifying questions pertaining to the new features. Dave agrees and they finish the call. He then has a couple minutes to gather his materials and head out to meet a customer to conduct a presentation. During the presentation he captures some additional notes about the customer as well as some followup questions he’ll need to address within the next couple days. As he leaves the meeting to head home his calendar notification pops up to stop at the supply store on the way home.
When he gets home he takes 15 minutes to debrief from the day. So far he has a couple pages of notes and several action items from the call with Mark and the customer presentation. He enters the data into his system as before including emptying his head, email and voicemail into the system. He additionally reviews his .Waiting list where he sees he is waiting for a reply from BBGE about the meeting later this week and he still hasn’t received a reponse. He stops what he’s doing and he emails them a polite confirmation that they do indeed wish to meet this week and that he’ll follow up with a phone call tomorrow late morning to confirm. He adds a 0 minute calendar reminder at 10a to call BBGE if needed. He returns to his Process session. After processing, he has the additional data in his system:
For BBGE:
- A calendar slot tomorrow for building the BBGE customized demo
From the presentation:
- A Project called Research for Customer ABC
- A task to research the questions online
- A task to email a colleauge about a possible reference that is similar to this customer
- Additional notes added to his reference file for the customer (which get entered into the CRM)
For Acme:
- A task to research qualifying questions and then send them to Mark
Before he finishes he checks his system if there was anything important he needed to do @home or anything he needed to speak to his wife about. After that he closes his computer knowing everything he has to do is accounted for and scheduled.
—
Let’s pause and review again for a moment. The day in the life of an SE can be intense and very interupt driven. I tired to account accurately for all the task switching that comes with the territory. It’s hard to follow all of the elements to this story, and that’s partially the point. Each of us needs a system that can deal with that kind of complexity without being overly burdensome. It takes a lot of text to explain each step, but once you’re in the flow this becomes automatic. The 10% overhead you’re adding to your day easily doubles the effectiveness of the other 90%.
Still, it’s easy to get tripped up here. Some of us have reps that schedule 5 account calls back to back with little time to eat let alone Process effectively. This is where the Review comes into play. It gives you the dedicated time to sync up with yourself and address any open loops you’ve been accumulating. Anything you don’t catch during the day you catch at your Evening Review. Something missed there can be captured at the Weekly Review. This extra redundancy gives you a safety net and permits imperfection (not read as: sloppiness) which I personally feel is crucial to minimizing stress.
Weekly Review
The next day Dave has his weekly review scheduled. Before doing that he processes everything to 0 to begin with a clean slate and goes through the standard review process. When he starts to review his projects. He looks at the project item for each customer. He starts with the one for Acme.
Inside the Task details he has:
Database Suite
- POC
Email Security
- Demo for security group
- Presentation for network group
Encryption Manager
ASCII Tool
Each of the main items (e.g. Database Suite) are specific product opportunities. Underneath each one are specific projects he needs to manage to closure alongside his reps. As he thinks about the POC (proof of concept) he adds a task to call the customer to check in on the status. For the demo, he had completed it earlier in the week and addressed all questions making it a “closed” project, so he remove it from the list.
For the remaining items he doublechecks his current Action list to ensure he has items for each one (.Waiting or Action).
Dave repeats this for each account and ends the session with a fresh set of tasks for the week. The total time spent was about 1.5 hours.
—
This wraps the series on Getting Things Done (GTD) for SEs. My hope is that this provides just enough motivation to start your own inquiry into the possibilities of getting more done and stressing out less in this difficult profession of ours. I, like most other recent GTD graduates, am proud of my accomplishments and still amazed at how well it helps me get through the day. I want everyone to experience that feeling, and to that end I’m happy to help with any other other pointers or advice I can should you choose to get started–just hit me up on the contact form.
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