How Do You Use Projects in GTD?

The following is a guest post from Geoff R from Gearfire.net

In my opinion, projects are one of the least talked about and most diversely used components of GTD. In Getting Things Done, David Allen leaves a lot of room for interpretation on the topic of what kind of project you should have. That is why many people have different “levels” of projects. It struck me yesterday that I didn’t quite know what I should be putting as projects. Should it be as concise as multi-step actions, which would change almost daily, or could they be as grand as your long-term goals? So far I have seen 5 ways of using projects in GTD.1. Multi-step Actions. These are relatively short-lived, and will be completed and created often. May include such things as “Get new car stereo” which would then include smaller actions such as “compare prices online”, “buy best stereo” then “bring to car shop for installation”.

2. General Projects. Things such as “plan vacation” or any work or school related projects. These will have more steps in them, and will probably take at least 5 days to complete.

3. Short-term Goals. Things such as “achieve a credit score of xxx before dd/mm/yyyy”. These will probably take upwards of a month until they are achieved, but are usually shorter than a year.

4. Long-term Goals. Generally longer than a year, such as “achieve # net worth by this year” or similar.

5. General Classification. Using projects as classification of actions, such as: social, financial, academic, etc.

Personally, I have gone down the list from classification to long-term goals, to short-term goals, and I am now I am using a mix of general projects, and short-term goals. Personally I think I like using short-term goals the most, but it really depends on what kind of person you are. Do you obsess with the short-term, doing everything you can, now? Or do you see into the future, and plan for later on? Either way, I noticed that the task app Toodledo has a Goals feature, which keeps track of your long-term and short-term goals. You can even tag your actions by goal, and see statistics about how many you complete for each goal!

So how do you use your projects in your GTD system?

Geoff R is a student productivity, organization, and GTD writer from Canada. He blogs at Gearfire.net, with a group of other high school and university GTD writers. You can subscribe to their RSS feed here.