How I Use Idea Cruncher to Manage my Projects
When I started working on Idea Cruncher, I was having the occasional day at work where it was tough to feel upbeat about the projects I had on the go at the same time. I like to think that I have a genuine desire to produce quality work, but managing details down at the individual project level could definitely give me that "pecked-to-death-by-ducks" feeling. The sheer number of worthwhile things that I could be working on at any given time would sometimes rob me of my enthusiasm for all of them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has days like this.
I was using a single coilbound notebook for all of my notes. I would keep a running to-do list along with all of the little details that I needed for my job: meeting notes, web addresses, technical information, rough drafts, drawings, designs, etc. (I have a filing cabinet at work with one complete drawer full of these books, stretching back to the early 90's -- I should probably do a purge...) It was an effective enough system as long as I didn't mind flipping pages and refreshing my to-do list every so often by copying the unfinished tasks from the old list and gathering up new tasks from the notes that I had taken in the meantime. I found that I was doing this refresh every week or two. I tried to hold the list to 20 items or less.
Of course, this was not the most effective or efficient system. I was doing a lot of page flipping. Things got accidentally left off the list and had to be tracked down in subsequent reviews of my notes. Ducks. I needed a better system for tracking my to-do list so that I could quickly add new tasks in the appropriate place as they became apparent. That's when I started working on Idea Cruncher.
Fast-forward to today. I still use the coilbound notebook for rough drafts and sketches, but the to-do list has moved entirely to Idea Cruncher. I keep the file (todo.idc) on a USB keychain drive so that I can take it with me between work and home. The to-do list itself is organized into six general categories: inbox, burning issues, today, short-term projects, long-term projects, and someday/maybe. (I've adapted this structure from David Allen's excellent book, Getting Things Done (often abbreviated on the web as GTD), which I really recommend. It's a fast read and it has lots of practical ideas.) Because Idea Cruncher is based on a tree structure, I can add any level of detail to any of these six sections by adding new branches.
The first category, "inbox," is used to capture new tasks without having to think about where they belong in the hierarchy. I use it for phone calls, emails, requests from coworkers, etc. that come in randomly throughout the day. When I have a few quiet moments (usually at the end of the day), I move these items from the inbox to one of the other five categories according to what they are and how urgently they need to be dealt with.
Below "inbox," there's a general category called "burning issues," which contains the high-priority objectives that I need to conquer within the next week or two. They tend to be the projects where I really need to focus some attention and set aside multiple-hour blocks in my workday. As these objectives are met, I delete them from the burning issues list (which usually gives me a little shot of whatever brain chemical is responsible for satisfaction).
The next category, "today," is pretty self-explanatory. Closely related to the "burning issues" category, it holds a list of areas where I expect to spend energy that day. Usually, I ask myself at the beginning of the day how I can move the ball forward on each of the "burning issues" and record the most important of these under "today." I should say that "today" and "burning issues" usually contain very little detail -- they are usually just flat lists to remind me where I need to focus. By definition, they're kept mercifully short. The actual project details go into the sections that follow.
The first project section, "short-term projects," contains projects that I am actively working on over the next one to three months. They are usually sub-objectives of larger projects, for example, a major milestone in a yearlong project. This "short-term projects" section is where I do most of my thinking, and it's where I really take advantage of Idea Cruncher's tree structure. For each project on this list, there are usually sub-projects with their own associated tasks, which all go into the tree as "children" of the project in question. So, let's say I've decided to spend a couple of hours on Project X. I move to Project X's section of "short-term projects" and expand the tree so I can see the subprojects and tasks associated with Project X. (At that point, I usually use the "Zoom in" command on the View menu to focus in on Project X, temporarily hiding everything else in the tree. This Zoom in command serves as a set of blinders for me, and it's probably more valuable than any other feature in Idea Cruncher for keeping me from getting stressed out.)
What I want to see when I look at Project X's section of the tree is a simple plan for divide-and-conquer. If the project is relatively small, it might be just a flat list of tasks. More often, it's a set of subprojects with their own tasks. Like I say, a detailed plan is what I want to see. Usually it is nowhere near that level of completeness. So, I ask myself what the missing items are -- what would I need to tell someone else to do in order to accomplish Project X successfully? I want to get as close as possible to a cookbook-like procedure that I hardly have to think about when I'm carrying it out. This notion of doing your project planning up front is one of the central ideas in the GTD approach. All of the subprojects and individual tasks go into Idea Cruncher's section on Project X, basically in the order that I want them done. At that point, I shift gears and start executing tasks. (Perhaps you're thinking it's counter-intuitive that this kind of detailed planning can be efficient, i.e., "too much planning is too little doing," as the saying goes. For me, the alternative to planning this way is a whole lot of "Whoops, didn't think of that -- I need to backtrack over the last day of work and incorporate what I should have thought of at the beginning.") I find that my plan usually covers about three solid hours of work. Moving through the list of tasks, I often feel a sense of momentum developing, which is a welcome change from the stress and frustration I can remember feeling in the past. The key difference is that I've given myself permission to ignore everything else and focus exclusively on Project X for a substantial chunk of time. I recognize the work as worthwhile (because it's usually on my list of burning issues) and I've developed a plan that I trust for accomplishing it.
The difference between "short-term projects" and the next section, "long-term projects," is a little difficult to define. It's probably just a question of size and complexity. My long-term projects tend to be measured in many months or even a year or two. Often I'll take subprojects from "long-term projects" and move them to "short-term projects" for some intensive focus. Another difference is that I tend to delegate more of the subprojects in the "long-term projects" list to others, whereas I almost always do the "short-term projects" myself. Finally, the "long-term projects" usually contain more big-picture reasoning than the nitty-gritty details of the "short-term projects." The two categories are different, and each has a purpose for me, but I recognize that the distinction is subtle.
The last category, "someday/maybe" is a bit of a catch-all, borrowed directly from GTD. It's just a bin for potentially useful information, but nothing that has to be handled with any kind of urgency. If I've got a few minutes on a Friday afternoon, I might take a look at this list and decide if anything needs to be promoted. It usually contains professional development goals, books, websites to look at and that kind of thing.
So that's the system that I use for managing my to-do list with Idea Cruncher. I'm not going to lie and suggest that I never have bad days working with this system, but all in all, I have to say that I'm more satisfied with my working life and more confident about taking on bigger responsibilities. When someone sends a new project my way, my immediate reaction is no longer a shocked emotional response to the additional drain on my time and limited mental resources. I can process new projects methodically, no longer feeling that everything has to be accomplished at the same time. That's good for me of course, but it's especially good for the people I work with. If you think that a system like this might be good for you and the people you work with, by all means print this off and download Idea Cruncher for a 30 day tryout. I hope you find it useful.
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