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I’ve previously posted about the Getting Things Done system. I’d like to take a sec to highlight, well quote directly, the Vertical Mapping concept.

I’ve been putting off ‘filling this out’ for quite some time, I need to sit down and fill it out. I kind of want to make it public, so I can be held accountable or something. Some of them might be private, though. I’ll do it up and share what I think is worth sharing =P How about that?

One of the not so often talked about principles of GTD is the idea of vertical mapping… …A vertical map is basically how your actions and projects all are part of and work towards your entire life’s roles, goals, objectives, principals and values.

This Vertical Map is broken into six “horizons of focus” that are broken out from the bottom up as follows:

Runway – Actions: The next physical and/or visible actions to take on any project or outcome. these should include calendar items, next actions on your context lists, e-mails to take action on, items to review, etc. these are the things you should be engaging daily.

10,000 ft. – Projects: These are the projects and multi-step outcomes that can be finished in a year or less. These should be part of your weekly review and should be generating the things on the runway.

20,000 ft. – Areas of Focus: These should be the areas of focus in your life and areas of responsibility in your work. This can include a high level job description, personal lifestyle checklist, etc. This should be reviewed monthly to ensure that your projects are properly aligned with these roles.

30,000 ft. – Goals and Objectives: This can include any job or personal goals you have. Twelve to Eighteen month out items to be reviewed yearly.

40,000 ft. – Vision: These are long term three to five year goals. What would success look, sound or feel like that far down the road? How will you know it when you get there? Write it down and review this once a year to make sure you are on the right path.

50,000 ft. – Purpose and Principles: This should be the beginning of everything. What is the purpose of the life you wish to live? What are the driving principles and beliefs? This can take the form of your faith, personal mission statements, personal manifestos, etc.

In other words, your actions at a daily “runway” level should be directly and vertically tied to your principals and values at the “50,000 ft” level. To get a real sense of this, look at it from the bottom up. Once you can see and understand how a project like “Fixing up the house for move In” fits into the overall goals of life (In my case “Relationships: Bethany: Life Partner”). It will give you a new drive and focus on the importance of follow through on the various associated action items in the project. How are the projects you perform at work fitting into your job description? If the project is not fitting into that description or role then is your role changing or is that project better delegated to someone else more appropriate?

There is real power in this. It really helps you focus and align your life along a path that gives each action meaning and context. Using a powerful outliner is key for me to be able to vision these items.

Some notes for telling stories; some of the classic and pure elements of storytelling.

Monomyth, Vladimir Propp, The Hero’s journey, Gamasutra podcast on the heroes journey.

Someone has created a system for workflow organization called called “Get Things Done.” The idea behind the system is to Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do. Not a bad system, and one that I’ve been adapting. Other people have adapted it, as well. I also found an interesting whitepaper on organization. My problem that I’ve been trying to work out is how it splits up the info; it has you group up your tasks into related projects or areas.

For example, any phone calls you have to make go under a @Phone Call heading. Any bills you have to pay go to @Bills. My problem is that I always collect tons of shit, be it random ideas and such, so that this one ‘project’ file becomes huge and ends up being a chore in it of itself to work around. I’ve been slowly figuring out what kinds of projects to use things.

Like recently, I consolidated a lot of random ‘project’ points into one or two big ones. One being ‘@creative ideas’. This is a catch-all section where I can put all kinds of creative ideas; ideas for entire websites, for a beat in a story, for a single webcomic, for a song mash-up. The important part being to record the essence of the idea; when I have time or inclination, I can dig through the ideas and pull one out, and then make it.

The other project I’ve made is ‘@consume’. This is a catch-all for any kind of consuming. Movies to watch, books to read, games to play, things to buy. The difference being that I’d put ‘buy new car stereo’ under @consume, and I’d put ‘get oil changed’ under a more important or pressing project.

It’s important to mention at this point that I do all of this ‘filing’ entirely in google docs.

I have tried my hardest to avoid putting entire projects into their own files, lest out of site out of mind. I’m finding that I may just not be able to do that. The original ‘get things done’ philosophy is to create a project out of something if it has X or more things to do; I think 4 or so. Mine has been more like 10-20ish but I think it’s starting to make more conceptual sense. In my current example, I have a document for any and all World of Warcraft stuff. Any snippets of advice, talent specs, links to websites, good quotes, anything at all.

I can keep stubs of stuff in the main project document and make new documents when needed. The important thing is that I print out the first page (and only the first page) of this project document and work off of that. I rearrange projects when needed, so I don’t get overwhelmed and go ‘oh I’ll just work on this for a little’. Cuz then nothing ever gets done!

Outsmart OS3D Demo - 3D Flex UI Room

A 3D room done with the new cool stuff you can do with Flash.