Tip: Using Projects as AoR Folders

Folke

12/03/2013 11:37

A "project" in GTD essentially is just a "big task", something that has tasks in it, and will be totally finished and checked off one day.

But not all tasks belong in projects. And Doit does not force you to keep tasks in projects. But I have chosen to always put all tasks in projects. Those tasks that do not belong in real projects I put in a phony "project" named after the Area of Responsibility to which the tasks belongs. These phony "projects" are permanent. They will not be checked off as completed. They just serve as buckets - I get a "project name" that is visible in the lists and which I can use for sorting etc. That's all. But I find it convenient.

According to David Allen it is common to have maybe ten AoRs in your work and maybe another ten in your private life. Personally, I have defined only eight AoRs all in all, because It think it gets too messy (long lists, too granular for my taste) to have more (I have tried).

For my private life, I use only these three:

\ P-MTR The responsibility to look after the family's material assets and services, including housing, cars, bank accounts, electricity, phone, insurance etc

\ P-AMB The responsibility to represent the other family members and look after their interests in their dealings with other people, including their colleagues, employers, teachers, banks, authorities etc. I also include here (to avoid having too many AoRs) my personal obligations relating to various non-business associations and entities.

\ P-MAN The responsibility to look after myself personally, for my own personal pleasure or development, or for upholding my own personal interests in relation to the family members. I also include here (to avoid having too many AoRs) my personal obligations as an educator/coach/influencer of the other family members' personal behavior and personal development.

I think of my AoRs as "roles" rather than as "types of task". For example, if I need to read a certain book, this could go under any of the above AoRs, totally depending on why I would read that book - in my capacity of what. (If I would want to somehow separate "reading" tasks from other tasks I would see this as a contextual requirement - need a book, need light, need a seat etc - and use a context/tag for it.)

For my work (business) I have five AoRs, also defined as roles. Two of them are for two specific long-term joint ventures with other companies, one is for my own ongoing consulting business with various clients, and one is for the general management and "infrastructure" of my company (furniture, computers, bookkeping, phones etc). And the fifth AoR I am planning to drop.

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• Anjum  (积分：100)12/04/2013 14:40
  1 floor

  Interesting, I have considered doing this as well. But where do you put your short term projects, are they just mixed in with your AOF's?
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• Folke  (积分：2425)12/04/2013 18:21
  2 floor

  @Anjum
  
  Well, the solution is not perfect, but the imperfections are compensated by the Goals feature:
  
  As you say, in each AoF there can be any number of "real" projects and also the "AoF single actions folder/project". Unfortunately, Doit does not allow me to tag all of these projects with a common inheritable AoF tag (as Nirvana allows), so there is no way to filter by AoF (either with the button filter or with the search filter). But:
  
  Doit has its Goals feature (an unpolished diamond, but quite useful already). Under each Goal I have a number of projects, both normal (real) projects and AoR "projects". This gives me a workable basis for segmenting my review work. True, I cannot review strictly by AoF, but by Goal. Usually, once within a Goal, I can see (recognize) quite easily which of the projects belong to a given AoF. (You could also prefix the project names with an AoF mnemonic code, if necessary.)
  
  But regardless of all this, I find it very practical to gather single actions under an AoF project, because it gives me the visible extra "tag" on the task line (#project) even for the single actions, and I get a natural list grouping mechanism for the single actions (which otherwise would be a long list), and also I have no "loose tasks" floating around.
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• Folke  (积分：2425)12/04/2013 18:29
  4 floor

  Please also compare with similar answer in http://help.doit.im/topics/2187#comment-10
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• kastangen  (积分：335)01/07/2014 17:07
  5 floor

  I didn`t quite get it. What is the difference between AoF and AoR? What does it stand for?
  
  Thanks
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• Folke  (积分：2425)01/07/2014 18:58
  7 floor

  Sloppy lingo, I s'pose.
  
  David Allen talks about:
  
  - Horizons of Focus (the "levels", the highest one being your life's meaning and values etc)
  - Areas of Responsibility (your current "roles", e.g. Accountant, Husband, Gardener, Father etc)
  
  AoRs are defined at the 20,000 ft Horizon of Focus. Our GTD projects ("micro-projects" as we would often see them) are defined at the 10,000 ft Horizon of Focus, and our "major projects" (as we might have called them in everyday language) are termed goals or objectives and are defined at the 30,000 ft Horizon of Focus. When such a major goal has been reached (e.g. new line of business established) it is not uncommon that we have to adjust the AoRs a bit.
  
  I get the impression when people say AoF that they often mean AoR, but far from always. They can be referring to virtually anything.
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• Folke  (积分：2425)01/08/2014 01:28
  8 floor

  @kastangen,
  
  I double-checked, and browsed the first book, Here DA initially uses the term Area of Responsibility but in one of the last chapters actually uses both terms - Area of Responsibility and Area of Focus - almost interchangeably. For some reason he there refers to the list of AoRs as an "Areas of Focus" list. It seems that his reason for calling the list of AoRs by that other name (AoF list) in that chapter is the overall message in that chapter that you should use this list (of AoRs) to trigger focused thought during your reviews on one area at a time concerning what new projects you might need to start in that particular area.
  
  Personal comment: Since I moved to Doit I tend to do my weekly reviews goal by goal, and project by project within each goal. I use Projects and Goals not only for real projects and goals but also use Projects as folders for "single actions" in a given AoR and also use Goals as folders for "single projects" in a given "AoR Group". All my tasks belong to a Project, and all my Projects belong to Goal. This is the best use I have been able to make of Doit's current features. Not quite "perfect" GTD, but it works well.
  
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• kastangen  (积分：335)01/08/2014 08:36
  9 floor

  Thanks :)
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• shenia  (积分：35)04/18/2014 02:19
  10 floor

  @Folke thanks for all the good insight, I find myself saying "ohh, that's a good idea' a lot when I read your posts.
  
  I'm currently refocusing to manage my life by AOF to do this I've defined my focus areas and I'm using them everywhere; which for me is means Outlook, Gmail, Evernote and Do.it.
  
  So everywhere I go in all my digital inbox the terminology is the same. I'm finding this very powerful. So I'm using Doit I find myself wishing I was able to create projects in projects where my AOF would be the main project and then the subtask be a mini project. A mini project would be a group of related tasks that once completed closes the project. The main project, or my case, AOF is a perpetual project - no end in sight.
  
  I've been reading about how you are using "Goals - Project - Task" to handle the various altitudes of your life and I'm thinking about trying it out be using Goals as my AOFs - Project - Tasks - Sub tasks.
  
  Let's see how that goes...
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