Your Active Projects List

Now that you’ve completed your Responsibility Map, your next goal is to drill down just a bit further to prepare a list of all of your Active Projects. (Some folks would call this a “brain dump.”)  This list should include everything you are working on or think you should be working on.  It will likely take you a good while, but it is worth every moment. In fact, completing this step for the last time was probably one of the best stress relievers I ever experienced. (There is definitely an art to keeping it maintained, and we’ll talk about that later.)

Set aside a couple of hours and get as much as you can down on paper.  You’ll likely still want to use the categories or themes you outlined in the previous section. And you’ll be able to continue to add to it as you remember things.

Some ways to identify all of your projects include:

• Clean out your email inbox.  Go through all of those unread or pending emails and jot down any projects you need to complete. (Then you can archive the email.)
• Clean up your desk, reviewing every piece of loose paper that represents a project or to-do.
• Review your job descriptions or other supporting documents (from your responsibility map).

To keep from ending up with a randomly sorted list, you may want to capture this list in an organized way. One option is a simple notebook with a page for each theme (family, home, work, volunteer group, etc). Depending on how complex your work arrangement is, you may want to break that section into sub-sections by clients or other major categories. If you prefer an electronic method, a Word, Excel, or GoogleDoc with a similar formatting will work just as well.

Take the time you need to complete a full “brain dump,” and then take a deep breath as you watch your stress float away. But be sure to keep your list handy over the next few days as additional projects pop into your mind. (They will, I promise!) Continue to write them down, and we’ll talk about the next step for your list on Thursday.