The GTD vertical map (or horizon of focus) has always stood out like a sore thumb. It’s a neat idea and can certainly offer a lot of value to people, but in a book that focuses so much on the here-and-now, it just feels tagged on with too little detail on it. I decided it was about time it was really addressed but as I thought about it and tried to really implement it, something occurred to me. It actually kinda sucks.
My main problem with it is the timescales used. One month projects, one year objectives, three-to-five year goals… I don’t know about you but very rarely have I ever done anything that fitted so neatly into such timescales. Speaking of the categories there are six of them. Six! Again, how many of your goals can you neatly break down to fill all of those stages? I found myself making stuff up just to make sure I neatly got from 30,000ft to 50,000ft. Finally, should you even be planning so far ahead at all? Dreams, jobs, relationships, personalities, lifestyles and beliefs change all the time. There is so much redundancy on a vertical map.
With all that in mind I’ve come up with a much simpler approach. I’ve halved the number of categories and stripped out the precise timescales. You could say it follows a basic long, medium and short term structure. However, like what I did with my prioritizing system, it’s all about the wording. What is a long term goal? How does it relate to the medium term goal below it? It all means nothing. Instead focus on your vision for your life, the goals that will move you forward and the projects and next actions you work on daily and weekly.
Vision ← Goals → Next actions/projects
Vision is the big picture, that often fuzzy image in your head of where you’d like to be and what you’d like to do in your life. Stuff like living in a beautiful house with a happy family are staples of this vision. Contrary to common advice, I don’t propose that you have to try and focus and clarify your vision. If you want to become the CEO of your own company developing alternative remedies for smelly feet, that’s a great vision. However, most of us are simply happy to pursue success in whatever field they find themselves in, and that’s fine too. If you end up forcing yourself to be more specific than that when you passions simply aren’t that focused, you will most likely find yourself going down roads you don’t really care for.
Goals are the key to this technique because they encompass many of the categories from the vertical map. They are long term enough to be significant but not so much that they have no clear focus, or aren’t flexible with changing lifestyles. Projects and next actions are the tasks we do on a day-to-day basis. But why do we do them? Because they move us towards a greater goal. For instance, decorating your bedroom is part of a big project of improving your home, which will move you towards the greater goal of selling it on and finding somewhere better. That goal is aligned with your vision of living in a great house in quiet neighborhood. Ask yourself why you’re doing something and if that fits with your vision, make that your goal.
Another example is how a person writes a big report to impress his bosses because there is a big promotion coming up. Getting that would move him towards his goal of becoming manager. That aligns him with his long term vision of having the experience and contacts to start his own company. There will most likely be more goals to achieve along the way (perhaps getting a couple more promotions or making your team top in the company) before you get to your vision but why worry about them when they are reliant on the results of current goals and are so susceptible to change? Imagine hitting that first goal of getting promoted and then having an old friend come along who wants to partner with you in a new business. On a vertical map with your future so tightly planned out would you be able to do something different or make spontaneous alterations?
July 8, 2008 at 08:24PM
I’ve never been much of a big picture person in some ways; the 50,000ft stuff doesn’t come naturally. So, in that sense, I like your simpler vision, goals and projects approach.
I don’t think doing away with timescales completely is the answer, though. The time frame could be a soft goal (rather than a deadline) or just a tickler to review that particular project, vision or goal at the end of the month, quarter or year.
The act of thinking about your goals and writing them down is very powerful. But it doesn’t set them in stone. You’re allowed to say, “Hey, this goal isn’t important to me anymore”. You could schedule time every so often to re-evaluate your upper level goals and visions (since during weekly review you’re more likely to just look at projects, next actions and someday/maybe items).
July 8, 2008 at 08:49PM
Thanks for the comment Laura. You’re right about how it’s not set in stone, but my problem is that if you fill in a full vertical map with all six stages, that’s a lot of stuff that will get changed on a regular basis (I’ve always found that they constantly change). Hardly encouraging and certainly a time waste.
July 23, 2008 at 08:02AM
In my opinion you oversimplified by leaving out responsibilities (20,000ft). Responsibilities are structurally different from goals, as they represent your current situation and not a future state to work towards.
August 1, 2008 at 08:45AM
I’ve got to say, I pretty much agree with your summary on this. Having recently tried to look at vertical mapping myself, I’ve ended up redesigning the thing – not quite to the same model as yours, but certainly into something more routinely workable.
The timescales aren’t an issue to me as I’ve never really interpreted GTD literally anyway (should I get a stopwatch for the two minute rule or what?), but the inherent problem is that the 20,000ft stage falls over in two areas.
Firstly, it’s a change in currency, which means mapping through the levels suddenly falls over at this point. My take on vertical mapping has always been as a means to assess whether your day-to-day is actually helping you achieve long term goals, so if you have orphaned elements at either end you are faced with asking yourself either, “Why am I doing this?” or, “Why aren’t I doing anything about this?”. The roles and responsibility at 20,000ft just interferes here – a continuous mapping from 10,000ft to 30,000ft is possible without having this step in the way. Not that I’m saying it’s not useful, but it feels like a parallel analysis, not part of the vertical map.
Secondly, if you do wish to retain the level, I still think you should be aiming to link each item in a level with at least one item in a level above or below it. But the problem with 20,000ft is that these relationships suddenly become way too complex. My work provides the money and expertise to service some of my longer term goals, but then the expertise also comes as a result of my personal activities. So immediately we’ve got many too many relationships appearing – not insurmountable, and as a techie with database expertise I can handle it – but wasn’t GTD supposed to help clarify things? Paralysis by analysis indeed.
So where did this lead me then? Well completing the 50,000ft to 30,000ft levels was a useful exercise and unlike some examples I’ve seen, I think this has to be a top down process, otherwise you’re just handing control of your life over to your current taskmasters – I’ve abandoned 20,000ft and chosen to liken those top three levels to a desired destination, the means I’ll use to reach that destination and the details of the first leg of the journey.
And as for how this meshes with the daily GTD actions, this will now form part of, say, a monthly review. Look at all my current projects and see which progress the first leg elements they tie in to. Any projects which don’t match are for consideration as to whether I should (or can) abandon them, or whether they highlight gaps further up the map. Conversely, any first leg elements which don’t seem to have a current project helping them along, well… that’s the easy part, isn’t it?
August 3, 2008 at 08:44AM
Wow, thanks for the comment Mike. I definitely agree with you about the 20,000ft level. While it’s useful it seems to stick out like a sore thumb in the otherwise harmonious flow of the vertical map.