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?

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).