Using ResultsManager to Reorganize My Work (Again): Part 6 of 9
Using ResultsManager to Separate Committed from Active
The Daily Actions Dashboard is ultimately where I want to see the effects of my work to separate committed activities from merely active ones.I’ll do that by creating a separate branch within the dashboard that shows only explicitly committed activities.
First, here’s a screenshot of an the sample project map that I’ll be using.
The project entitled “Recruiting Document delivered to Dave” shows the handshake icon, which says that this project is committed. I’ve committed to Dave to get the document to him. To accomplish that objective, I’ve defined several contributing activities, which are shown as subtopics of the project. I should do them roughly in order, beginning with “Draft Recruiting document”. I have explicitly marked that one as committed as well. The significance of that will come in later. (Note that there is a list feature that I could have enabled on this project which would impose an ordered completion timeline on these activities. So “Draft Recruiting document” would be considered the only Next Action, and until it were marked complete, “Circulate recruiting document…” would not even appear on the Daily Actions Dashboard as as a Next Action. But for the purposes of my example, I’m not using the list feature.)
Now here’s a screenshot of the Next Actions branch of my customized Daily Actions Dashboard. (Of course, this is only an example. This dashboard only contains activities from this one sample map. In real life, a dashboard would aggregate many activities from many different maps.)
Now notice that the only activities appearing under the “Explicitly Committed” branch are those that showed the handshake icon in the original project map above. For most practical purposes, the “Circulate” activity is also committed because it inherits that committed property from it’s parent project. But for my purposes of seeing an extremely focused view of only those activities that have been explicitly committed, the “Circulate” activity is not committed.
What difference might this make? Well, suppose I get into a cruch and I run out of time after drafting this document, and I don’t have time to circulate it for feedback. I haven’t actually committed to Dave that I’d circulate it for feedback. I just committed to get him the finished document. So if I need to renegotiate the circulation activity, I can. That’s my own self-commitment, an extra step that I’ve committed myself to do before delivering the doc to Dave.
Wrapping Up
OK, now you can see what the new dashboad looks like. But how did it get that way? Next, I’ll discuss: Modifying the Daily Actions Dashboard to add the Explicitly Committed Branch.