Turn ideas into action from your inventory of items to be addressed or issues to be solved in either bottom-up or top-down projects. ## Is It a Task or Project Deciding if an activity is a task or a project depends on its size, complexity, and the resources required. If it’s part of daily work, it’s likely a task. If it’s lengthy or needs to be split into subtasks, it’s probably better managed as a project. ## Definition of a Task A long task for just one person can be managed in several steps or in small, regular sessions. Example: you want to improve your website. You know that you can’t do it all in a single day. It will require maybe 30 periods of half an hour. You can’t afford to take two weeks out of sales orders, so you spread it out over a month. Is this a project or a repeating task? A bit of both. It’s a recurrent time block, but the content can be different for each. So you might need a plan, or, at leas a list of goals. - Improve the design - Reorganize the menus - Improve the content - Improve the site’s search position Each of these objectives might, in effect, imply a lot of detail. It’s important to distinguish everyday tasks from project tasks. Every day and ad hoc tasks are generally outside the scope of a project and can be unforeseen and arise out of nowhere. They can be urgent and blocking, need immediate action and thereby disrupt the normal flow of work. You may be able to build others into projects for resolution together. > [!NOTE] Is it a task or project? > If a task requires a budget, it’s probably a project! ## Definition of a Project A project is typically based on deadline (fixed time), demands resources, has more than one step, and more than one person is involved. The more people required, the more the need for coordination. A project has the potential to address multiple issues at once. But operationally, an issue might remain unresolved for longer while the project is constituted. Costs may be incurred in expenditure on physical resources but also time spent. It’s useful to be able to calculate the cost of all tasks and, therefore, the total project cost. A typical characteristic of a project is that it must be achieved by a certain date. This implies that if the resources allocated are insufficient to achieve the date, then allocating more resources will. In practice there are limits to this. Some tasks can only be done by one person or can’t be broken down into leaf nodes and unitary tasks. At other times, things just take time. In construction, for instance, there are incompressible times, such as concrete setting. Being able to cast many cement blocks may require hiring costly machinery, which means that it’s cheaper simply to extend the time. The greater cost, the more likely it’s a project, with a budget that will need to be signed off objectives: the more significant the objective, the more likely a task will be a project. A rule of thumb definition is that if many people are involved, there are multiple tasks. In practice, software requires you to be able to assign a task to a person. Many people may be involved on a task but in management terms, better to break it down and assign one person to one task if possible. But just because you have multiple tasks, doesn’t make them a project. A project is generally a set of interconnected related tasks with a common objective. ## Purpose Is Top-Down You can create a project from a list of items that you previously recorded by **bottom-up analysis**. **Top-down** is to take an overall objective and break it down into components and into a work breakdown structure, which then forms tasks. Purpose can be expressed as a top-level goal and broken down into stages. It can provide focus, and is not only a higher objective; it can also be the reason why you wake up in the morning. However, to paraphrase[[Getting Things Done (GTD) framework]], there’s little point if you can’t actually get things done. ![[breakdown-and-build-up.png]] ## Many Sources of Ideas The intention of the Funnel concept is to convert past and present experience into action. It recognizes that there are many incoming data and influences on any business decision maker, which needs to be sorted and prioritized. ![[Funnel-with-ideas-and-Linking.png]] The approach is to record ideas as atomic notes, and then, when looking to engage, compile them into coherent and coordinated projects. The Funnel is this process of sorting and linking many things into action. ## The Ayoa Planner See the following video about how to prioritize tasks using the [[Ayoa project planner and mind mapping|Ayoa Planner]], and determine what you should be doing Now, Next and Soon.  ## Record Your Ideas Place your thoughts, concepts, options, and possibilities into [[Getting Things Done (GTD) framework#The Trusted System|your trusted system]]. If a subject needs analysis: create a reminder to deepen your understanding. For an actionable item, add it to the task manager at an appropriate priority. There are current activities and others in waiting. It may not be immediately obvious how to include a new idea. ![[a-new-idea.png]] ## Evaluate New Ideas If you have a great new idea, don’t immediately knock it down or analyse it away by thinking it’s impossible, whether for reasons of available time, money, or difficulty. Note it down and be positive: imagine how it could be implemented, and the steps you could take to get it done. Some of what you record may overlap or you may need to put aside. This sorting and linking is where you evaluate each item to see if it relates to others. ![[linking-ideas-together.png]] ## Linking Ideas Together Linking may demonstrate that you can implement several items as a group, pulling them into a coherent real-life action plan. You need to find the (financial, material and human) resources and then sequence them into a logical, sensible, doable order in which to get things done. ![[evaluating-new-ideas.png]] Because you will always think up new things; however, you will evaluate the plan more than once in a continuous looping process to make sure that it’s still the best approach. ![[making-things-happen.png]] ## Turning new ideas into action It’s essential to capture ideas faithfully as you think of them to be evaluated for feasibility later when you link them into the existing environment. The objective is to maintain a coherent current plan and evolve your business or system, but also to give new concepts a chance of being implemented. Some items may remain unused because the timing was wrong, the resources were unavailable, a solution was not forthcoming, or the issue required more analysis. But no matter, these unused items will be in your library for later. ![[turning-new-ideas-into-action-pdca.png]] ## Top-down and Bottom Up Analysis Top-down analysis is to break an idea into parts, or an objective into steps or actions. ![[top-down-bottom-up-analysis.png]] Bottom-up analysis here is to construct single concepts, projects, or goals from individual items by linking them together. See how you can do this using [[Kanbanote to filter Evernotes in a kanban]] or push [[Ayoa project planner and mind mapping#Push tasks from Evernote to Ayoa|Evernotes to an Ayoa task board.]]