What's the next action

A time to consolidate

10 08 05 - 06:17 - Bookmark this post

The past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about my implementation of GTD in both personal and professional life. And I have decided that it’s time to really stop tinkering and tweaking the system and just leave it for a while. As a lot of GTD-devotees tend to do, I also kept tweaking my work system, implementing new ideas I read here and there, trying new software (Yes, I will get back on those evaluations, thanks for the reminder!) and testing ideas from The Book. But for the last couple of days I have found myself in a state of mind where I think my system is pretty OK for me at this point and I should really focus on succesfull outcomes for my different projects. Ofcourse this is a goal you should always have, but I feel I should leave my system as is right now and go further with some projects. What are those projects? Well, apart from my professional projects I always have stuff to do in the house. This varies from hanging some lights to painting the outdoors. But I also have some projects regarding this weblog. I have ideas for a new layout, perhaps a more commercial approach of this blog. And I am working to put my 10 year old thesis on scenemarketing online as a open source project for everyone to benefit from.

How do I manage those projects? Simple. I have found out that in my personal life, the need for a fully implemented system with different contexts, projectlists and actions is not really necessary. I don’t have a lot of pressure to change the layout of this blog, so whenever I feel like working on it, I work on it. I read some weblogs on making money, but I don’t have a grand scheme on how to implement it. I just go along with the flow. And when I have a weekend planned to paint the frontdoor, but something else comes along? Ah well, deal with it. Next weekend is just 6 days away.
I know, it’s a strange conclusion to draw, but really, this is a nice way to look at it. Ofcourse, there are some things that need to Get Done in a specific timeframe, like paying the bills. But you know what? I have these activities planned on a solid day of the week. Same with cleaning parts of the house. So because I have a trusted system for some of the activities, I can have more flexibility in time and resources for other activities.
Personal life: System is consolidated right now. Professional life: Same issue. I think I implemented GTD in a nice way around the workflow we already have at our office. More on that in a later post!

I’ve been struggling with over 200 next actions and like you I’ve decided to use GTD only for things that must Get Done. I now store things that I would like to do, may do, wish I could do, and so on unstructuredly in my brain (http://www.thebrain.com/) or in a per-project word document. When I decide to really do something, I create a project and next actions in my gtd. When I’m too busy I offload stuff from gtd to my brain. I’m sure someone is going to tell me that i’m using my brain as “someday / maybe” basket :-) I guess the point is that you can attend to and review only so many projects and actions. Does anyone ever manage to have 0 next actions? (other than to review someday/maybe for new projects)
René (URL) - 12 08 05 - 10:53

Hey there. I follow you on this one. I’ve tried so many ways of organising my life. Different apps, and different approaches, but all in all I conclude that GTD is too much – and Nike’s approach; Just Do It – is better. So I found a compromise; I just use a simple to-do list, and think of the next action when I tick off or put in items.
Oliver Nielsen () (URL) - 28 10 05 - 19:20