Quick Question! Action Items and afterthoughts: best practice

[Jimhardie74]

Hey Guys,

I am going to explain roughly something that i have got into the habit of doing with my next actions-- I would love some feedback if you do something similar or maybe you have a better approach to this.

Often when I write a next action note ('call michele about flat veiwing', or 'write out a new morning routine') I will often write a few support ideas next to the action item. For example underneath the 'call michele about flat veiwing' action item i might write 'also check if he is okay to meet next week' OR next to the 'write out a new morning routine' I might write underneath 'make sure it includes drinking water, avoid eating large amounts of sugar straight away etc'.

These are usually afterthoughts that I will think of as I am writing the next action and organising the action on a list. These afterthoughts arent critically important, but they are things that I might like to be reminded of when It comes to doing that action item. Do any of you have a similar habit? Is this best practice? Is there something I could be doing better. I considered writing these afterthoughts (which are basically reference/support materials) in a seperate sheet but my concern is that I would then neglect/forget to also look at this sheet when the time came to me doing the action. But at the same time, I am not sure if its a great idea to also be adding afterthoughts to my clearly defined actions. (I am using evernote)

Love reading the input that you guys offer! Thanks so much for your time! James

 

[Oogiem]

If I take your examples the first one I would actually add "Check on possible meeting next week" as a separate action with a context of that person as part of an agenda list where the context is that person.

On the second I'd call that support material for the action or project and I also keep them with my action when they are small. I use Omnifocus and when I have those kind of notes and stuff I just add them in the note field for the action. So one from my current lists is "Draft biosecurity plan for farm" and the note has links to the new Federal regulations, link to some presentation materials from the Livestock Conservancy on issues to consider about biosecurity that are stored in my DEVONThink file, a note that there are some paper materials in the project support file for the project and some of my own ideas on how to handle the farm tours in the face of a disease outbreak in our county. When I start that action I need all that right there and it's easier to know what I have to check it when it's a note attached to the action.

Afterthoughts are sometimes critical, the key is to process them fully, are they really new projects or actions or are they project support material for that action? What you do with them depends on what they really are, the firs step in processing inputs. I treat afterthoughts like new inputs and follow the processing steps for them.