This has been a sticking point with me for quite some time and I've tried a few things that don't work all that well, I'm hoping for some suggestions.
I have two kinds of projects where identifying next actions gives me trouble:
As an example of the longer-term clearer projects, I got edits back on a long report I wrote and I need to revise the report. This isn't something I can do in one sitting, but I've struggled with what Next Action to use that will actually get me to do it. Some things I've tried:
Thanks in advance!
Edit: I thought about it a bit more and maybe the main problem with both of these kinds of projects is that there's a bunch of potential next actions that I could do to move it forward since it's either a bigger project or a project without a clear outcome just yet. So then I struggle between a) choosing ONE next action to put on my list and seems arbitrary and maybe gets me unmotivated because I see it and say I don't want to do THAT particular thing right now but I could have done another thing, or b) putting every possible next action on my list since they aren't dependent on one another but then that seems like it could overwhelm my list. Is there a happy medium?
I have two kinds of projects where identifying next actions gives me trouble:
- Very "fuzzy" projects where the outcome is not completely clear when I get it and my job is to make sense of it and work on it until the picture becomes clearer
- Longer-term projects that take kind of the same activity over and over for a while until it's done and the next action seems to be just "work on this thing"
As an example of the longer-term clearer projects, I got edits back on a long report I wrote and I need to revise the report. This isn't something I can do in one sitting, but I've struggled with what Next Action to use that will actually get me to do it. Some things I've tried:
- "Work on edits to report XYZ" - maybe this isn't a bad thing, it just doesn't feel very "next action-y" to me, and it ends up staying on my list for a long time so I can potentially become numb to it
- "Complete edits to section A of report XYZ" - 1) I might not be able to complete all the edits to that section in one sitting, and 2) it seems arbitrary to start with that specific section, maybe I want to just open up the report and scroll through and attack something that makes sense to me at the time, by adding this extra structure it creates some friction to actually opening it up since I'm like "ugh I don't want to deal with that particular section right now".
- Have multiple items "Complete edits to Section A", "Complete edits to Section B", etc since I can technically do any of those at any time. - Seems to clog up my list a bit.
Thanks in advance!
Edit: I thought about it a bit more and maybe the main problem with both of these kinds of projects is that there's a bunch of potential next actions that I could do to move it forward since it's either a bigger project or a project without a clear outcome just yet. So then I struggle between a) choosing ONE next action to put on my list and seems arbitrary and maybe gets me unmotivated because I see it and say I don't want to do THAT particular thing right now but I could have done another thing, or b) putting every possible next action on my list since they aren't dependent on one another but then that seems like it could overwhelm my list. Is there a happy medium?
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