Do I need to write down all next actions?

Whitehairs90

Registered
Hey, i'm have a project list of about 80. Some need to be done by
-the end of the day
-the end of the week
-the end of the month
-the end of the season
-the end of the year

Option one - go through each project and brainstorm all the steps to accomplish it and turn it into a mini goal
Option two - just jot down a couple next actions and take it from there

I know there's no "right" way - but if you've done it one way and found pros/cons i'd love some feedback.
 

Gardener

Registered
Hey, i'm have a project list of about 80. Some need to be done by
-the end of the day
-the end of the week
-the end of the month
-the end of the season
-the end of the year

Option one - go through each project and brainstorm all the steps to accomplish it and turn it into a mini goal
Option two - just jot down a couple next actions and take it from there

I know there's no "right" way - but if you've done it one way and found pros/cons i'd love some feedback.
When I used to have a long stream of next actions for my projects, most of my review time was spent in correcting the actions, because things kept changing. So I definitely advocate no more than one or two next actions, and in fact, if the start is more than about a month away, I don't even have that much--the project is one line in an "ideas" list.
 

bishblaize

Registered
This can mean a few different things. The first question is, can it be done, or are we talking about future Next Actions you can't do yet? For example, you might email a colleague to ask for some data, with a future Next Action preplanned to send that data to someone else. I never do those future Next Actions because it often turns out different to how you expect anyway. You email someone for some data, and they email you back to explain it won't be available for another 3 weeks unless you go to someone else and ask them, etc. This happens so often it becomes pointless even typing out future actions in my experience.

If it's something that can be done now, I always put it on the list, even if it might take months to get round to it. For example, we're launching a new piece of work on 1st of December, and we need some copy to put into a leaflet to promote it. I don't need to do it until maybe the end of October, but I may as well have it on my list now. Why not? One afternoon it might just be the kind of thing I feel like doing. Better to give myself the option.

On the other hand, you might be talking about general milestones. I use these a lot; they're useful. If I want to tender for a big piece of work that has to be submitted on 31st December, I'll know I need the final draft approved at the 15th December board meeting, which means I need the final draft completed 1st week in December, so I need the finance details by mid-November, etc. I generally work backwards like this, stick key dates in a list, keep them with the project support material, and review it at the weekly review. It reminds me of where I more or less need to be on a project. I don't bother adding them to the actual Next Actions unless they're hard deadlines. (I'm not too fond of soft deadlines; I never keep to them anyway) but it's useful to help check that a project is broadly on track.
 

Oogiem

Registered
Option one - go through each project and brainstorm all the steps to accomplish it and turn it into a mini goal
Option two - just jot down a couple next actions and take it from there

I know there's no "right" way - but if you've done it one way and found pros/cons i'd love some feedback.
Both work. It all depends on the project. Right now I have 185 projects that are active. For about 75% of them I've fully defined the next actions and have a well developed plan for how to accomplish the goal of finishing that project. But about 25% are far less structured with just one or 2 actions most of which are things that start with words like Investigate or Consider or Evaluate i.e. until that action is done I have no clue what my next action will be or in some cases whether I will even continue with the project at all.

Also for nearly all of the ones that are well defined the actions are sequential. The next actions must be done in a specific order and I can't skip any steps. So I have my list manager hide all the actions that are not available so I never see them in my lists.

On the deadline issues. If they are really hard deadlines that must be met then I'd have that as a due date in my list manager on that action. If they are just your ideas of what you want to accomplish but they are not really hard dates then I do not include them as a due date.
 

Whitehairs90

Registered
This can mean a few different things. The first question is, can it be done, or are we talking about future Next Actions you can't do yet? For example, you might email a colleague to ask for some data, with a future Next Action preplanned to send that data to someone else. I never do those future Next Actions because it often turns out different to how you expect anyway. You email someone for some data, and they email you back to explain it won't be available for another 3 weeks unless you go to someone else and ask them, etc. This happens so often it becomes pointless even typing out future actions in my experience.

If it's something that can be done now, I always put it on the list, even if it might take months to get round to it. For example, we're launching a new piece of work on 1st of December, and we need some copy to put into a leaflet to promote it. I don't need to do it until maybe the end of October, but I may as well have it on my list now. Why not? One afternoon it might just be the kind of thing I feel like doing. Better to give myself the option.

On the other hand, you might be talking about general milestones. I use these a lot; they're useful. If I want to tender for a big piece of work that has to be submitted on 31st December, I'll know I need the final draft approved at the 15th December board meeting, which means I need the final draft completed 1st week in December, so I need the finance details by mid-November, etc. I generally work backwards like this, stick key dates in a list, keep them with the project support material, and review it at the weekly review. It reminds me of where I more or less need to be on a project. I don't bother adding them to the actual Next Actions unless they're hard deadlines. (I'm not too fond of soft deadlines; I never keep to them anyway) but it's useful to help check that a project is broadly on track.

Thanks!

What I installed since I got the advice from @Gardener and @kelstarssing and now with your advice to put in "soft due dates"

I made a couple tables which i use as trigger lists:

Daily Repetitive projects that I don't make up (e.g. work out)

Daily Ongoing Projects (i.e. read another chapter of the journal I'm reviewing)

Weekly Repititive projects (e.g. laundry)
Monthly (e.g. see my parents in law)
Seasonally (e.g. oil change) (here I note when the last time I did it was)
Annual (here I list it by month, and have a ✅ for when I complete it)

Then I have a list for "non repetitive tasks that I am not working on daily" (e.g. freelance stuff that came in) where I list "upcoming soft due date" and I list "next action"

I get to review these lists pretty often and it seems to have everything I need on it.
 

Whitehairs90

Registered
Both work. It all depends on the project. Right now I have 185 projects that are active. For about 75% of them I've fully defined the next actions and have a well developed plan for how to accomplish the goal of finishing that project. But about 25% are far less structured with just one or 2 actions most of which are things that start with words like Investigate or Consider or Evaluate i.e. until that action is done I have no clue what my next action will be or in some cases whether I will even continue with the project at all.

Also for nearly all of the ones that are well defined the actions are sequential. The next actions must be done in a specific order and I can't skip any steps. So I have my list manager hide all the actions that are not available so I never see them in my lists.

On the deadline issues. If they are really hard deadlines that must be met then I'd have that as a due date in my list manager on that action. If they are just your ideas of what you want to accomplish but they are not really hard dates then I do not include them as a due date.

Thanks for this!
Tell me more about this list manager?
 

GTDengineer

Registered
When all the actions for a project can be planned in advance, the information should be filed in your project support material as project plans.

Only the actual next actions which can be performed as soon as time and energy are available should be included in your next actions lists.

Use the weekly review to transfer the actions from the project plan to the relevant next actions context list.



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cfoley

Registered
An option that I don't see mentioned here is to create a checklist of what 'Done' looks like. That way, there is a list of things to inspire next actions without the rigidity of queueing all those actions up.
 

Oogiem

Registered
Tell me more about this list manager?
I use Omnifocus.
Only the actual next actions which can be performed as soon as time and energy are available should be included in your next actions lists.
Depends on your list manager. For me, it's much faster and easier to put any and all actions I know for sure will need to be done into Omnifocus and let the system manage putting them into my context lists as they become available. Moving things out of project support and into the active list is a manual cut and paste prcess. That's seful at my quarterly big reviews where I move entire projects in and out because it forces me to re-evaluate them but is painfully slow when dealing with the current seasons' projects.

Digital project support materials used to be in DEVONTHink for me but I am moving them all out of DT and into Obsidian after losing significant data in DT due to a bug in their iOS version. Data loss that is unrecoverable and was uidden for months so that even the best backup strategy meant the items were gone made me lose all faith in DT as a safe pace to store critical information. So I'm moving into Obsidian instead. All the files are in plain view on my hard drive.
 
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