"Is it actionable?" II

Michael Ramone

Michael Ramone

Registered
Still, all these years later, don't understand what "actionable" means.

It's either exactly the word for the meaning David Allen intended when he wrote the book—"can be acted on"—or exceptionally poorly chosen. How is the question "Is it actionable?" at all related to questions like "Is action required on it?" I just cannot wrap my head around what the idea is supposed to be. I stare at this stupid question for hours to no avail. It's opaque to me. The entirety of the GTD methodology apart from this is crystal clear to me—at least insofar as such is possible in lieu of clarity about "actionable."

If the question is, "Is some action required on this?", then we encounter a slew of unrelated issues. Many items you get in your inbox could, with fairly little consequence, be equally suited for any "decision"—trashed, filed as reference, incubated for "possible later action", acted on somehow in 2 minutes or less, delegated in some form, or acted on later in some longer-than-2-minute form. You COULD do any of them with most of the inputs you get. So what is the real determining criterion? What does "actionable" mean?

What is the idea? I don't understand "action required". I don't understand "Is it actionable?" Is the idea that I'm simply supposed to choose one course and go with it? Is it totally an act of will in the moment?

Let's say I get an e-mail with a bunch of information in it. I know what it is already. That part of the processing is easy and straightforward. Now it occurs to me that I COULD spend some more time reading it more closely. I now have a "next action" that I COULD take—but is this THE "next action" that's "required"? I COULD do it. Is that all that is involved?

Then it occurs to me while looking at the e-mail that I COULD also go check some other data source on the Web that's in some way related to my receipt of this e-mail. Is this an action that is "required" on this input? Is this an action that I "have"?

Then it occurs to me while I'm aberrating in the above that I CAN think of some response that I COULD send back to the sender. Is this now an action for me to take?

Here's the problem: If I ask "Is it actionable?", I answer "Yes, I can..." It is indeed actionable. It can be acted on. If I ask, "Is there some action required on it?", I always say, "No, of course not. I can avoid this e-mail as much as I want. Nothing is necessary about this e-mail."

The answer to "Is it actionable?" is always "Yes." The answer to "Does it require action?" is always "No." What's the real decision? The other options we see paraded around are so squishy

"Do I want to act on it?"
"Am I committed to act on it?"
"Do I intend to act on it soon?"

All these are largely meaningless. You may feel one way one second and another the next

One final note: Many people seem to think that "Is it actionable?" is intended to be used as a test to determine whether some item on a list is sufficiently clear according to GTD standards. They'll say things like "The item 'Go to Europe' is not actionable; it's not broken down enough. 'Surf Web for airline tickets' is actionable. That's a step you can take." This use of the word has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here. I don't know where exactly this idea comes from. I don't think it's used anywhere in the official expositions of the methodology. It seems to be a remnant of some other context or source.

The essence of the decision in the middle of the workflow chart should be damn clear; the entire thing depends on it.
 
Here is my take. The real work during the clarification phase is making choices. The clarifying questions guide me to those choices but they don't provide the specific criteria on how I live my life.

I think you are looking for the actionable question to do something that it can never do. It is you who has to decide whether you are going to take action, and it is you who has to choose a concrete action from all the possible actions available.

GTD has other tools that can help you choose, like the higher horizons and the natural planning model. They still don't make the choices for you but they can help with perspective and with sorting through your ideas.
 
I think you’re treating “actionable” as a capability question (“CAN I act?”) when it’s actually an outcome question (“Do I need a different outcome than what currently exists?”).

The email sitting in your inbox with information in it, if that information is now in your head or you’re satisfied with just knowing it exists in your email archive, then there’s no action required. The current state IS the desired state.

But if receiving that email means something needs to change in the world (you need to respond, decide something, create something, update something, tell someone something), then there’s a gap between current and desired state. That gap = actionable.

Your paralysis seems to come from confusing “I could take action X, Y, or Z” with “I need a different outcome from this.” The first is infinite; the second is finite and answerable.
 
Michael Ramone said:
Still, all these years later, don't understand what "actionable" means.

It's either exactly the word for the meaning David Allen intended when he wrote the book—"can be acted on"—or exceptionally poorly chosen. How is the question "Is it actionable?" at all related to questions like "Is action required on it?" I just cannot wrap my head around what the idea is supposed to be. I stare at this stupid question for hours to no avail. It's opaque to me. The entirety of the GTD methodology apart from this is crystal clear to me—at least insofar as such is possible in lieu of clarity about "actionable."

If the question is, "Is some action required on this?", then we encounter a slew of unrelated issues. Many items you get in your inbox could, with fairly little consequence, be equally suited for any "decision"—trashed, filed as reference, incubated for "possible later action", acted on somehow in 2 minutes or less, delegated in some form, or acted on later in some longer-than-2-minute form. You COULD do any of them with most of the inputs you get. So what is the real determining criterion? What does "actionable" mean?

What is the idea? I don't understand "action required". I don't understand "Is it actionable?" Is the idea that I'm simply supposed to choose one course and go with it? Is it totally an act of will in the moment?

Let's say I get an e-mail with a bunch of information in it. I know what it is already. That part of the processing is easy and straightforward. Now it occurs to me that I COULD spend some more time reading it more closely. I now have a "next action" that I COULD take—but is this THE "next action" that's "required"? I COULD do it. Is that all that is involved?

Then it occurs to me while looking at the e-mail that I COULD also go check some other data source on the Web that's in some way related to my receipt of this e-mail. Is this an action that is "required" on this input? Is this an action that I "have"?

Then it occurs to me while I'm aberrating in the above that I CAN think of some response that I COULD send back to the sender. Is this now an action for me to take?

Here's the problem: If I ask "Is it actionable?", I answer "Yes, I can..." It is indeed actionable. It can be acted on. If I ask, "Is there some action required on it?", I always say, "No, of course not. I can avoid this e-mail as much as I want. Nothing is necessary about this e-mail."

The answer to "Is it actionable?" is always "Yes." The answer to "Does it require action?" is always "No." What's the real decision? The other options we see paraded around are so squishy

"Do I want to act on it?"
"Am I committed to act on it?"
"Do I intend to act on it soon?"

All these are largely meaningless. You may feel one way one second and another the next

One final note: Many people seem to think that "Is it actionable?" is intended to be used as a test to determine whether some item on a list is sufficiently clear according to GTD standards. They'll say things like "The item 'Go to Europe' is not actionable; it's not broken down enough. 'Surf Web for airline tickets' is actionable. That's a step you can take." This use of the word has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here. I don't know where exactly this idea comes from. I don't think it's used anywhere in the official expositions of the methodology. It seems to be a remnant of some other context or source.

The essence of the decision in the middle of the workflow chart should be damn clear; the entire thing depends on it.
Click to expand...
I think "is it actionable?" and the answer is no it is just deleted. If the answer is yes the question is "what is the very next action?". The answer shows what context the very next action goes to. If it is broad like "Go to Europe" It depends on when you plan to go. If it is next week you clearly have a next action. So "go to Europe" goes on the project list and the very next action goes on the correct context next action list. If it is sometime in the future it may go on the Someday/maybe list. I think you are conflating next actions with projects too.
 
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Every day, I receive solicitations to buy things with various costs, in other words advertising. I am quite sure David Allen is not using actionable to mean I must consider most of these offers in any detail simply because I am able to act on it. After answering the question “Is it actionable?”, one of the options is to trash it. This is a decision, based on my wants and needs. You have to decide. You are making decisions all the time, based on your current state.

T.S. Elliot’s famous poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” may seem familiar:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
Click to expand...

It’s worth reading the entire poem.
 
@fooddude Please refer to the second-to-last paragraph in my original post. Your use of "actionable" here is totally removed from the GTD significance. It has nothing to do with the clarifying step.

@cfoley Thanks for your reply. I'm not under the impression that "actionable" decides on my behalf. I simply don't understand what the decision—that I'm to make—is.

Ultimately, you're deciding whether or not to send the item to your "actionable"/"active" GTD lists—but I do not believe this constitutes an explanation. This presupposes the value of GTD organization and renders the system equal to any one of a growing number of arbitrary time-management and personal-organization structures. The promise of GTD is that it's not about the categories; it's about the thinking. I want to master the thinking, exactly as it is intended. I only fail to see what clarifying consists of.

Sure, everyone nowadays says, "It's a matter of determining what things mean to you." But let's face it: This is terrible advice. It's much too broad, and means almost nothing on its own. Once one understands what Allen had in mind with regard to clarifying, one can indeed come around and recognise that, yes, "clarifying" amounts to one specialized manifestation of "determining what things mean." In the meantime, however, invokation of this decree confesses a lack of knowledge on the part of the bearer. It's a cool description, but useless. Instruction is required.

@PlunkRock I don't disagree. Maybe that is the ultimate meaning. My qualm is that I cannot get past Allen's usage of the word "actionable", and the other wordings he presents throughout the GTD corpus. Don't you think that if he meant exactly what you meant, he'd have used an expression recognisably similar to yours? It's hard to believe he so drastically overlooked the phrasing—that he'd leave it up to readers/seminar participants to uncover some magic hidden meaning themselves—especially in light of the rigor of the remainder of the exposition of the methodology. If what you say is true, then why the runaround with the wording? Why isn't your version spelled out anywhere?

I cannot escape the thought that he did mean to use the word "actionable" in the diagrams + elsewhere. Perhaps the idea is that one is supposed to conjure to one's mind all one's options first. ("You can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing.") Perhaps he took for granted that people would naturally decline some possible actions, etc. It's an interesting idea, but it does not explain the presence of Someday/Maybe on the non-actionable side of the diagram. Many of those things can be acted on now—it's just that for some other reason one chooses to not act.

@mcogilvie Thank you for your reply. You write, "After answering the question 'Is it actionable?', one of the options is to trash it..." You seem to imply that one's answer to "Is it actionable?" is separate from some secondary query that decides the "yes or no" choice. You're choosing to act independently of your answer to "Is it actionable?", as though the question has no effect, and as though you're answering it dispassionately in compliance with a prescribed method. This is a bizarre perspective. I thought "Is it actionable?" WAS the "yes" or "no" choice depicted in the diagrams—i.e., that an answer of "yes" to the question constituted activation of the "yes" side of the tree. Are you saying that "Is it actionable?" is not the essence of this two-pronged choice?

Again, this perspective assumes the value of the flow chart as designed, without considering the value of constituent elements. The flow chart is worthless if the elements that constitute it are not individually meaningful. Allen didn't just sit down one day and pull this diagram out of thin air. He learned the elements one by one—some perhaps in clusters, but nonethelss individually—and eventually constructed a full map of the flow of new input.

This is not to say that a combination of these elements is not more or differently meaningful; it simply means that each question must be real and distinctly meaningful, even if, in the end, each must be used in consort with the others for full effect. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts—but only because the parts are what they are. If they mean nothing, the whole is a fantasy.

(Please excuse the below. I understand the topic of religion is to be avoided. I simply have no better analogy. I keep it as unaffiliated, generic, and brief as possible.)
Without getting too far into the weeds, your approach resembles justifying a belief in a higher power on the basis of the holiness of a holy book claiming the higher power exists. The problem is that you don't know the book is holy until you know the deity exists.

In your case, the "holy book" is the flow chart. You're taking its significance for granted. But it's arbitrary unless the individual elements are grounded in reality, provided with some meaning.

As I wrote earlier, if you drop out the thinking behind the diagram, then GTD becomes nothing more than any number of other "productivity systems", all of which have their own idiosyncratic terminologies, formalities, and boxes to be filled in. The "thinking" of GTD does not simply consist of a glance at a provided flow chart and an arbitrary choice about which cutesy path you'd like to send XYZ down, although many people treat it that way. Is the process real or not?

"Is it actionable?" has to have some meaning, even if you never knew that the rest of GTD existed. This is what it means for the concept to be real. In short, the question "Is it actionable?" has to actually be a question, not merely a pointer to a nondescript fork in some image of a line. The map represents the territory; it is not the territory.

I notice in the old podcast David Allen did with Dean Acheson, Acheson describes a coaching experience involving an executive whose in-desk pencil tray kept annoyingly sliding out of place every time he opened or closed the drawer. Acheson asked him, "Is there a next action with that?"—at least as far as he recalls. Since the "What's the next action?" question came first in the GTD lineage, it seems this formulation is closer to the genesis of the idea than other options. The only problem is that it still does not differentiate between possibilities and realities. "Is there a next action with that?" could mean "Can it be acted on?" or, distinctly, "Are you going to pursue action on this?"

Now, Allen says in GTD that Acheson went on to "perfect" a methodology using the "What's the next action?" question to process in-trays before Allen's own developments. I'd like to get my hands on some of his original diagrams or depictions of his process, if he ever made any.
 
Michael Ramone said:
@fooddude Please refer to the second-to-last paragraph in my original post. Your use of "actionable" here is totally removed from the GTD significance. It has nothing to do with the clarifying step.

@cfoley Thanks for your reply. I'm not under the impression that "actionable" decides on my behalf. I simply don't understand what the decision—that I'm to make—is.

Ultimately, you're deciding whether or not to send the item to your "actionable"/"active" GTD lists—but I do not believe this constitutes an explanation. This presupposes the value of GTD organization and renders the system equal to any one of a growing number of arbitrary time-management and personal-organization structures. The promise of GTD is that it's not about the categories; it's about the thinking. I want to master the thinking, exactly as it is intended. I only fail to see what clarifying consists of.

Sure, everyone nowadays says, "It's a matter of determining what things mean to you." But let's face it: This is terrible advice. It's much too broad, and means almost nothing on its own. Once one understands what Allen had in mind with regard to clarifying, one can indeed come around and recognise that, yes, "clarifying" amounts to one specialized manifestation of "determining what things mean." In the meantime, however, invokation of this decree confesses a lack of knowledge on the part of the bearer. It's a cool description, but useless. Instruction is required.

@PlunkRock I don't disagree. Maybe that is the ultimate meaning. My qualm is that I cannot get past Allen's usage of the word "actionable", and the other wordings he presents throughout the GTD corpus. Don't you think that if he meant exactly what you meant, he'd have used an expression recognisably similar to yours? It's hard to believe he so drastically overlooked the phrasing—that he'd leave it up to readers/seminar participants to uncover some magic hidden meaning themselves—especially in light of the rigor of the remainder of the exposition of the methodology. If what you say is true, then why the runaround with the wording? Why isn't your version spelled out anywhere?

I cannot escape the thought that he did mean to use the word "actionable" in the diagrams + elsewhere. Perhaps the idea is that one is supposed to conjure to one's mind all one's options first. ("You can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing.") Perhaps he took for granted that people would naturally decline some possible actions, etc. It's an interesting idea, but it does not explain the presence of Someday/Maybe on the non-actionable side of the diagram. Many of those things can be acted on now—it's just that for some other reason one chooses to not act.

@mcogilvie Thank you for your reply. You write, "After answering the question 'Is it actionable?', one of the options is to trash it..." You seem to imply that one's answer to "Is it actionable?" is separate from some secondary query that decides the "yes or no" choice. You're choosing to act independently of your answer to "Is it actionable?", as though the question has no effect, and as though you're answering it dispassionately in compliance with a prescribed method. This is a bizarre perspective. I thought "Is it actionable?" WAS the "yes" or "no" choice depicted in the diagrams—i.e., that an answer of "yes" to the question constituted activation of the "yes" side of the tree. Are you saying that "Is it actionable?" is not the essence of this two-pronged choice?

Again, this perspective assumes the value of the flow chart as designed, without considering the value of constituent elements. The flow chart is worthless if the elements that constitute it are not individually meaningful. Allen didn't just sit down one day and pull this diagram out of thin air. He learned the elements one by one—some perhaps in clusters, but nonethelss individually—and eventually constructed a full map of the flow of new input.

This is not to say that a combination of these elements is not more or differently meaningful; it simply means that each question must be real and distinctly meaningful, even if, in the end, each must be used in consort with the others for full effect. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts—but only because the parts are what they are. If they mean nothing, the whole is a fantasy.

(Please excuse the below. I understand the topic of religion is to be avoided. I simply have no better analogy. I keep it as unaffiliated, generic, and brief as possible.)
Without getting too far into the weeds, your approach resembles justifying a belief in a higher power on the basis of the holiness of a holy book claiming the higher power exists. The problem is that you don't know the book is holy until you know the deity exists.

In your case, the "holy book" is the flow chart. You're taking its significance for granted. But it's arbitrary unless the individual elements are grounded in reality, provided with some meaning.

As I wrote earlier, if you drop out the thinking behind the diagram, then GTD becomes nothing more than any number of other "productivity systems", all of which have their own idiosyncratic terminologies, formalities, and boxes to be filled in. The "thinking" of GTD does not simply consist of a glance at a provided flow chart and an arbitrary choice about which cutesy path you'd like to send XYZ down, although many people treat it that way. Is the process real or not?

"Is it actionable?" has to have some meaning, even if you never knew that the rest of GTD existed. This is what it means for the concept to be real. In short, the question "Is it actionable?" has to actually be a question, not merely a pointer to a nondescript fork in some image of a line. The map represents the territory; it is not the territory.

I notice in the old podcast David Allen did with Dean Acheson, Acheson describes a coaching experience involving an executive whose in-desk pencil tray kept annoyingly sliding out of place every time he opened or closed the drawer. Acheson asked him, "Is there a next action with that?"—at least as far as he recalls. Since the "What's the next action?" question came first in the GTD lineage, it seems this formulation is closer to the genesis of the idea than other options. The only problem is that it still does not differentiate between possibilities and realities. "Is there a next action with that?" could mean "Can it be acted on?" or, distinctly, "Are you going to pursue action on this?"

Now, Allen says in GTD that Acheson went on to "perfect" a methodology using the "What's the next action?" question to process in-trays before Allen's own developments. I'd like to get my hands on some of his original diagrams or depictions of his process, if he ever made any.
Click to expand...

I think that a good part of your post is addressed to me, so I will address that latter part as one long reply. In brief, to be actionable in this sense is not so abstract. I don’t think you can act on something unless you have some idea what form that action might take. You say my approach is “bizarre” but I’m not sure why. You compare what I’m saying to faith-based religious beliefs, which seems extreme. You are the one who is elevating a flow chart into an inerrant document which must be interpreted correctly. I assure you it is not. I have seen many versions of the GTD workflow flowchart and they are all a bit different. David Allen wrote several books and a lot of essays trying to convey a fairly systematic approach to getting things done. They don’t always say the same thing the same way, which I think is good.
 
I use GTD to bring my relationship to my world into alignment with how I want my relationship to be to my world.

When something has my attention, I capture it. I take the time to examine it and confirm whether my relationship to it is where I want it to be. If not, I consider it to be an open loop that I want to handle in some way.

This is how I decide whether to go down the yes part of the workflow diagram (yes it is an open loop) or the no (it is not an open loop) part of the diagram.

"What is it? Is it actionable?" is shorthand to me for this process.

From the session on Clarifying for better lists: clarifying is deciding. Deciding for now, a point in time decision. The weekly review is the place to review your decision. It stops the inbox from being an anxiety closet.

When the name "Goals" as horizon 3 made it repellant for me, I changed the name to "Larger Outcomes" and restored my relationship with that horizon so that it got an appropriate amount of my attention.

"Is it actionable?" seems to be taking a disproportionate amount of your attention. It is a placeholder for the clarifying part of the workflow diagram. Replacing the phrase with what it means to you and that speaks to you may help you adjust your attention to that step to a level of attention you desire: to resolve what that step actually means for you.

Clayton

When you don't deal with what has your attention, it takes more of your attention than it deserves. - something David said better than I just did.
 
Michael Ramone said:
Sure, everyone nowadays says, "It's a matter of determining what things mean to you." But let's face it: This is terrible advice. It's much too broad, and means almost nothing on its own. Once one understands what Allen had in mind with regard to clarifying, one can indeed come around and recognise that, yes, "clarifying" amounts to one specialized manifestation of "determining what things mean." In the meantime, however, invokation of this decree confesses a lack of knowledge on the part of the bearer. It's a cool description, but useless. Instruction is required.
Click to expand...

Rather than terrible advice, I think it is the whole point. A flyer put through every letterbox in the street will mean different things to different people. Is the flyer actionable? For most people, the answer is 'no' and they will put it in the bin. A few might be interested in it for themselves or for others but it will depend on where they are at in life and how the information on the flyer speaks to them individually.

I accept that I did not give you the style of answer that you are looking for. Unfortunately, I cannot see inside David's head. I can only interpret his words on the page and share what works for me. Good luck in finding your answer.
 
Michael Ramone said:
@fooddude Please refer to the second-to-last paragraph in my original post. Your use of "actionable" here is totally removed from the GTD significance. It has nothing to do with the clarifying step.

@cfoley Thanks for your reply. I'm not under the impression that "actionable" decides on my behalf. I simply don't understand what the decision—that I'm to make—is.

Ultimately, you're deciding whether or not to send the item to your "actionable"/"active" GTD lists—but I do not believe this constitutes an explanation. This presupposes the value of GTD organization and renders the system equal to any one of a growing number of arbitrary time-management and personal-organization structures. The promise of GTD is that it's not about the categories; it's about the thinking. I want to master the thinking, exactly as it is intended. I only fail to see what clarifying consists of.

Sure, everyone nowadays says, "It's a matter of determining what things mean to you." But let's face it: This is terrible advice. It's much too broad, and means almost nothing on its own. Once one understands what Allen had in mind with regard to clarifying, one can indeed come around and recognise that, yes, "clarifying" amounts to one specialized manifestation of "determining what things mean." In the meantime, however, invokation of this decree confesses a lack of knowledge on the part of the bearer. It's a cool description, but useless. Instruction is required.

@PlunkRock I don't disagree. Maybe that is the ultimate meaning. My qualm is that I cannot get past Allen's usage of the word "actionable", and the other wordings he presents throughout the GTD corpus. Don't you think that if he meant exactly what you meant, he'd have used an expression recognisably similar to yours? It's hard to believe he so drastically overlooked the phrasing—that he'd leave it up to readers/seminar participants to uncover some magic hidden meaning themselves—especially in light of the rigor of the remainder of the exposition of the methodology. If what you say is true, then why the runaround with the wording? Why isn't your version spelled out anywhere?

I cannot escape the thought that he did mean to use the word "actionable" in the diagrams + elsewhere. Perhaps the idea is that one is supposed to conjure to one's mind all one's options first. ("You can only feel good about what you're not doing when you know what you're not doing.") Perhaps he took for granted that people would naturally decline some possible actions, etc. It's an interesting idea, but it does not explain the presence of Someday/Maybe on the non-actionable side of the diagram. Many of those things can be acted on now—it's just that for some other reason one chooses to not act.

@mcogilvie Thank you for your reply. You write, "After answering the question 'Is it actionable?', one of the options is to trash it..." You seem to imply that one's answer to "Is it actionable?" is separate from some secondary query that decides the "yes or no" choice. You're choosing to act independently of your answer to "Is it actionable?", as though the question has no effect, and as though you're answering it dispassionately in compliance with a prescribed method. This is a bizarre perspective. I thought "Is it actionable?" WAS the "yes" or "no" choice depicted in the diagrams—i.e., that an answer of "yes" to the question constituted activation of the "yes" side of the tree. Are you saying that "Is it actionable?" is not the essence of this two-pronged choice?

Again, this perspective assumes the value of the flow chart as designed, without considering the value of constituent elements. The flow chart is worthless if the elements that constitute it are not individually meaningful. Allen didn't just sit down one day and pull this diagram out of thin air. He learned the elements one by one—some perhaps in clusters, but nonethelss individually—and eventually constructed a full map of the flow of new input.

This is not to say that a combination of these elements is not more or differently meaningful; it simply means that each question must be real and distinctly meaningful, even if, in the end, each must be used in consort with the others for full effect. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts—but only because the parts are what they are. If they mean nothing, the whole is a fantasy.

(Please excuse the below. I understand the topic of religion is to be avoided. I simply have no better analogy. I keep it as unaffiliated, generic, and brief as possible.)
Without getting too far into the weeds, your approach resembles justifying a belief in a higher power on the basis of the holiness of a holy book claiming the higher power exists. The problem is that you don't know the book is holy until you know the deity exists.

In your case, the "holy book" is the flow chart. You're taking its significance for granted. But it's arbitrary unless the individual elements are grounded in reality, provided with some meaning.

As I wrote earlier, if you drop out the thinking behind the diagram, then GTD becomes nothing more than any number of other "productivity systems", all of which have their own idiosyncratic terminologies, formalities, and boxes to be filled in. The "thinking" of GTD does not simply consist of a glance at a provided flow chart and an arbitrary choice about which cutesy path you'd like to send XYZ down, although many people treat it that way. Is the process real or not?

"Is it actionable?" has to have some meaning, even if you never knew that the rest of GTD existed. This is what it means for the concept to be real. In short, the question "Is it actionable?" has to actually be a question, not merely a pointer to a nondescript fork in some image of a line. The map represents the territory; it is not the territory.

I notice in the old podcast David Allen did with Dean Acheson, Acheson describes a coaching experience involving an executive whose in-desk pencil tray kept annoyingly sliding out of place every time he opened or closed the drawer. Acheson asked him, "Is there a next action with that?"—at least as far as he recalls. Since the "What's the next action?" question came first in the GTD lineage, it seems this formulation is closer to the genesis of the idea than other options. The only problem is that it still does not differentiate between possibilities and realities. "Is there a next action with that?" could mean "Can it be acted on?" or, distinctly, "Are you going to pursue action on this?"

Now, Allen says in GTD that Acheson went on to "perfect" a methodology using the "What's the next action?" question to process in-trays before Allen's own developments. I'd like to get my hands on some of his original diagrams or depictions of his process, if he ever made any.
Click to expand...
"Ultimately, you're deciding whether or not to send the item to your "actionable"/"active" GTD lists"

Like Trash, Inaction to Archive/Reference, Someday/Maybe, Tickler, etc. are also Next Action(s) places when Organizing from Inboxes for current GTD detachment space for future Review and appropriate Engagement and are the GTD purposes for Next Action(s)?

As one sees GTD fit best. . . . .
 
TesTeq said:
@Michael Ramone "Is it actionable" means "Should I do something about it?". The context is YOU. Putting something in a reference file or in the trash is an action too so it can be considered as "actionable" too, but the only action is to put it in the appropriate location.
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@TesTeq

Spot-On . . . @TesTeq is always increasing GTD to the next level . . . thank you very much

Indeed . . . appropriate location Organize is a by-product of appropriate Review and appropriate Engagement and as such increasing one's GTD skills decreases appropriate Review and appropriate Engagement for desired outcomes . . . also on the Next Action level?

Very nice. . . thank you very much
 
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