I've found that most of my projects begin with a "research" (or "r&d" as I've heard David Allen call it) action. Realistically, there are multiple actions I take during research, each of which are relatively quick (often under 2 minutes, like googling something), which means it should be a project according to the GTD definition. That said, I don't feel like it works well as a project in practice.
Research tends to evolve quickly. when I find out some new information it often dramatically changes the course of my research, which makes it very tedious to accurately track possible next-actions as the come up, and filter out actions that have become irrelevant. For these reasons I've begun listing research as a next action not a project, and keeping some notes on my research in project support. However, I find myself wishing that I had the clarity that next-actions provide; it's intimidating to pick up a next action that realistically should be a whole project when I have 30-50 simple next actions on my other lists available instead.
I'm curious what others in the GTD community do with research projects. How do you approach tracking research?
Research tends to evolve quickly. when I find out some new information it often dramatically changes the course of my research, which makes it very tedious to accurately track possible next-actions as the come up, and filter out actions that have become irrelevant. For these reasons I've begun listing research as a next action not a project, and keeping some notes on my research in project support. However, I find myself wishing that I had the clarity that next-actions provide; it's intimidating to pick up a next action that realistically should be a whole project when I have 30-50 simple next actions on my other lists available instead.
I'm curious what others in the GTD community do with research projects. How do you approach tracking research?