Look at the Next Action below
- Draft outline for board report
You've included a reference to the Project in your Next Action. You say "Draft outline" lacks clarity, and in order to gain clarity, what have you added? Reference to the project.
Tracking a Project's next action(s)
- Thread starter Brenaud10
- Start date
Look at the Next Action below
- Draft outline for board report
You've included a reference to the Project in your Next Action. You say "Draft outline" lacks clarity, and in order to gain clarity, what have you added? Reference to the project.
ianfh10
Registered
Yeah, because that happens to be how the action is clear; I'm not adding the reference to the project so I know what project it relates to, I'm adding information that allows me to complete the action without any other defining or thinking required.
If you have 'draft outline' on your next actions list, and there's no bigger project, how do you know what you're drafting an outline for?
An example for me:
In an ideal universe, every year I would clear, fork, and luxuriously amend every bed in my vegetable garden, and get that bed's irrigation perfect. In a real universe, that's not going to happen. There will be vegetable garden triage. So it's not as simple as "Fork vegetable garden." It's not even as simple as "Fork row 7, front" followed by "Amend row 7, front" and possibly, "Debug irrigation for row 7, front."
I want to know WHY I'm performing a task on that particular 144 square feet, so that if I run low on time or resources, I know which is the highest priority. Is it for peas? I can probably just do the forking. Is it for tomatoes? I'll dryfarm them anyway; I don't have to worry much about the irrigation. Is it for pumpkins? They need it all, or don't even bother.
Of course, I could fully specify all of my actions, so that the projects are irrelevant:
- Fork row 7, front, for 2023 pumpkins.
- Fork row 9, rear, for spring 2023 peas.
- Amend row 7, front, for 2023 pumpkins.
I don't want to do that. I would much rather have
Project: 2023 pumpkins (row 7, front)
NA: Fork
NA: Amend
NA: Check irrigation
The tie to the project saves me a bunch of typing. And it better supports triage, because not infrequently triage means putting the entire project On Hold, which hides all of its actions.
benedikt
Registered
Disclaimer: I have not read the whole thread, so maybe this was already mentioned.
The easiest way is to define a project code for each project that is easily memorisable. E.g. "bike repair" could have a code "BR". You attach that code each time you write down the next action (app- or prepend.)
As it was already mentioned, doing the weekly review will make the project codes stick very easily. Especially when doing this on paper*, writing that code multiple times will make it stick for sure!
___
* I switched away from paper because exactly of this – the redundant efforts. However, I print out my next actions regularly. I still see the benefits of paper.
Interesting. I would probably have a checklist of all rows, front and rear, in project support. There would be a single project for all the bed prep. Only the currently in progress rows would have next actions, and they would probably have a form like “Row 7, front (pumpkins): Fork” or something equivalent. As each next action completed, I would add the next step. The app I use makes it very easy to duplicate. Or I might just change “Fork” to “Amend” although I have no clue what that is (@Gardener, please explain). This is essentially the way I wrote a two-volume set of textbooks over the last three years.
Do you mean collection, organisation and processing are quicker using paper vs digital? Or still referring to linking Projects and Next Actions?
Still referring to linking. I have never used paper for GTD.
Apologies, I don't understand what you mean then. Maybe you could expand?
ianfh10
Registered
I'm not familiar with the system you've screenshotted here, so a couple of questions may help me understand:
Your highlighted area is the project, yes? If so, where is this information coming from? I'm guessing you had to do some manual plugging in or linking of this to the action?
And if you have an action that doesn't have a project, I'm assuming that nothing appears here?
Yes thats the project. It comes from the Project List. You can view the Project List in various ways, but the two most common ways are in the sidebar, or in the main window, as below.
When you click on a Project you then get the following view, where you can add next actions and choose your context. Excuse the typo.
If you choose a context from the sidebar, it shows you all the next actions with that context. (Apologies for the crude redaction, I have staff members' names in there).
In terms of your specific questions, no there's no manual linking. Simply creating the Next Action makes the link happen.
As for what happens if you create a Next Action with no project, it just sits in the Context List with no project.
However best practice in OF is to create a single action list rather than leaving them in your contexts. This is just a place to put all your NAs with no Projects. Otherwise, you have to go hunting through your context lists during the weekly review. This way you can just review your Project List and know that it will include every Next Action in all your lists.
I don’t have to put a next action within a project, and I don’t have to think about placement within the project. I only have to write something that makes sense to me, and put it on a context list. An additional benefit is that I don’t have to look at the project support material in the moment, which can derail my getting things done.
But you do add the project to the project list too?
Of course, if there is a project. In fact, that is where I store most project support material. Most of the time the project already exists.
I don't see where you save any time doing it your way then.
You use Omnifocus, right? When you add an item to a project, you must either navigate to the project or look up the project in a list. Now Omnigroup tries to make that easy, but its‘s extra work. And there’s more. Most people who use it do not have only next actions under each project, but also other stuff, and the order of that stuff matters, and when it is visible. So you probably end up going to the project anyway to get the new action to where it belongs. I have stopped doing any of that. It not only saves time and reduces cognitive load when managing next actions, it helps promote an action orientation, moving review to its rightful place as a separate, high-level activity. Your mileage may vary, of course.
In Omnifocus, its the same number of clicks if you're in a different app entirely, the only difference being that your project list is longer than your context list. So you might save one or two swipes? (I use Alfred so it takes the exact same amount of time in my case, but I appreciate not everyone uses it)
However this would only count when you weren't already in the app and looking at the Project. Since this is what you do during the weekly review, and (at least in my case) a majority of NAs get created during the weekly review, what you're talking about only applies in a minority of cases anyway. And of course if you had two NAs to add to two contexts, that would also take longer than just adding them both in the same place.
But then consider how much more time you then lose thereafter.
a) Every Next Action you type out has to be longer to include some reference to the project it relates to.
b) Every time you're reviewing a Project and want to see its actions, you have to manually find every Next Action to check it. Given that you review every Project during your weekly review, this means manually finding every NA at least once a week! For ~100 projects and ~150 NAs, that is a lot of work.
c) If you're looking at a NA and need to see its project support material (which you mentioned you keep in the Project), that's yet another search/trawl instead of a click.
The time you gain is outweighed manyfold by the time you lose down the line.
a) I find this to be a non-problem, and a little detail to be helpful.
b) David Allen suggests reviewing Next Actions before Projects so one has a clear picture of those actions. When I do this, I don’t need to do as you suggest.
c) I have a little trick that typically keeps projects and next actions close. However, Things has an excellent search (you just type- it’s light years better than OF3) and that’s easy too. In the vast majority of cases, I do not need to look at support material.
In all honesty, OmniFocus and I never meshed well. I had hopes for better usability In OF4, but the beta is progressing slowly. I know many people use OmniFocus with great success though.
My "Amend" task is amending the soil, usually with a standard per-square-foot amount of compost/manure and fertilizer and sometimes greensand, though it may vary depending on the crop or the condition of the soil.
I have considered a checklist, but things vary often enough that I suspect I'd make so many exceptions that I'd lose the advantage of the standardization of the checklist. On the other hand, I am actively working to standardize a lot of practices across the garden, so in a year or so a checklist might work just fine.
FocusGuy
Registered
reading this all post made me thinking about 2 things.
1) There seems to be 2 ways of practicing GTD
- one is to make list of next action => You have to be very precise about the way you write this NA and have a part a project list.
This way suits for people very oriented action who dont look at their project list very often
- One is have a project list + relative next action. This suits for people who needs to be very project oriented and needs to see the very next action.
Both works for GTD. It is just a question of feeling.
The only difference is about reviewing. When you make your weekly review it can be complicated to link the very next action to the projects
Personally Omnifocus gives me the 2 ways of seeing things
I can see my results to obtain (Project view)
I can see my next action and control if on my list I really get the very next action about a project
Sometime I am more oriented project, sometime I am more oriented action.
But what is sure is that when I make my WR it is easy to choose what project I must work on the very next week. I can focus on a project and quickly see with my reference material if it is still worth working on or not.
Omnifocus is not perfect but it does the job, very well.
1) There seems to be 2 ways of practicing GTD
- one is to make list of next action => You have to be very precise about the way you write this NA and have a part a project list.
This way suits for people very oriented action who dont look at their project list very often
- One is have a project list + relative next action. This suits for people who needs to be very project oriented and needs to see the very next action.
Both works for GTD. It is just a question of feeling.
The only difference is about reviewing. When you make your weekly review it can be complicated to link the very next action to the projects
Personally Omnifocus gives me the 2 ways of seeing things
I can see my results to obtain (Project view)
I can see my next action and control if on my list I really get the very next action about a project
Sometime I am more oriented project, sometime I am more oriented action.
But what is sure is that when I make my WR it is easy to choose what project I must work on the very next week. I can focus on a project and quickly see with my reference material if it is still worth working on or not.
Omnifocus is not perfect but it does the job, very well.