Getting Things Done: Next Actions

I am currently reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity. I am not even half way through it, and yet I am already increasing my productivity by applying what I am learning.

The beginning of the book gives a general overview of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system. I managed to pick up a few ideas, like the idea that everything that takes more than a few two minute actions should be considered a Project, or the idea of the Next Actions list. Up until recently, I simply made todo lists. I found that it helped me to remember important tasks. I was always forgetting things, and todo lists were a great tool to overcome that problem.

Of course, it didn’t take me too long to add a due date to some tasks. A game review needed for Game Tunnel? It wasn’t enough to say that I had to do it. I had to also say that it was due in two weeks. Homework #3 needs to get done? I need to know when, or else it might get put off.

This past week I started listing the next action needed on the different tasks. At work I keep a todo list of projects, but I started listing a Next Action next to each one. If a project involves building a server for someone, it might be held up because I need to learn more details about the build needed. The next action for that project is to call the person and ask about it. If I am waiting for more information about hard drives from a colleague, my next action is “Wait for colleague to get back to me.”

Before supplementing my todo lists with Next Actions, I had a vague sense of what I needed to do. Make a command line Tic-Tac-Toe game. Do the homework for my Tuesday night class. Items like this were somewhat high level, which is still good to know, but left me feeling stuck when I wanted to actually start any one of these projects.

Now, for each project I have on my list, I know exactly what I need to do in order to make some progress. And some progress is better than none. As Steve Pavlina said in his article Overcoming Procrastination “If you simply start a task enough times, you will eventually finish it.”

My current system isn’t very efficient, but it is definitely better than only a year ago when I was drifting through life. While I don’t want to get caught saying that it is “good enough” I don’t want to put off doing anything just because it isn’t perfect.