Too many next actions?
July 20th, 2012 GTD Times Team - Staff ContributorsCategories | Best Practices of GTD | David Allen | Getting Started | Getting Things Done | Implementation | Inspiration
Too many next actions? DA weighs in…
Question: I have done a good job of getting all my commitments in Outlook tasks and out of my head, but here is my dilemma: I have written down every work and personal task I need to do, including converting emails to action items and now I have 580 work tasks, 346 personal tasks, 266 tasks for my assistant and 117 honey-dos for my husband! I have them organized by project and date, but am feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all! Any advice? Thanks so much for your work.
David Allen: Well, you have as many commitments as you have, and unless you want eternal subliminal stress, you need to get them objectively out of your head and reviewable. As you’ve discovered, your next task to get more stress-free is to determine which ones are really “someday” vs. which ones need to be on the front shelf. Essentially, everything that you’re not doing at any moment is “someday,” but the psyche feels much better when you have made some distinctions between the active ones that you really want/need to get done within a reasonable time vs. those that can wait. Ultimately you’ll have to decide what kind of overview/map you need and want to see, to feel OK about what you’re doing. So there’s no right or wrong answer about any of this—only what’s most workable for you.
But… it is not an answer!!!!
Actually I thought David was pretty clear.
The overwhelm comes from thinking that everything is current, where actually everything is ‘someday maybe’ apart from what you’re working on ‘now’
It’s difficult to get overwhelmed with just 1 task. ;o)
We can bring a group of projects and tasks into the foreground, as many as feels right to you. But being able to mentally ‘let go’ of the projects – because they are safe and being cared for in your system is the key.
Of course if you’ve made promises and commitments to lots of different people about lots of different activities.. there will need to be some difficult conversations.
There is an interesting distinction between internal vs. external overwhelm.
Maybe she should let go of some things!
If a woman had 117 “honey do” items for me, we’d probably be headed for divorce court. Just saying, . . . maybe not all that stuff is as important as she thinks.
Larry
Larry,
I agree with you. Not everything on my honeydo list is of the highest priority. But I don’t want it rumbling around in my head either, once I’ve identified it as something “to be done” (sooner/later/someday/maybe).
I keep a similar list in my system, but I don’t think of it as a list of “orders” for my husband. I am not his manager/boss. I’m simply the one that’s at home, processing mail, fielding phone calls, managing the family schedule, etc.
I throw all kinds of things onto this list as they come up, both individual tasks and larger scope projects. So my “honey-do” list is really just another name for the “agenda” for our regular “family meetings,” from which we each end up with real tasks/projects in our respective GTD systems.
And, yes, a lot of ideas that I scribble down here do turn into someday/maybes. Not everything on the honeydo list is as straightforward as “replace the light bulb at the top of the stairs.” Sometimes it’s on the order of “research ways to celebrate our 20th anniversary,” or “brainstorm ways to alter savings/investments patterns in order to retire sooner”.
I stumbled over this one as well. Even 150+ tasks on a @computer list can be too much to be helpful when deciding day by day what to do. Since my someday/maybe list has too much far away tasks, would like to’s and potentially things it’s also not a place to put tasks for example that have to happen this month but not next week. So I created a @not now context which is a short term someday/maybe list. I set up one rule for my weekly review, it doesn’t matter how complete I’m able to do my review I always have to check this list to decide whether the tasks are still ” not now”
Like this my daily list is not too big and I don’t get lost in it.
This also results in for example that I review not now weekly but someday/maybe only monthly.
In my opinion when you first clear your head and your spaces of “stuff” and capture it the best thing to do is identify the desired outcomes for each of those items first and list them on a separate sheet of paper. Don’t make any immediate next action decisions right away; you may not want to commit to these outcomes yet.
Once the complete list of outcomes is in front of you then decide for each one whether or not you plan to actively pursue or not at this time. If you do then add the outcome to the Projects list. If not, add it to Someday/Maybe.
Once your Projects list is up-to-date with your active commitments *then* define at least one next action that you could do right now if you have the right context, time and energy available. Put the reminder of that next action in the appropriate place.
David answered this in a similar way that I would. I had a few hundred next actions and I routinely have to go through and move them to the someday list. Then, I will routinely go through my someday list and see which ones of these are really going to happen. It is a two stage purging process. It is helpful for those of us (or at least myself) that feel the perhaps obsessive compulsive tendency to not let go of things. For me, it is a gentler process to move to someday and then come back to see if it is really ever going to happen. I can’t say for sure, but I imagine the person asking the question might have tendencies that I could identify with
A week is the base in my GTD practice.
Next action lists consist of tasks to be accomplished during upcoming week, not later. I compile NA lists during weekly review. In ideal world at the end of a week all items on NA lists are done.
All other tasks are put on someday maybe list in a “sleep” status and are going to be considered / reviewed not before the following weekly review.
As mentioned above you should decide what real (NA) and what is not (SM)
Reviewing thousand items during weekly review is a mental drudgery. To simplify the WR I suggest splitting your SM list into review Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly.
I agree with Peter D. and also Scott Huff, Caren.
I have found that I’m really struggling with letting go of the Someday Maybes — some of them, I can’t deal with the thought of them never happening. From my experience, time goes by much more quickly than I ever realize, so I’m doing an experiment with my personal time. I’m spending 20 minutes on the SM’s that I feel will cause me deep regret, and that means 20 minutes a day for a few of them and 20 minutes 3 days a week for a few of them.
My biggest challenge was to get clear on which items belonged in which category, and the suggestion to split SM into review Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly is a perfect solution. (thank you, Peter D.).
I hope you’ll be able to actualize your truly important SM’s because they may hold the key to your greatest contribution to your community and to the planet.