In my last post, I challenged you to look at how much you’re choosing to sit in your email inbox versus work from your lists. That sure seemed to strike a nerve of truth with some of you. So WHY can lists start to repel us? Here are a few reasons why and some ways to resolve that:
- You know your lists are not current so you dread having to clean up while you scan (Done a Weekly Review lately?)
- You know there are things on there that require more thinking (Ask yourself, “Do I have all of the information I need to do this?” If not, you don’t have the next action. Get more specific.)
- You have things on your lists that you don’t think are your job (Get clear on your Areas of Focus & Responsibilities–what’s your job and what’s not)
- The next actions you are seeing are too big (Break them down into smaller next actions. Watch where you go too big on time or energy commitment.)
- Your action listed is not the next action so some part of you doesn’t see success. (Drill down to the next physical, visible action. If you’ve got to Rewrite the report before you can Book the meeting with the team, then Rewrite report is your next action, not Book Meeting.)
- You don’t like the tool you are using (get one you like)
- You don’t know how to use the tool you are using (spend time learning the essentials–even the speed keys help a ton)
- You don’t trust the list you are using (get one you trust like your second brain)
- Your lists aren’t setup to work the way you think (renovate them so they do work for you)
- You skipped from Collect to Organize, so you really just have amorphous blobs of stuff to choose from (Refresh yourself on that critical Process step in GTD. Listen to the Best Practices of Processing podcast or read chapter 2 of the Getting Things Done book again.)
Bottom line: You don’t have to love your list manager or love what’s on them to get stuff done, but you do need to have clear next actions to choose from.
I was resisting my Weekly Review. It always took me hours. Until it dawned on me that I had made my personal WR checklist too long, convolved and complicated (I love lists). Now I’ve cleaned it up and I’ve found the energy to do the same for my projects and action lists too. OmniFocus used to be a monster – now it’s a sports car!
Just in time for Halloween. Good advice.
Lists are also designed to help show the relationships that exist between each of the items in the list. As a result, the mind can often be steered by lists into categorizing, prioritizing, organizing rather than doing.
Just taking a 3×5 card to look at each item one-at-a-time can be a big help to getting in action mode instead of thinking-mode when working your lists.
Thomas, I would love to hear more about your cleaned-up WR — I have the same tendency to try and do too much in one sitting!
About a month ago I faced it, my lists were getting “stale,” I was not paying careful attention to them. Oh I’d do some mini review a few times a week, but it was “in one ear and out the other.” I considered this a technical problem (what I consider most of my problems), and when I have a technical problem, I look for a technical solution.
I knew I had to take every item on my lists (collection again), review it for currency etc, and then put it elsewhere. If my eyes were fuzzing over on Vitalist which I’d used for a few years, it was time for a change. I needed something new, a novel visual experience. I began using Omnifocus, and my technical solution has worked like a charm. Furthermore, its a cool program. Now for the icing on the cake –I have a new seminar of doctoral students starting up. I now include time management/organizational training part of the curriculum for my third year students. At our first seminar meeting I handed out a copy of D. Allen Getting Things Done to each student, and told them to read the first section, for discussion last evening. Re-reading with a bunch of graduate students who think they are more burdened with work than anyone else in the world –perfect timing for me. Between that and Omnifocus, my lists look fresh, I remember some of those basic exercises I’d forgotten about, and suddenly things are almost effortlessly getting done.
Even if you do weekly reviews without fail, you will still have a huge list, if you do not act upon them.
Over period of time you will have giant lists of next actions, and projects that will drain your energy.
You cannot afford to forget why you made the list in the first place-to act upon it.
I have a tactical question re: level of detail on the task list. The example above talked about “Rewrite the report” as an appropriate next action vs “Book Meeting”. My challenge is my list gets too detailed / cumbersome because I think of all sorts of subsequent tasks (e.g., “Book Meeting”) and put them on my list in advance. this results in my list getting very long and burdonsome. Would it be preferred to ONLY list the next action (e.g., “rewrite the report”) and trust that I will remember / add subsequent steps once the fuirst step is complete? Is that the preferred technique?
Bruce:
I would try to use a project list for your list of subsequent next actions and refer to it when you get the “actual” next action done – it keeps your next action list clearer but allows you to hold further points of action elsewhere without being concerned that you might forget them. I am trying a system of using 1 record card per project to allow me to list a number of actions related to the project without cluttering my real next action list. However, I am in the very early stages with it so am not yet certain how this will play out…
I hope that this is helpful.
I’m finding two problems with my next action lists cause my eyes to glaze over when I look at them.
1) Too often, when I go to do a next action, I find out it will take much more effort, and it explodes into a project. Should I have planned ahead more thoroughly? Should I just transfer it to the projects list, plan, and identify a next action from there? How then can I keep projects from exploding into subprojects and subsubprojects?
2) I skip over too many next action items, because I have other projects with approaching deadlines. Should I just toss these low-priority action items in a tickler file or on my calendar to look at later?