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Leslie Harradine
Start at the beginning
As a trainer and coach for the David Allen Company, I’ve found that as simple as it may sound to identify the Next Action, it takes practice to become savvy at defining the microscopic steps of what’s necessary to effectively move forward. Given the amount of data coming at people in a day, an hour—or even within minutes—we’ve had to learn how to process information extremely quickly. As a result, people tend to conjure up images about everything that’s got to happen for a project to be complete, rather than a series of specific steps necessary to make incremental progress.
To better understand this dynamic, it’s valuable to look at the microscopic steps involved in our own thinking. Most people take one look at a project folder on their desk, an email in their in-box, or notes they have collected from a meeting, and instantly they envision the vast array of resources it will require to complete it. All the research, the phone calls or Emails, the meetings, the travel, essentially, the hours, days, months or even years of effort it will take to finish it. The image of what it takes to get to the finish line comes to us in a nano-second—and it can make us feel heavy, lethargic and disinterested from the get-go. This same reaction occurs over and over again every time we are faced with a complex and yet-to-be completed project. The result? Major stress and overwhelm. The consequence? Avoid it!. Procrastinate! Contemplate resigning from your job!
For those who are familiar with Getting Things Done, you know that a Next Action is a physical step you can take no matter how large or small the scope of a project. Read, review, fax, write, go to, research, buy, and enter are some examples of typical verbs that define Next Actions. Thinking is not a physical activity; it’s a mental one. But what happens when your next action is “to think about it?”
There are actual physical steps you can take when you need to think about something in any of the piles you have accumulated. What most of you do is create a “to think about” pile. Then you end up shuffling and reshuffling through the same pile over and over again saying to yourself, “Yep, I sure do need to think about this stuff!”
To move on anything that you need to think about, the first thing you need to do is put it in your in-basket because you have not fully processed this item. To process, you need to answer a couple of questions.
First, “What is it?” You have to know what it is you’re looking at. Once you’ve defined that, the next question is. “What is my next action?” Answering this question accurately will be the key handling those “to think about” items. The way you do this, is to determine exactly what you need to do physically that will facilitate your thinking. Do you need to re-read a document or do some research? Make a phone call to gather missing information? Perhaps you need to write down your ideas to see things more objectively. You can accomplish this through brainstorming or mind mapping.
As you consider these things, beware that one of the most common mechanisms for procrastination is in telling ourselves we need to “think about it.” Have you noticed that there is never enough time to think about it? All those things that require thinking build up and add to the stress. In an attempt to manage the stress, we end up shuffling papers from one pile to another pretending we’re doing something about them.
Remember: Taking action always brings clarity. As soon as you move on something, possibility and options begin to appear. The thinking process, therefore, needs to be about determining the action that will move you to greater clarity. As David Allen says, “You need to think about your stuff more than you think, but not as much as you’re afraid you might”. Thinking about your projects is a critical part of managing them and moving them to completion. The only way to do that is to take action!
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