How many next actions is enough?

[tychinin]

I know everyone is unique but how many Next Actions is enough for a person to have on the active list to cope with? I think that 200 is too much when 5 is not enough to be engaged the whole day. Is it right to calculate next action or a better option would be to calculate projects? How many David Allen has?

[Myriam]

if you've listed all your projects and have defined NA's for all of them, then you should be fine. For one person that might be only 5 NA's, for the other one 55, for yet another 100... I usually turn around 100, and those are only work-related, not private...

But then again, I'm a consultant, with a multitude of smaller projects going on. If I would be the type of consultant with 5 big projects to work on, I might have only 5 NA's.
Don't forget after all: NA-list is not your todo-list for the day/week/month/... it's where you left off working on a project and where you should pick it up again. So I might have 5 projects, with 5 NA's and work on only 1 project today, and tomorrow thus I'll have 5 NA's from which 4 are the same as on my list I have today.

I know there are people who don't like to see 100 NA's on a list, and will filter the list to whatever actions they want to execute this week. I don't like that, I like to have all of them visible, so I can pick whatever action I want to perform, even if I should not absolutely do it now (for example print a text I'm supposed to read in 3 or 4 months, if I'm in "printing modus", then I might as well print it and allready put it in the read/review box).

Myriam

[kelstarrising]

Excellent advice Myriam! Spot on.

[TesTeq]

How many next actions is enough? I think Douglas Adams would answer 42. :-)

[Tom.9]

I usually turn around 100, and those are only work-related, not private...

I like to have all of them visible, so I can pick whatever action I want to perform,
Myriam

I have 60 projects and about 530 next actions, both work & private
(and 230 someday/maybe)

and seeing ALL oft them together (in Outlook tasks) is a bit overwhelming
(even if the most important projects procced very well at the moment)

Maybe I have to move some more to someday/maybe?
But that list already seems too big to me