Quote Originally Posted by AGrzes View Post
I think practice of putting only one next physical action on the next action list encourages doing them in breadth first order. One from one project then one from another and so on.

It is fine for ping-pong actions where I have for example to send something to someone and wait. But for tasks requiring more sustained effort it feels counterproductive.

I can spend time doing something from many projects but I feel that none of them is going anywhere, and inversely when I allocate few hours of time to one and only one project I really feel the progress.

Do you have similar observations and how do you advise to handle that?
I actually have found just the opposite. If I have a good next action on an important project, I can usually make significant progress in 30 minutes, and sometimes in 10 or even 5 minutes. Sometimes, I will work for two hours on a single project if I want to, but it's rare for me to have a list of sequential next actions. I don't necessarily need or even want a list, because when I stop I tend to write a better fresh next action than I would have if I had "planned" things out. To give a concrete example, I am revising a manuscript now to address some comments I received. The comments form a list of project support material, but that's not what I work from. I work from my next action list, from a single bookmark that tells me how to start up again. It's really your choice how you want or need to work, but I feel fresher and more on top of things this way. It's also a lot easier to maintain, because I'm heading in a direction rather than making corrections to my route.