Next Action Help

[jaludwick]

So I'm a'collecting, and collecting, and I have my action list already divided into categories (calls, erands, etc...)

And now I don't know what to do with them; I'm not suppose to organize them by priority, just next action.

So do I have a next action for each category?

and does anyone organize action by day/time as when to do them?

What should I do?

Jeff

[Brent]

I think you may be a bit confused!

You should have a whole bunch of Projects (such as "Clean the house")

You should have several Context lists. Each Project should have (at least) one Next Action on one of those Context lists somewhere. So, on your "@Home" list, you may have an Action "Dust dining room table."

I don't organize by date and time, unless there's a specific date and time on which the Action has to be done, in which case it goes on my Calendar instead of a Context list.

Does that answer your questions? Maybe I'm unclear, or didn't understand your questions.

[jaludwick]

These are not projects, they are one action things, put into an action category, such as calls, etc...

The question is... what is I have 5 actions, not related, under @calls, and 4 under @work, etc... Which do I do 1st? Di I just pick one item from each action category?

I have a thought, and if it's only one action, not a project of many actions, I put it into the appropriate category.

So the bottom line is that I have 13 "@" categories, all with many actions, do I pick one from each and do it?

thanks Jeff

[TesTeq]

According to David Allen the judgement what to do next is intuition-based. So - if your intuition does not tell you what to do - just do the first thing from the first list. Or throw a dice.

[Rolf F. Katzenberger]

So the bottom line is that I have 13 "@" categories, all with many actions, do I pick one from each and do it?

Hi Jeff,

actually, your categories should equate to contexts, that is: intersections of places, times, or resources that occur repeatedly in your life and allow for some tasks to get done whenever you're "in" the respective context.

If you're able, in theory, to pick any next action right now from any of your 13 lists, then you're not listing next actions by contexts, but rather according to some other criteria.

I suggest that you review your categories and reshape your system so that you have lists that you can pull out in the respective context.

Recently, I've blogged about this in What is (not) a GTD context?, maybe this helps.

Rolf

[WebR0ver]

The idea of grouping things in context is so that once you have yourself mentally and physically in that context and are committed to doing one item, it should be easier to continue knocking out items on that same list for some time rather than to change contexts to do something else.

Of course if the situation is different and you know you have pressing items on other lists, your choices of what to do next would be different.

[kewms]

The whole point of context lists is to group actions requiring similar resources together. So it might be more effective to do all your @call or @email actions at once before going on to another list.

It doesn't matter (to GTD) which of the items on any particular context list get done first. If an item doesn't need to be done at all, it should be on a Someday/Maybe list or dropped altogether. If an item is an urgent priority that has to be done today, it should be on your calendar. In between, it's really up to you.

Good luck!

Katherine