Silver Clipboard

Why ‘Next Actions’ Make Big Projects Easy to Tackle

One of the key ideas of Getting Things Done, is the ‘next action’. Like much of GTD it’s a simple idea that makes a big difference.

Next actions are the steps you take to complete a project. For example, your project may be ‘sell my old CD collection. That’s a typical to-do list item, but it’s not something that you can do in one go — so it lingers on your list. Forever.

To decide what the next action is, you need to think of the next physical step required to move the project forward. For selling your CDs, you need to decide how you are going to sell those CDs. On the Internet or at a store? Your next action is ‘find the phone number of local music shops’. After you complete that, your next action is to call music shops to see how much they pay for old CDs. Then you may want to ‘research eBay and Amazon auctions online’ to see if they are better options.

Next actions improve upon the idea of breaking down a project into small steps for two reasons. First, you’re only need to think of one next action at a time. This way you don’t get overwhelmed by trying plan every step from start to finish. Second, by thinking of the next physical step, you force yourself to clarify exactly what needs to be done — and don’t end up with a nebulous, undoable to-do list.

So take a look at one of your big projects, define the next action and get started.

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Header photograph by visualpanic

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If you live in London and would like personal help, please check out my workflow and organizational coaching services.

Dilbert on Time Management

Dilbert author, Scott Adams, has kicked off a very long discussion on his blog with a simple observation: there isn’t enough time to live a relaxing, health life. There’s a lot to read in the hundreds of comments from people talking about how they try to balance their life, their work and their health.

[Click here to read ‘Time Management’ on the Dilbert Blog]

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Header photograph by Ol.v!er [H2vPk]

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The Mess Box

On your desk live a bunch of miscellaneous objects: scissors, coins, a stapler, hole punch, etc. These are not objects you use every day, but you do use them frequently enough that putting them in storage is inconvenient. Slowly they spread across your desk, cluttering the space and annoying you in worst way possible: just below the threshold of doing something about it.

The solution to this desk detritus? The mess box. To reign in my desk clutter I took the lid from an old shoe box, turned it upside-down and decided that all miscellaneous desk stuff would live in there from now on.

The mess box makes a surprisingly profound difference. First, it gives a clear border to the mess — it will never be more than a square foot of space. Instead of slowing creeping across my desk when I’m not looking, the hole punch and its friends are confined to that box. Secondly, the mess box discourages me from carelessly leaving random things on my working space. With undefined stuff on a surface, adding one more item makes little difference. By having a mess box to hold cluttery items, the desk is always clear for whatever needs working on.

Instead of just letting the mess happen without thinking about it, consciously put boundaries around it. This lets you stop repeating the thought: ‘my desk is a mess’. You can let go of that constant, nagging thought because you’ve made a decision about it. I suggest looking over the mess box during your weekly review and decided what objects you want to keep in there.

Go flip over a box top and get your desk mess under control.

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Header photograph by Syntopia

How to Make Your Laptop Battery Last Longer

On Apple’s website there is a page where they go into detail on how their batteries work and how to keep them lasting as long as possible. There are a few useful tips, and they’ll even schedule into your iCal the regular maintenance you should perform.

[Click here to go to Apple’s Battery page]

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Header photograph by Demion

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If you would like to see more articles about getting organized in the future, please click here to subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you live in London and would like personal help, please check out my workflow and organizational coaching services.

The Packing Problem

This past summer I helped my parents retire from New York to a Confederate elephant graveyard of suburban development in search of a lower cost of living.

To pack for the move, my parents individually wrapped each of their belongings, placed them in boxes, then wrote on the outside a list of the contents. They didn’t write ‘kitchen supplies’ or ‘books’ as normal people would, instead they listed all the kitchen supplies and the titles of the books. My parents are obsessively neat people.

Near the end of the packing, my mother looked around the house — 80% empty at this point and said: “I’m glad most of this stuff is packed. It shouldn’t take long to finish.”

But it did. Many more hours of work lay ahead — more than had passed already.

In our packing, we forgot an important truth: the 80/20 rule applies to all things, even moving. In this case, the last 20% of stuff takes 80% of the time to pack.

Why is this so? Because people start packing with the easy items: books, dishes, clothes. These things live in clearly defined places and fit snugly into boxes. The last 20% of stuff is widely dispersed throughout the house and is awkwardly shaped. These knickknacks, souvenirs, gifts and other unintentionally accumulated stuff, straddle the line between between ‘throw out’ and ‘keep’. They drag on the mind and require the most decisions.

To help quicken the packing of the last twenty percent of stuff here are two suggestions:

1. Decide your default position. Make a decision, in advance, about what you are going to do with unclear items — things you aren’t immediately sure if you want to keep or ditch. The two options are: ‘when it doubt, throw it out’ or ‘when in doubt, keep it’. It doesn’t matter which option you choose, just decided before you start to save yourself hours of dithering and trips down memory lane. (Alternatively you can also photograph your items, then throw them out.)
2. Get thyself to a Container Store. Buy a big box filled with many smaller boxes. For that last 20% of stuff you keep, don’t try and sort it — that will take forever. Just start packing a small box with the miscellanea and when it’s full, add it to the bigger box. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Header photograph by Jared