The danger of next actions lists and what to do instead

Photo by: roger jones

There’s something dangerous about a bunch of small, un-intimidating next actions on a single list. The things you should be doing are generally uncomfortable, larger, more intimidating than the things that aren’t that important. The things you should be doing are generally much fewer in number than the things that aren’t that important. Unfortunately, the things you should be doing are, by definition, the things that will bring you closer to your long-term goals. That’s why you should be doing them.

I see this as a predicament. How is one supposed to glance at this list of automated productivity, and time and again pick the most important tasks, which are more often than not, the most pain-in-the-ass tasks, when there is an abundance of easier, less important tasks sitting right there on the same list? If there is no clear distinction between important tasks and less-important ones, we will continue to fall into the GTD trap of checking trivial items off of lists we’ve spent way too much time grooming, giving us the false feeling of productivity. What’s worse is that all the while, the large intimidating tasks continue to add grains of stress to the mountains already built up in our minds. 

Plan Your Day

This is why I find priority to still be the number one most important way to organize any list of todos in any form, whether they be in your head or on your computer.  But I’ve found that it’s beneficial to go one step further and do one simple thing every day: plan your day. You don’t need a productivity book or internet phenomenon to teach you that. People have been doing this for ages because it’s irreplaceable.

Here are some details about making a daily plan that I’ve found beneficial:

-       Plan to do the most important tasks that will bring you closer to your most important goals.

-       Know which tasks take a predictable amount of time and which ones don’t. And fit in a reasonable amount of tasks for a given day. Don’t be overzealous. Everyone should know this by now. Don’t make the rookie mistake of planning a million things for a single day. Pick a few, walk way, then come back and pick half from that list. Let big tasks take up the whole day. If you have one large experiment or a paper to write, be okay with that being the only thing on your agenda for the day. You don’t need even write this down, you just know that tomorrow you will get this done one way or another.

-       Plan to take breaks and take them; another fundamental move. Consult The Now Habit for more explanation.

-       Hide. Try to find good chunks of time when (or where) other people aren’t around to work through your plan. Other people have a way of changing your plans. Bosses and Ph.D. advisors are number one on this list of hoodlums.

What about tasks beyond the scope of one day?

Of course there maybe lists of tasks and other things to remember about all the projects in your life that you want to keep written down. That’s fine. Write them down and put them somewhere and refer to them when you need to. You don’t really need to be looking at all those tasks for all your projects multiple times every day do you? 

What about when you’re thrown off your plan?

The hardcore GTD supporters like to bring up the argument that any given workday can throw you off your plan at an instance and if you’re net well-equipped with a list of tasks for any context, you’ll be standing naked in the rain. They say that as a result of the frequency with which this happens, priority should be at the bottom of the list of factors to consider when organizing a task list. I find this argument unconvincing, especially so for students. Of course emergencies happen and unexpected things come up, but when that happens you’re almost never at a loss of what to do. All this time we spend planning and reading blogs about using time wisely are not made for days when we are “putting out fires”. Everyone knows what to do those days. It’s for the common day, when nothing urgent arises and you are left only to your desk that you need to be well equipped with a plan of attack, because the alternative, wasting hours, days, and years oscillating on what you should be doing while browsing the internet and checking email is too bleak an outlook to accept.