Home
>
Get Organized - Organization
>
Getting Things Done: A Guide To Next-Action Lists

Getting Things Done: A Guide To Next-Action Lists

Getting Things Done (GTD), is a productivity methodology designed by David Allen. GTD increases your productivity by getting things out of your mind, and into a reliable system that you can trust. This frees your mind to work on the task at hand, instead of trying to remember a myriad of things at once. You will find yourself more relaxed, and more productive at the same time.

In particular, one easy-to-use part of GTD (which I describe later), only takes 2 minutes to learn, but can increase your efficiency by phonemenal levels.

There are many parts to GTD. One important component is next-action lists, which replace to-do lists in other methodologies.

David Allen realised that in today's dynamic society, todo lists, daily plans, etc, often do not work. If everything and everyone around you is going 100% to plan they can work, but how often does everything go according to plan? A meeting runs longer than expected, the report you need isn't ready yet, or the computer network goes down for an hour, and your whole day can go out of whack.

David Allen's solution to this was next action lists. Rather than plan out the day based on projects, you list the next-action items for tasks you have to do. You record these next-actions into separate lists based on context.

This is best shown with an example...

Suppose you had the following todo list:

Research buying new Palm pilot
Arrange next marketing meeting
Service car
Buy new Apple Mac
Cancel magazine subscription
Prepare for the department meeting

The first step in GTD is to change the list to be based on the next physical action for each project:

Search online to find different potential Palm Pilots to buy
Phone John to arrange next marketing meeting
Look in car manual to find qualified mechanic for car
Phone Apple Reseller and buy new Apple Mac
Phone and cancel magazine subscription
Print out the financial report for the department meeting

By listing the next specific physical action, it becomes much easier to proceed on the projects. You might procrastinate on "Prepare for the department meeting", but "Print out the financial report for the department meeting", seems like a much easier thing for you to tackle, and therefore, you are MUCH more likely to get it done. Just this one idea alone will increase your productivity dramatically! It seems simple, but it is actually quite profound, because it focuses your mind on ACTION.

The next step in Getting Things Done, is to move these next-action's into separate lists based on context:

@Phone (Things I can do when I am at a phone):

Phone John to arrange next marketing meeting
Phone and cancel magazine subscription
Phone Apple Reseller and buy new Apple Mac

@Computer:

Search online to find different potential Palm Pilots to buy
Print out the financial report for the department meeting

@Home:

Look in car manual to find qualified mechanic for car

Why have separate lists? The main benefit is that it lets you look at the tasks that are only suitable to where you are at the moment. If you are at work, you aren't distracted by the tasks that are on the @Home list, and if you are at home, you aren't distracted by the work tasks. The actual GTD contexts that you use are up to you. The standard ones that David Allen recommends are generally based on location (like the ones above), but you can use whatever works best for you.

Another benefit of separating out the lists into contexts is that it becomes easy to change what you are working on quickly if something goes wrong. Suppose your in the middle of some research online, and the computer network goes down. Whilst other people might decide it's time for a coffee break, you can just look at you phone list, and start tackling some of the @Phone tasks instead.

Breaking your todo lists into next-action lists based on context may seem like a lot more work than a standard todo list, but it isn't really. It only takes a little bit longer to plan, but the increase in productivity more than compensates for this.

Next-Actions lists are a small part of the Getting Things Done methodology. They are useful on their own, but their power is multiplied when used with the rest of David Allen's system. GTD is incredibly effective, and I highly encourage you to try it out for yourself, by reading David Allen's book ("Getting Things Done: The Art Of Stress Free Productivity"), or by trying out some GTD software.

Dan Fletcher is a developer at dogmelon. They make dogmelon, an easy-to-use tool, being used for GTD on Palms, PC's, and Macs.

house refresh service Morton Grove ..

In The News:

Carnegie Mellon's noninvasive brain technology allows users to move robotic fingers by thinking about the motion, offering new possibilities for people with motor impairments.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of protection to your accounts. Instead of relying only on a password, MFA requires you to verify your identity using two or more methods.

Scientists from Duke, Harvard, and the University of Otago have unveiled a game-changing tool called DunedinPACNI. It uses a single AI brain scan to reveal how fast a person is biologically aging.

A disturbing wave of fake agent phone scams is sweeping across the United States, catching people off guard and draining their savings.

Emojis aren't just playful add-ons; they're powerful tools for building stronger connections in our increasingly digital world.

Google has taken a major step toward the future of clean energy by partnering with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), an MIT spin-out working to build one of the world’s first commercial fusion reactors.

If you create and share art online, you might have seen messages warning that Facebook's parent company, Meta, claims the right to use or even sell anything you post, whether it's pictures, poems, or artwork.

Cybercriminals hit Qantas in a major data breach that exposed information from up to six million customers.

Having reliable, loud, and timely emergency alerts on your phone or device is important because when severe weather strikes, every second counts.

Here's how your daily brew is becoming the foundation for greener buildings.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, are transforming how we learn. But what does this mean for AI and learning retention?

Modern AI data centers use much more electricity than traditional cloud servers. In many cases, the existing power grid cannot keep up. One innovative solution is gaining traction: repurposed EV batteries for AI data centers.

Microsoft 365 and Outlook users are being targeted by a tactic that injects fake billing alerts directly into their calendars.

Researchers are now showing us that old smartphones as data centers could be the next big thing in sustainable tech.

Scientists have created micro-robots for sinus infection treatment that can enter the nasal cavity, eliminate bacteria directly at the source, and exit without harming surrounding tissue.

Let's examine how your data is collected in everyday life, who is buying and selling it, what happens to it afterward, and, most importantly, what you can do to protect yourself.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. developed small robots called "Pipebots" that can travel inside water pipes to find and potentially repair leaks, all without any excavation.

A groundbreaking new study has uncovered disturbing AI blackmail behavior that many people are unaware of yet.

Four teams of autonomous humanoid robots competed in China's first AI soccer tournament, demonstrating advanced capabilities in ball detection and independent decision-making.

The ID. Buzz autonomous van features self-driving technology with 13 cameras, nine LiDAR units and five radars after Volkswagen partnered with Hamburg and Uber for 2026 deployments.

Social Security phishing scams use urgency and impersonation to steal personal data. Learn how to spot fake SSA emails and implement 10 protective measures.

French startup Pazzi Robotics created an AI-powered pizza robot that made pies in under five minutes without human help, but it closed in 2022 despite patents and expert partnerships.

Reclaim your time from big tech with effective screen time reduction strategies for iPhone and Android, featuring steps to limit app usage and create phone-free zones.

Amazon Prime Day shoppers face threats from 120,000-plus scam websites as cybercriminals prepare phishing traps and malware ahead of the July sales event.

Fox News' AI Newsletter brings you the latest on this rapidly evolving technology.

Getting Things Done: A Guide To Next-Action Lists

Get Organized - Organization