The Importance of Next Actions
I had an insane day at work on Friday, the sort where new things to do ASAP just keep flying at you.
At one point there was a small queue of people forming at my desk, which is always a bad sign.
Anyway, I was carefully making a note of all the things I needed to do on an index card which was propped up in front of me, things I really ought to do that day.
This then overflowed onto a second index card. These cards just sat staring at me as I attempted to do some of the stuff on them, without stopping to go through them and find a Next Action for each in a sensible Getting Things Done fashion.
Needless to say, much of it was left undone when I left work approximately 3 hours after official “home time”.
When I left, I added the todo cards to my Hipster PDA, which I consulted when I got home. Only then did I start thinking about Next Actions.
Had I taken the 5 minutes out from the flailing about in a panic earlier, I would have realised that several of the Next Actions were along the lines of “ask X to do Y so I can do Z”, which would have at least got the ball out of my court.
However, I think a lot of the time, I was working out the correct Next Action, but subconsciously thinking “X is far too busy to worry about this at the moment”, but it would at least have moved it on further, and hopefully X would have looked at it at a sensible time for their schedule.
Note to self: always think of the Next Action! And if it means writing a very short email, just do it there and then!