Now that you've made a Project List with the caveat that each project requires more than one action to complete, identify the next actions for each project. In the Reading Page under Getting Things Done, you'll find Merlin Mann's Two Part article on Next Actions. Below I've adopted key points for the Dissertation Bootcamp. To help with creating the lists, we'll use this resources The Trigger List and the Project/Next Action List Verbs. For an example of Project and Next Action lists, see this link.
From Merlin Mann's Building a Smarter To Do List Part One.
The primary idea of a to-do is that it's a task that can and should be done. The best and most useful to-dos share common qualities:
it's a physical action
it can be accomplished at a sitting
it supports valuable progress toward a recognized goal
it's something for which you are the most appropriate person for the job
In Getting Things Done , David Allen introduced his notion of the “next action,” which he defines as “the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.”
For example, a classic old-school to-do might be something like “Plan Tom's Surprise Going-Away Party,” “Clean out the Garage,” or “Get the Car Fixed.” But, as Allen cannily notes, these are each really small projects since they require more than one activity in order to be considered complete. Learning to honor that distinction between a task and its parent project may, in fact, be the most important step you can take toward improving the quality and “do-ability” of the work on your list.
So, in our example of beginning to organize for Tom's big party, we first want to learn when exactly he'll be leaving town. But to obtain that information, we'll first need to call his housemate, Sue, for details. But before we can call Sue, we'll have to remember where we jotted down her new work number last week. (Project managers call these kind of linked tasks “dependencies,” but you knew that.)
Suddenly our focus has narrowed from the ginormous and ultimately un-doable “Plan Party” to the entirely manageable “Find Sue's work number.” While this is far from the only task we'll have to complete for our party planning, it's clearly the next thing we'll need to do before proceeding. This is the bona fide “next action,” so it's earned a place on our to-do list.
By always breaking projects of any size into their true constituent next actions--and it's definitely okay to have several at once per project--we're making it fast and easy to always know what should be happening next.
Articulating your to-dos in terms of physical activity--even when they require only modest amounts of actual exertion--has a variety of benefits.
Most importantly, it ensures that you've thought through your task to a point where you can envision how it will need to be undertaken and what it will actually feel like once you're doing it. This means you can easily visualize the activity, the kinds of tools you'll need, and perhaps even the setting where the work should take place; It's not just a bunch of words you've written on a page.
Framing your work in the physical world is easiest when you imagine what's being done, and the best trick here is to simply phrase your task in a form like: “verb the noun with the object.” That means instead of reminding yourself with the mystery meat of “Year-end report,” you'd more accurately first “Download Q3 spreadsheet from work server.” And, instead of “Get with Anil,” you'd probably want to “Email Anil on Monday to schedule monthly disco funk party.” Get specific in whittling the task down to one activity that you can accomplish completely at a sitting. “A sitting” will vary for you, but I try to never plan a task that would take more than ten minutes (your level of busy-ness might command even smaller-sized tasks).
Consider, for example, how an oversized to-do like “Prepare the big presentation” might be improved upon by zeroing in on the physicality of a first step like “Draft four ideas for our presentation's theme.” Where the former task provides no purchase for a sensible ascent, the latter gives us a fat handle for getting started with something that already feels familiar: we know how to type, and we definitely know when we see four of something. So, this is a sensible chunk of work that can be done.
Notice how we're breaking these Big Nouns into little verbs? That's deliberate. With that original to-do for your presentation, you might theoretically just keep “preparing” your presentation until some arbitrary alarm bell goes off in your head, saying “Yeah, okay, that looks like a fully-prepared presentation, so you can stop.” But a better-defined chunk of activity suggests a task with clear edges; it has a beginning and an end. This enables you to keep putting one foot in front of the other, ensuring that you always know what to do next, instead of half-assing your way through a badly-defined pile of fuzzy nouns.
This physicality and functional piece-work act in concert to make the planning and execution of your tasks as stress-free and unintimidating as possible. Knowing that every item on your to-do list is a familiar task that can be accomplished before lunch can be wildly empowering. It's just up to you to ensure that all your work is segmented, shaped, and stacked into units that can fit through the windows that are available to you.