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Where do you store potential future actions?
Steven Ho | Nov 2 2007
A lot of times, when defining the next action for a project, I think of other things that I MUST do sometime later in the project, but I can’t do it yet, for whatever reason. Let’s call these “potential future next actions”. How do you guys manage these potential future actions within a project (note: these actions are not someday maybe projects) WITHOUT creating a Gaant chart like system? POSTED IN:
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Right in the project list
I keep my project list as a set of to-do’s in iCal, and when a project needs some advance planning like you’re asking about, I put things in the notes for each one. For more long-term, involved projects, I might make a separate text file or OmniOutline to track it too.
Actions vs. Next Actions
At one time, I had the same quandary. However, I realized that the easy way to overcome this was to create Next Actions a subset of the total list of Actions.
You list all of the Actions that you need to do, but only put the ones you can do now (i.s. the ones that aren’t dependent on ay other action) on the Next Actions list you carry at all times.
Thankfully, my system (simpleGTD) has this all wrapped up: you can create as many actions as you like for your projects, and only the “starred” ones end up in your printable Next Actions list.