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No obvious next action

This has been bugging me for some time.

Let's say my project is "Stop drinking coffee"
What is the next action? Not drinking coffee? This
is hardly an action. Not drinking coffee for one day?
Again, it is too long to be an action and it is more
not acting than acting.

There are several of those projects where I do not
find actions and those are the ones that do not get done.
Other example : Changing my diet.
Or one as simple as "shave everyday". Next action? Shave tomorrow?

Maybe I'm missing something. Thanks for your help.

SteveC's picture

I think there's more than...

I think there's more than one issue here

pouexmachinax;9263 wrote:
This has been bugging me for some time.

Let's say my project is "Stop drinking coffee"
What is the next action? Not drinking coffee? This
is hardly an action. Not drinking coffee for one day?
Again, it is too long to be an action and it is more
not acting than acting.


Difficult -- One could be flippant and say that the project is complete (until you do drink some coffee!). If you're going to use GTD for something like this, you'll need to make the outcome of the project more specific (for example - don't drink coffee, but replace with herbal tea - or - don't drink any coffee until the end of the month).

Quote:

There are several of those projects where I do not
find actions and those are the ones that do not get done.
Other example : Changing my diet.

Changing your diet - again, more focus on the outcome would help. But in this case, there's a positive outcome (as opposed to the 'don't drink coffee'). What do you want your new diet be like? How are you going to achieve this? Possible NAs might be 'make shopping list with new diet foods only' or 'look up low-calorie meals in cookbook' or so on.
Quote:

Or one as simple as "shave everyday". Next action? Shave tomorrow?

I don't bother putting that level of action into my GTD system. I build those sorts of things into routine behaviours which 'always' happen. I happen to be 'not good' at mornings, so don't want to think more than possible. Hence I try to do the same things in the same order. In my case this happens to be 'get up, go down stairs, feed cats, make sandwiches for lunch, make breakfast, wait for wife to come down stairs, eat breakfast, clean teeth, put in contact lenses, get dressed, cycle to work' -- I typed that straight off!

Quote:

Maybe I'm missing something. Thanks for your help.

I suppose it's that GTD doesn't do everything for you -- in fact getting GTD to work involves making your system much like my morning routine. Something you can do without thinking, so it's actually the easiest way to behave.

Not sure I've really answered you questions, but I hope it's useful.

Steve

 
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