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Discrete-izing amorphous blobs
Emily Horner | Mar 25 2008
There is one part where I end up not knowing what to do with GTD. And that’s when I can’t figure out a way to break down my ‘next action’ into discrete actionable tasks. At the risk of being too abstruse, these are tasks that you ‘measure like water’ — one part flows into the next too smoothly; you can’t count the individual drops. For example: If I’m reading a book for research, my next action might be ‘read chapter 3.’ But I could read half of chapter 3; I could read a quarter of chapter 3; I could read all of chapter 3 and go on to 4; and the line between one chapter and another is totally arbitrary anyway. In terms of thinking of a discrete action, it might make more sense to view reading the whole book as a discrete action (albeit one that might take me several hours over the course of a week). When I am in the midst of writing fiction, in one session I usually write until I get tired or bored, or don’t know what’s going to happen next. I can make discrete goals for myself - ‘write the scene where she finds out her bike has been stolen’ - but I generally don’t follow them anyway. Come to think of it, most of my concerns are about either (1) long actions that are hard to divide, except arbitrarily, into shorter ones; (2) things that should be habits but aren’t. It’s more of the same, over and over; and do you really put them on your next action list over and over and over? 2 Comments
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 Dissecting effervescenceSubmitted by augmentedfourth on March 25, 2008 - 6:18pm.
For number 1 in your final paragraph, I have run into the same problem. I realized, however, that next actions merely need to be the smallest discretely-performable action, and then you can go from there. Just because my NA list says “read The Now Habit, page 19,” it doesn’t mean that I should stop and look at my list again once I turn to page 20. Sometimes Next Actions are just jumping-off points that will snowball into other actions within the same project. In fact, sometimes my project planning involves defining and writing down actions that aren’t next just so that I can have a clearer idea of where I’m going. I only put actual NAs on the lists I carry, and during my review I move the plain Actions up to Next status if all the NAs from a project are done. However, if I get on a roll with a particular project, I never stop myself from moving forward just because I’m advancing to a task that’s not on the list in front of me. For your second question… that’s what a tickler file is for, whether you keep it digitally or in 43 actual folders. »
 Agree...Submitted by CuriousGeorgeGuy on March 25, 2008 - 8:24pm.
Yes, I’m having that problem currently. I’m working on a “literature review” and aside from “read 100 articles and summarize them” I’m not sure how to break that up into steps. I mean the review of the articles is one step. Writing up the literature review is a second step. But all in all, I don’t have to do a lot of thinking, planning, etc., I just need to do it. I think, though, there are two possibilities. One is we’re thinking too narrowly. In addition to all of that we all still have to go by the grocery store, e-mail so-and-so, pay such and such bill, etc. I think that’s where GTD helps — “horizontally” I believe is the word. Vertically it probably depends on the project. What augmentedfourth is implying is important too. If you set a specific goal of reading “at least chapter 3” or “review/summarize at least 10 articles tonight” then I think that’s how those kinds of things can be managed. I think it’s a matter of holding yourself accountable for making progress on your “project” whatever that project might be. But I don’t think anywhere anyone says if you find you can finish your project in one sitting that you’re not allowed to. In sum, I think it’s a matter of finding what works for you! Does any of this help? »
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