Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 18 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Make it impossible to fail
— From Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
When we think of our never-ending to-do list, or when we feel stuck on the project in which we are working, it’s natural to feel resistance. This resistance comes from not being clear on what we need to do, says David Allen, renowned productivity guru, in his book Getting Things Done.
Yet sometimes that clarity we seek is muddled by our way of looking at the task: if you write down a to-do item as, for example, “Tires for the car,” it may be too big and unclear of an item.
Allen suggests an incredibly simple, but oh-so-effective solution. By asking yourself this question and acting on it, it will be almost impossible for you to fail on making progress: “What’s the next action?”
And I’d take it one step further as: What is the immediate, smallest, next action required, for me to move forward with this project?
“This is the critical question for anything [you’re going to write down on your to-do list]” says Allen. “If you answer it appropriately, you’ll have the key substantive thing [to move forward]. The ‘next action’ is the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality of this thing toward completion.”
In the above example of the tires, the immediate next action is not actually you changing the tires. It’s not making an appointment at the tire shop to bring your car in, either. It’s calling your friend Fred, who told you he’d give you the info of the shop where he got his cars’ tires changed at a great price.
So, the broad “tires for the car,” that has been in your to-do list for the past week, suddenly turns into this immediate, small, next action: “Call Fred for name and phone of the tire shop.”
By breaking it down into small, actionable, next-action chunks, any task can be achieved.
It’s so simple that all we intuitively know it, don’t we? (Yet sometimes we need someone to point out the obvious for us for it to sink in. And that is why Allen’s Getting Things Done system has worked so well for millions of people worldwide, it’s so effective!)
And then what?
The author says, “Do it, Delegate it, or Defer it. Once you’ve decided on the next action, you have three options.”
1. Do it. “If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.”
2. Delegate it. “If the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, Am I the right person to do this? If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity.”
3. Defer it. “If the action will take longer than two minutes, and you are the right person to do it, you will have to defer acting on it until later and track it.”
I’ve implemented this simple system for a while now, and it really makes it almost impossible to fail. It always gets me unstuck. And sometimes the action I need to take is so small, that it makes me laugh and, thus, I do it with much joy to move forward.
Hope this turns out to be as effective for you as it’s been for me!
P.S. If you want to learn and apply this and other ways to achieve your goals in 90 days, I’m starting a program called Achieve in 90. Hope you can join us!
ACTION
TODAY: Redo your to-do list in terms of the immediate, smallest, next action required, for you to move forward with your projects.
FUTURE: Make it a habit of thinking in immediate, small, next actions required to move your to-do list forward and achieve your goals. This approach brings clarity and replaces overwhelm with a feeling of can-do when you focus on the next action that you can take. That’s why it makes it impossible to fail.
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