GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

This is the biggie. If there's something that needs to be done about the item in "in," then you need to decide what exactly that next action is. "Next Actions" again, means the next physical,visible activity that would be required to move the situation toward closure.

This is both easier and more difficult than it sounds.

The next action should be easy to figure out, but there are often some quick analyses and several planning steps that haven't occurred yet in your mind, and these have to happen before you can determine precisely what has to happen to complete the item, even if it's a fairly simple one. 

Let's look at a sample list of the things that a person might typically have his attention on.

• Clean the garage

• Do my taxes

• Conference I'm going to

• Bobby's birthday

• Press release

• Performance reviews

• Management changes

 Although each of these items may seem relatively clear as a task or project, determining the next action on each one will take some thought.

• Clean the garage

 ... Well, I just have to get in there and start. No, wait a minute, there's a big refrigerator in there that I need to get rid of first. I should find out if John Patrick wants it for his camp. I should...

• Call John re refrigerator in garage

 What about. . .

• Do my taxes

 ... but I actually cant start on them until I have my last K-l back. Can't do any thing until then. So I'm...

• Waiting for K-l from Acme Trust

And for the. . .

• Conference I'm going to  

... I need to find out whether Sandra is going to prepare a press kit for us. I guess I need to. . .

• E-mail Sandra re press kits for the conference  

. . . and so forth. The action steps—"Call John," "Waiting for K-l," "E-mail Sandra"—are what need to be decided about everything that is actionable in your in-basket.

The Action Step Needs to Be the Absolute Next Physical Thing to Do

Remember that these are physical, visible activities. Many people think they've determined the "next action" when they get it down to "set meeting." But that's not the next action, because it's not descriptive of physical behavior. How do you set a meeting? Well, it could be with a phone call or an e-mail, but to whom? Decide. If you don't decide now, you'll still have to decide at some other point, and what this process is designed to do is actually get you to finish the thinking exercise about this item. If you haven't identified the next physical action required to kick-start it, there will be a psychological gap every time you think about it even vaguely. You'll tend to resist noticing it.

Until you know what the next physical action is, there's still more thinking required before anything can happen.

When you get to a phone or to your computer, you want to have all your thinking completed so you can use the tools you have and the location you're in to more easily get things done, having already defined what there is to do. What if you say to yourself, "Well, the next thing I need to do is decide what to do about this?" That's a tricky one. Deciding isn't really an action, because actions take time, and deciding doesn't. There's always some physical activity that can be done to facilitate your decision-making. Ninety-nine percent of the time you just need more information before you can make a decision. That additional information can come from external sources ("Call Susan to get her input on the proposal") or from internal thinking ("Draft ideas about new reorganization"). Either way, there's still a next action to be determined in order to move the project forward.

Determine what you need to do in order to decide.

Once You Decide What the Action Step is

You have three options once you decide what the next action really is.

• Do it (if the action takes less than two minutes).

• Delegate it (if you're not the most appropriate person to do the action).

• Defer it into your organization system as an option for work to do later.

Do It