The next step in the process work flow is organize.

You organize everything in a set of lists which you can use to track the items awaiting your attention. It doesn’t matter where this list is. You can have it on a computer, a PDA, IPhone, on paper, on your legs. It doesn’t matter (except for yourself, especially if the list is on your legs ) where you keep these lists, as long as you have it. I’ll provide my setup in a later post.

Next actions

All next actions are gathered in this list. You can (and please do so:-) ) provide a context to these next actions. This context are extra information for how/where/which they can be don, such as :

• In the office
• at the phone
• at the computer
• at the store

An example is at the phone. Imagine you just had a great lunch meeting, but your stomach is demanding more attention and all your blood and power is concentrated to digest your great meal. Maybe this is a good moment to do some phone calls. Some low level, low brainpower phone-calls. Then you take your next action list and filter on the context ‘at the phone’.  The execution of actions is also related to your physical and mental energy. If your energylevel is very low, like you have the thinking peformance of an insect, what do you need to do.. Low level next actions. You can refill your stapler or give your plants in the office some water, or organise your email, or desk. (you can be sure that at a certain moment, when you are full of energy, and need to staple some important documents for and important business criticall meeting you run out of staples … Use your ‘braindead’ moments good

Project

If something you have to complete takes more than 2 next actions, it is  aproject. It might be someway difficult to get used to this idea (it was for me), but it helps a lot. Theses projects should be reviewed regulary to make sure every (current) project has a next action associated with it, and hence can be moved forward.

Waiting for

On this list all actions are stored that have been delegated to someone else. So before you can proceed the project this is tracked in this list and you should check it periodically if an action is due or needs a reminder to be sent.

Someday/Maybe

These are possible later action things. Somethingyou might do, but not now, maybe mater, maybe not.  You might do this someday, but not right now. For example “look for a holiday to Venice” or “learn Microsoft SharePoint development”

The calendar

Your calender is important to keep track of all appointments and commitments. The calendar contains the big stones you can put into a bigg glass. When you fill the glass with big stones, there is still plenty place left to keep filling it with little stones, and eventually with sand. So don’t fill in your calendar for 100% , because you will get interuptions that will mess up your schedule. Don’t plan more then 60% of your day.

What else is on your agenda? Everything that would ‘die’ if you don’t do it at that time. for example deadline driven next actions

What exactly does the next action mean?

Well, the next action is the next physical action you need to do to in order to move the current situation to completion.

Some examples :

• Talk to David about the book we need to buy (improve competence)
• Call Vanessa to schedule a meeting for marketing activities next month   (marketing campaign july 2009)
• Make a mind map for items to blog about  (update my blog)

These actions are real physical actions that need to happen. If I do them, I will move forward to completion (of a project).  (an example of a project is written between brackets next the the next action in the list above)

The basic idea is that a project exists of more next actions, but everything (or every project) needs a (one)  next action to go forward to become completed.

We have a lot of stuff. Stuff is anything that is hanging around (on your desk, in your head, your e-mail in basket,..) where no action has been defined yet.

When you have collected the stuff, you must do something with it. Actually, this is a continuous process, and you process stuff all the time.
Processing means you determine what to do with it.

First of all you need to decide if the stuff is actionable. If it isn’t , there are three possibilities.

• Trash it (many people forget to use a great key on their computer called DEL), or
• put it on a someday/maybe list (incubate), or
• file it for reference material

If it is actionable, you have to decide what the Next Action is. And please note that the answer to the question “Is it actionable” can only be 2 things. YES or NO.

If the Next Action takes less then 2 minutes to execute, DO IT (NOW)!

If the action takes more then 2 minutes to execute, you have to put it on a list and delegate or defer it. When you delegate it, don’t forget to add it to your Waiting For list so you can track it later. If you defer it, you might put it on your calendar, if it is a day specific action, or put it on your Project list as a Next Action.

Oh yes, some other rules you should really follow :

• Don’t get distracted by other stuff when you process stuff. Take care that you handle it one at the time, item per item.
• Don’t (ever) put anything back in In.

Stuff is all over. One of the basic principles of GTD is get everything out of your head, into a trusted system. I’ll explain more about my trusted system in a separate post.

Stuff is anything that you have allowed into your life (logical or physical), that doesn’t belong where it actually is, and you haven’t defined the desired outcome yet. It can occur to you in digital format, paper, email, voicemail, a small note you found in your jacket or it might be just stuff in your head.

But what does get it out of your head actually means? We’ll its a simple as can be, get it out of your head, and put in on paper. You can decide what you do with the paper later, but first get it from your head to a paper.

When my wife explained her ‘’lists’ to me, I laughed. She inherited this behaviour of making lists from her father who has worked as a HR manager. The reason I laughed with this was because the methodology was not the correct one for me. She worked with a Todo list, and for me a simple todo list doesn’t work. I needed more.

Now, how can you empty your personal in-basket (your head) and actually do something with it? Put it on paper. The moment you put it on paper, it’s out of your mind.
And maybe you know, but your mind has no idea of time. Is has no clue of today, tomorrow or in a few months. The moment you open a loop (you start by engaging yourself to do something), it reacts like you should be doing that all the time, until it is marked as complete. Imagine what that does when you open 2 loops. Or maybe you are a crazy maker and your mind thinks you should be handling 50 tasks or 1000.

May I suggest you stop reading for 3 minutes and  execute this exercise : write down 5 current things that are on your mind at this moment. Really think good about it.

When you have written this small list down, how did you feel? I bet you felt some degree of positive emotion like relief, release, but possibly you also felt felt frustration, guilt, panic fear,… Isn’t it very strange that you can have such an opposite feeling by doing exactly the same exercise.

Welcome to the collection phase . After you have written it all down to paper you have to put it in one place. This can be a plastic tray, or if you have lots of stuff gathered a box. We call this place IN.

You have to collect anything in your environment that lays somewhere. All the papers, notes, receipts, business cards that are widely spread allover, should be put in the IN-basket.

When everything is gatered in IN, you have to process it. This means that you have to perform several actions on this pile of paper. This is the next phase in the 5 phases process of GTD. The process phase.

It has been a while since I blogged something. The main reason is that I was very busy. But being very busy is not a good reason. We will always be busy, all of our lives. I was just caught in the busy-trap. Busy doing what? Well, Iat this moment I am contracted in a large company in the energy market as a Domain Expert SharePoint (since 2008), and I run (with an associate) a company in IT (Retail, business to business). I am also married and have got kids. So what was I actually doing? To be honest, sometimes I didn’t knew what I was doing, or what I was not doing and should be doing. Does this sound familiar?

A long time ago, a good friend of mine named Marcel told be some things about Getting things done and 7 habits of highly effective people. At that moment, I wasn’t ready for that life changing information, so I did absolutely nothing with it.

A few months ago I read Getting things done , ‘The Art of Stress-Free Productivity’ from David Allen. This was that a life changing moment. After reading this book, I started looking on how to implement this in my life. This was definitely not a simple assignment..

Anyhow, these moments were life changing and therefore I will share this very useful information with you

I’ll do my best (and added it as a Next Action to my action list) to post on a daily base something about why this thing matters for me.