With “Getting Things Done” (GTD) the importance of the “next action” cannot be over emphasised.  It’s the beauty of the next action that let’s you clear your mind of things, (that need to be done but not yet), and focus only on what needs to be done right then and there.

GTD is tool agnostic, meaning it can be implemented by any number of tools and software.  Some of them are GTD centric and some aren’t, but most software I’ve tried missed something around the next action.  Often, I’d complete an action associated with a topic and I’d have to remember to go elsewhere to initiate another next action for the project.  Otherwise that project then gets forgotten until the next weekly review is done… and this can be too late.

I’m lucky enough that my organisation uses Lotus Notes and I’ve picked up eProductivity from Eric Mack.

eProductivity has this “Next Action” thing down pat.  Watch this!

First of all I’ve looked at my project under Category: Blog Subcategory: Posts Project: Successful follow up post, and decided what the next three actions are to achieve this project.  The first action has been designated the next action so it has a star beside it.

Then I complete the first action and press the button to mark it complete.  This is what I get.

At this stage I can choose the next action from those actions I’ve already put in, or I can create a new action to mark as next.  Or I can mark the whole project complete.  It also has an option to have no next action.  Try not to use this unless is a Someday/Maybe type of project.  To avoid having no next action on important ones, I often add a next action of “Decide the next action or plan of attack”

Whichever way I go, I always have a next action marked on all the projects that are important.

Let’s say I decided that action one’s results were such that action three should actually be my next action, my project would then look like this.

Note the star and the change in order of the action items.

Once again, well done Eric and team.

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