Prevarication and trouble with "Next Actions"

[John . Smith]

Hello

PROBLEM

I have been finding a psychological problem with using just one "Next Action" for each project.

Part of the problem is that as a core principle, it seems that the more times I look at something and fail to execute it, the harder that task gets. i.e. The more I put something off, the higher its psychological 'resistance' becomes.

So what I find is that if I fail to execute that any given next action within a few days, it suddenly becomes much harder - stupidly hard to execute. And if I only have ONE next action for each project, then the whole project becomes blocked because of individual "stupidly high resistance" next actions.

In fact, over time, it's all too easy to end up with lots of important projects being blocked in this way.

The honest truth is that personally I find it all too easy for important stuff to get put off for no good reason. And I find that it gets put off for the bad reasons that
- it's not urgent (yet),
- nobody is chasing me for it (yet) and
- part of me doesn't want to do it yet because it's hard.
But what is worse is that having looked at it a few times and failed to do it, I now start to have the habit of failing to execute that task.

[ASIDE: It turns out I am not alone in this procrastination. Did you ever see Tim Urban's TED talk on this? 

https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator ]

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
One solution is of course to have more than one Next Action per Project. The problem is that although MLO has a "Next Action per Project" view, there is absolutely no way (that I am aware of) to get individual tasks that are not technically the next action within their MLO Project to appear on any "Next Actions per project" view in MLO.

The result that I don't normally use this Next Actions view, at all.

Instead, I flag up tasks for today manually (using Stars). The down-side of course of this method is that once I've ticked those tasks off as completed, there is no next task automatically on my list, so the project can stall again for that reason.

Also, if I make too many next actions for each project visible on any given day, then either
A) I can become overwhelmed by too much stuff on my screen at once OR
B) if I fail to complete them all within 2 or 3 few days, their psychological 'resistance' can soon start to build... and I now start to become numbed to seeing some of those tasks... and they fail to call me to action.
C) Or both!

Yes, I have experimented with "Complete Subtasks In Order" but in practice, I wind up getting confused with tasks being hidden from me accidentally and I wind up living in "All Tasks" views, that are of course cluttered up with stuff I have deliberately wanted hidden from view for now. 

Yes I have experimented with creating multiple sub-projects within a Project, but I find that fiddly & very artificial. I find it easy to get confused about what really is a Project and what is just a way to get tasks to appear on my Next Actions view!

Am I alone in wanting some simple way to flag up individual tasks to appear in the Next Actions view?

J

[Daniel Sekera]

I would say yes.  I mean maybe you're not alone, but a next action is a next action.  By definition there cannot be two next actions.  Only one can be done.  As you state, all the peripheral mental attributes you are assigning to your problem you are creating and I do not see any software except I guess for a excel spreadsheet with one task per cell and you just move to the top whatever you feel like working on when you feel like working.

A next action means you are at the point that you need to DO something.  The fact that you are making a conscious choice to not do it no software can control.

Based on your description me personally I would just have every single task coded as "hide the branch in the to-do" and just un-tick that box on whatever I was actually going to do at that moment

or just have every task for a project live and chose

or use a gantt chart

but i do not feel there is ever multiple next actions.  There might be multiple actions that can be done that really do not affect the timing of that actual stage of the project your in, but you can only do one at a time so chose and do it and move to the next.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganized+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/1285611e-2973-4a55-9625-1b753db29948%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Wallace Gilbraith]

I don’t use Next Actions, it sounds way too complicated

Each night, I review what’s Due tomorrow, and either Star it for doing tomorrow (then sort the Starred view into the sequence I’d like to do them), or defer the due date

Only takes 10 mins most nights, and I sleep well afterwards

--

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/1285611e-2973-4a55-9625-1b753db29948%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/CAHmP9kXWT6bd73DkxmzgFiXEAnLHxW_QGKsKLDstR0gNcVawcA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stéph]

I’m with Wallace on this one - although I find my task due dates frequently getting out of control. As a result, I’m now trying to implement a policy of setting the due date to the latest, deadline date which a task can be done and then just using the star tag to identify the things I plan to do tomorrow.

Stéphane

[John . Smith]

Personally I've never really understood Due Dates, unless they are EXTERNAL ones.

For me I just use Start Dates. As we know, if the task hasn't started yet it disappears off the Active task lists, so I use hotkeys to kick things into the future A LOT - as to when I want to be reminded to have a look at something 
e.g.  Alt+S  3 D [enter]
==> takes about half a second to kicks the current task 3 days into the future.

What are the advantages of using Due Dates?

To recap the problem with using only using "Do Tomorrow" (/today)  stars, is that once you've done whatever task it was for a project, the next task does not automatically appear. And the only way around that is to add more task to you "Do tomorrow" stars which then can become overwhelming.

J 

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 05.03.2018 um 12:27 schrieb John . Smith:
> What are the advantages of using Due Dates?

They should be set for any tasks that have a fixed deadline, so you
don't forget that deadline, e.g. when looking at the view "due next 7/30
days" in your regular reviews. This is the *last* day you can work on
that task. Often, you want or need to stark working on it much earlier.

So in contrast to that, start dates should be set to the earliest date
the task can be started, or to the date you intend to start working on
the task, since there is no separate field "scheduled date" for that.

-- Chris

[Nick Clark]

One problem with MLO is that due dates have to be set for repeating tasks even if it doesn't make sense. Dwight's workaround for this is to set sure dates so far in the future that they effectively never become due.

[Ed Wallace]

John, I get it. I don't think this will get fixed with software. Have you tried adderall? I only ask ask because I totally get what your saying, and it sounds just like me without my ADD meds!

[John . Smith]

Hi Ed

The solution to my MLO problem is... [drum-roll]  ...to take drugs!

Sorry but I had to laugh, even though I get your intent was to help.
OK, joking aside, in truth I do find that meditation does help a lot with focus & purpose. But drugs & meditation aside, I do still reserve the right to say that MLO would be easier to use is we could find a way to have more than one Next Action per Project. I still think the best thing of all would be to hand-pick additional individual tasks to flag them to appear on the Next Actions list. [Fwiw, GTDNext has this.]
 

Failing that, if we had a global setting to show the next XX tasks (e.g. 3 tasks) for all projects would be extremely welcome. [FWIW, Nirvana has this].

Given that other task managers have these features, maybe I'm not quite so bonkers after all?

Or even maybe a field at the Project level for how many tasks to show in the Next Actions list. That way for larger projects you could adjust this value up and keep smaller projects just showing the next 1 tasks.

Any other takers?

J

[robisme (Olivier R)]

Couldn't you display "active" or "available" actions, rather than "next action"?

Olivier

[Stéph]

If you want to hand pick additional next actions, couldn't you use the star to pick them, then customize the "next actions" filter so that it shows next actions OR starred actions?

On Tuesday, 20 March 2018 20:40:56 UTC, John . Smith wrote:

...MLO would be easier to use is we could find a way to have more than one Next Action per Project. I still think the best thing of all would be to hand-pick additional individual tasks to flag them to appear on the Next Actions list. ...

[John . Smith]

You might have thought so but I spent a long time battling with this one and apparently the answer is no, you can't do this.

From memory the problem is that there is no function for "IsNextAction()" and if you create a view to be based on Next Actions, then that is ALL that it shows...

...But if you work out a way to achieve this I'd definitely buy a pint (or whatever the on-line equivalent is!)

 J

[Fletcher Kauffman]

I, too, have this same problem. I've done a lot of work, personally, on understanding and parsing it (the resistance).

What I have discovered is that often, when I have an action on a to-do list (I do not use Next Actions), the ones that fallow (sit for a long time, glaring at me in red), are tasks that are, just in their name, somewhat vague.

That is, that sometimes, tasks I resisted were actually themselves not tasks, but desired outcomes. Something like "spend more time with Emily" is not actually an action-- it is an outcome.

Furthermore, I found that the key to nearly all of this was the first word of the title. If that first word was a concrete action verb (go, sit, write, call, open, close, take), then those things would get done. The kinds of actions that had a lot of resistance to them were things that "involve more than one step"-- and I did a lot of these: "Figure out", "Learn about", "Do something about", "Develop", "Work on". Those things would sit, because they weren't clear what I was supposed to do next.

I could possibly write a book on the rest of what I observed, but I did find this bit useful-- as a root cause.

I'm also working on a solution to this now.

[Domas]

Hi,

that's very useful!

I would be very interested to hear your other tips for "task naming psychology" & other areas :)