Sometimes you’ll encounter work that is hard to pin down into lists. For example, how do you break down “write up chapter 23 of my novel”? Those of you who are used to thinking in terms of Getting Things Done “next actions” (like myself!) might get bogged down trying to define next actions when that isn’t really possible. In such a case, what do you do? How do you actually get the work done? Let’s discuss.

After watching the video, see whether any of your todos—particularly ones that are key action steps for achieving your goals—are of the kind that are hard to break down. If so, rephrase them: rather than describing the work to be done, think about which tasks you could complete to create the right conditions for doing the work.

Video transcript

[00:00:00] We've now spent a good amount of time identifying the key action steps that will help you make progress towards your goals and eventually achieve your goals. And we've spent a good amount of time organizing those action steps. Now, you might find that some of the action steps that you've identified don't really lend themselves to being written down in lists. So we created some projects in your task manager or whatever task management system you're using. And we try to identify the subtasks, you know, the component tasks of your projects. Right. Or maybe even some of your key action steps are simply one off tasks. But they sound vague. They’re still broad. It's hard to see how you can get started.

[00:00:42] So I wanted to take the time to discuss how to handle work that isn't really list based. This is especially relevant for those of you who are big fans of David Allen's Getting Things Done. Getting Things Done is such it's such a great book. It's such a great method. Right. David Allen had so many great insights. And one of the particular insights that I love that David Allen had is focus on what is the next action, what is the next physical thing that you can do to move your project forward. OK, and so a lot of us are used to really thinking that way. And I think that way a lot, too. But sometimes you will encounter work that is just very difficult to express in terms of next actions. OK, so this work is often, but not always, your deep work, your most important work. And we're going to cover that concept a little bit later on in the course. But what I wanted to do in this lesson is just show you an example of work that really lets itself—that lets you express it really well in a list with next actions and some examples of work that you cannot really express well in next actions or in a list like that. And for that latter type of work, how I recommend that you handle that instead, that you manage that work instead.

[00:02:06] So again, we are here in my task manager in Things 3. The first thing that I want to do is show you an example of work that is really easy to describe in a list. So I'm going to my trip to Bonaire project here in my Things 3 because I'm going to Bonaire soon on a diving vacation. And there's a bunch of things I'd like to do to prepare for this trip. So honestly, I could probably call this prepare for trip to Bonaire. OK, it's got a deadline because I'm going on June 19th. So the deadline is June 18th. And I have a bunch of tasks in here. OK, so I'll just walk through these to show you what they are.

[00:02:45] I've got to book some things with the diving shop that—I'm going to rent some gear and I'm going to do a few guided dives, a few unguided dives, but I got to book some stuff with them. And this is written vaguely. But if you open the checklist, I've got some more specific ways. OK, but this is something that I know how to do. So I can actually probably say email, VIP Diving to book courses, to book guided dives or courses. It'll probably be mostly guided dives. OK, I can see myself doing that. It's clear, right? I'm going to email them. Another task I have is decide whether to buy or rent dive gear. I've actually completed this. I'm going to buy my own dive gear, as we saw in my buy my own scuba gear project, so I can check this one off.

[00:03:30] I also have a task make an appointment for a PCR covid test. Right. So to get into Bonaire, I first have to take a test, test negative, etc. I have to make an appointment for such a test. Very easy. I know where to do it. There's a place right across the street from where I live to do it and I just have to go to their website and make an appointment. So I can visualize myself doing this as well. I know how to email. I know what that looks like. Make an appointment. Go on their—go to their website. Very easy. I got to get my girlfriend’s dive gear tested is another way—another thing I got to do to prepare for the trip. Now, actually, probably here, I should say, make an appointment with our local dive shop to get Mısra’s gear tested. OK, so that's a very actionable thing. Again, I can go to their website. I can send them a message easy. I should just say make an appointment with our local dive shop, honestly, to get our gear tested, to get new batteries for my for dive watch and to buy gear. OK.

[00:04:35] So then I can delete this one. I also want to buy a GoPro for some underwater photography or videography. That's easy. I know how to do that. Refresh my memory of nitrox procedures or nitrox theory. Anyway. So there's a bunch of tasks here, but they're all really obvious. Create tasks for the paperwork for entering Bonaire. I got to look up what is the paperwork I need to fill out to declare that I don't have coronavirus, et cetera, et cetera. Right. I got to pay a Marine reserve fee. I know how to do all these things. It's very obvious what these tasks are. But, um. And so if your key action steps—or really any to dos that you have—whether they're directly related to your goals or not, if they are this kind of project where the action steps are really easy is, you know, really simple, really clear. It's easy to add them to your task manager. Right. So you just do it like this.

[00:05:28] However, sometimes you find that that doesn't work. Now, let me give you some examples. So I've created some example projects just to show you where this might be difficult. Let's say you're building your own Twitter app, right. So you're building your own app that people can use to browse Twitter. That's not the official Twitter app. And you're working on version two. Right. And you want to build some new features. So you might want to say add—or build the feature that lets people see who liked their tweets. This is something that one of my favorite Twitter apps, Tweetbot, just added this feature. OK, so how are you going to do this? Right. Can you visualize yourself building this feature? Maybe. But what is the first step? Right. Like what is the next action?

[00:06:15] So if we if we take the David Allen approach, we're asking ourselves like, what is the next action here? So it might be like, OK, sketch out the feature. Right. And it may be OK, define the requirements and whatever, and we can get really specific on that. So maybe maybe let's say that this project is actually build the feature that lets people see who liked their tweets. OK, so maybe you think of this as a project because it's going to have multiple steps. But then what? Now we've got this project and how do you actually—so I can say define the requirements of the feature. Create a visual sketch of what the features should look like and so we can get nice and specific, but now we have this to do here and this to do says write the code, okay?

[00:07:03] This is just—at some point you've defined what it should look like. Now you've just got to do the programing bit, you know, the software development bit. And that part is just very hard to break down. If you've got any software development experience, you'll sometimes know where to start. But you find out that as you're writing something, you realize that there's something else you got to fix. First, you're yak shaving. You know, if you don't know what that means, look it up. And so. It's just not really possible to describe in very logical steps how exactly you're going to build out this features some things you can split out, like define the requirements of the future, create a visual sketch. But at some point, you've just got to do that programming work and you got to discover as you go what it is that you need to do. So how do you represent that in your task manager? Something like write the code. If I have a task like this, this may take me five—five days of three hours a day of work, you know, just to do it.

[00:07:58] So then what am I going to do? I'm going to schedule this for tomorrow and just keep it in my today. Day after day after day while I'm working on it. That's one option. However, a lot of the times I find that people will then procrastinate if they do things like that. So another option you can do for the kind of work that's very difficult to put into lists is to create tasks like this. Schedule a block of time to work on this feature. OK, so rather than trying to nail it down in your task manager, instead you can have a task and your task manager says schedule a block of time on your calendar or whatever to work on this feature. So rather than trying to describe everything in your task manager, you're using your task manager manager to actually give you the space to work on this feature. So remember, your task manager is just a tool. It's just a tool to help you do the actual work. What matters is that you do the work. What matters is not that everything is represented perfectly in your task manager. Right. So this is a way for you to actually do the work, even if in your task manager the process doesn't get represented perfectly.

[00:09:08] Let's do another example. Let's say you're writing a paper on the economics of vaccination. This is fun. I for college, I studied economics. I went to Swarthmore College and there are some professors at Swarthmore College who are doing some very interesting studies on how to improve or increase vaccination rates in the population. And so one of the things they're studying is what happens when you actually pay people to get vaccinated and you'll you know, you'll find that more people will end up being willing to take vaccines, which I think is great. And so, you know, let's say they're writing a paper, right, on a research study that they did. So you can imagine a bunch of things you can say, like define the overall structure of the paper, write right up that chapter or write up the introduction, write up the summary or write up the research method description, write up their research results, write the conclusion. And I can do a bunch of steps like this.

[00:10:11] But at some point you just hit like a section where it's like write up the research results and it's very difficult to break that down further in your task manager. So what could you do? Again, you can say schedule some time on the calendar to work on this. Right. Or you could simply say something like spend two hours on writing up the research results. So rather than having a task that's very binary about whether the research results are done or not, which might be very difficult to do in one go, you can actually phrase things this way, right? You can say spend two hours on writing up the research results. So now you can schedule this for Tuesday, say, right. I can say schedules for tomorrow and. It'll be very clear tomorrow, like, did I spend two hours writing that up, yes or no, you may not finish writing up the research results. However, this is a way to use your task manager to get you to actually do the work, even though the work is very difficult to write down in a list, okay?

[00:11:12] Let me do one more example. Let's say you're creating a short film for a festival. In fact, when I ran a previous version of this course, Big-Picture Productivity, live, one of my students was doing exactly this. There was a local film festival in France where he's from, and he was creating a short film for the festival. So what do you do when you're creating a short film? You can say come up with an idea, right? For the short film, you can say write up the script for. The short film for. Prepare the props I'll need for the film record. The short film ended the short film and send the film into the festival website or something like that. At some point you hit that task where it’s, “record the short film”, you know, and that is just tricky. Yeah, we can break that down to like record scene one, record scene two, and record scene three.

[00:12:11] But at some point you've still got to do, like, “record scene one”, right? And that may take some time. You may not get it right in one go. So often it is also the more creative type work that is just harder to pin down in lists. And you know what? That's OK. So what I want to tell you here is like use your task manager to list the steps whenever you can at whatever level of detail you know makes the most sense. Right. And often that is quite detailed. But at some point you're going to find that things are just hard to list. And that's OK. You know, don't get frustrated. Don't think I'll because I cannot list this in these super specific and next actions like David Allen, for example, emphasizes that's totally fine. Do what you need to do to actually do the work.

[00:12:58] So again, rather than, say, record the short film, we can say reserve two days on my calendar for recording the film. What does that mean? That may may mean a bunch of things. It may mean rescheduling appointments. So maybe your task is reschedule all of Wednesdays and Thursdays appointments. Right. It might mean talking to your spouse who lives with you and saying, hey, you know, can I have some some space, some quiet to do this right now? You can come up with all sorts of ways. So rather than trying to nail all the super, super specific steps in your task manager, you can instead create tasks to set the context right. To set the conditions, to create the conditions, really for being able to do your work.

[00:13:46] OK, I hope that all made sense. I think it should. So, again, think about the kinds of work that you're doing and what work do you have that really doesn't lend itself to very specific listing in terms of what's the next action? What is the next action? Don't stress out about it if you have that kind of work. But instead, rather than creating just those tasks like write the paper, build the feature, record the film, write, create tasks for creating the conditions, you know, whether that's scheduling time, telling people to leave you alone for a little while or just having something like, hey, today, spend two hours on my novel or whatever it is, create those tasks instead.

[00:14:30] All right. There's no workbook exercise here. I just want you to spend a little bit of time right now looking at your tasks, especially the key steps. Right, for your goals. Are any of them like this? Are any of those tasks like this where it's very difficult to pin them down exactly into like visualized next actions that you can do and if so, instead create tasks for setting the conditions to do that work?