Getting Things Done - GTD
Goals, Responsibilities and Next Actions
AUTHOR: David Torné
What should I do next? That is the big question, and knowing the answer is one of the secrets to keep your business under control while you progress towards your goals. Any self-respecting GTD application, including FacileThings, allows you to filter your actions by the energy level, the context and the time needed to get them done, so you can obtain a reduced list of potential next actions. However, the power is not in the tool, but in the work and reflection you made about “what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go.”
You must always keep in mind your goals—where you are going—and what things you need to do to achieve them. Wondering if an action—or a project—helps you get closer to your goal, is a powerful filter level. It allows you to keep up with what you want to achieve, creating a workflow and taking a steady speed. You just need to keep the tasks directly related to this purpose in your next actions list.
“Work for a maximum of 3 goals at once. Otherwise your efforts will be spread, you will begin to move away from your purpose and your motivation will fade out.”
Your areas of responsibility lie beneath your goals. Actions that are linked to some of them have a real meaning in your workflow. It is up to you to decide what tasks you prioritize at any given time, depending on the area you need to focus. Depending on the situation, it may be more interesting to devote your time to professional issues or to your personal side.
For all your casual tasks that you cannot frame within an area of responsibility, you should ask yourself if it really should be done. If such kind of questions persist it is a sign that you need to review your areas of focus.
Once applied these criteria you can use the more conventional filters and decide according to context, time and energy. This allows you to refine the criteria on goals and responsibilities and move forward.
Implementing it involves making a prior reflection to decide what your goals and areas of responsibility are, followed by a regular review of your progress. Reflecting and reviewing; an evidence that productivity is not restricted only to your activity.
Advice on FacileThings
For all the application users that want to follow these criteria: there is a little dropdown that goes unnoticed in the top left of your Next Actions list, called Focus on. One click allows you to access a menu to filter according to your goals and areas of responsibility. Really useful if you want to apply the criteria I discuss in this post.
These features are the ones that make me opt for applications specifically designed for GTD. In others you have to devote time and energy to figure out ways to implement these functional details.
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