25 episodes! Thank you all for listening and helping us grow the ProductivityCast community!

As we grow and change in our personal and professional lives, we should all consider if the way you see your “next actions” (the granular, physical tasks we take to move projects forward, a la Getting Things Done by David Allen). If we approach next-action crafting in time chunks smaller or larger, or based on different contexts, than you need to accomplish them, then we’ll see ourselves being less effective. In this cast, the ProductivityCast team addresses the issue of priming ourselves to appropriate next-action thinking in our productivity systems.

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In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Francis Wade

Art Gelwicks

Show Notes

Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Quantified Self (DC Quantified Self - Ray is the Organizer)

Eisenhower Matrix (Merrill-Covey Matrix)

Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory

Life changes to give you pause to know it’s time to reflect on the structure, time and contexts of your next-action planning:

1- Birth

2- Death

Professional Transitions

   3- I've Been Demoted!

   4- I've Been Promoted!

   5- I've Been Hired!

   6- Unemployment (whether involuntary or by choice)

   7- Changing Careers (while employed or not)

8- Starting School

9- First Job

10- Moving Home

11- Moving Office

12- Downsizing Home

13- Starting Retirement

15- Marriage / Long-Term Commitment

15- Divorce / Separation / Ending a Long-Term Relationship

Calculator - Do You Need a Task Management Improvement? by Francis Wade

Francis: “The Ultimate, Evergreen Guide to Choosing Your Next Task Management App or Practice.” Plus. the stuff on implicit vs explicit tagging is in my book which is being updated - http://perfect.mytimedesign.com. Francis also included the idea in this paper - http://www.2time-sys.com/can-time-actually-be-managed/

Francis: The idea of facing changing constraints as task load increases, and the need to see a change is also mentioned in this article: What are the greatest task management tools, and why?

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is h:mm:ss.ms to h:mm:ss.ms (e.g., 0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000 starts at 0.00 seconds and ends at 4 seconds in the cast's audio).

Read More

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are you ready to manage your work and

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personal world better to live a

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fulfilling productive life then you've

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come to the right place

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productivity cast the weekly show about

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all things productivity here your hosts

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ray Sydney Smith and Augusto pronounces

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weight and art Galax welcome back

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everybody to episode 25 of productivity

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cast and so I just want to thank you all

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for listening to productivity cast and I

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want to welcome to the show today

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gusto pinaud francis Wade and art Galax

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welcome to the show gentlemen guys I'm

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doing really well and as I was saying

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pre-show I'm I'm double caffeinated I'm

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drinking two types of caffeine this

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morning so I'm probably a little jittery

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but I'm gonna I'm gonna try and keep it

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level keep it level for us all today so

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we're gonna we're gonna talk today about

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a rather interesting concept principle

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concept centering on the premise of

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getting things done next action

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principles and how those things change

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over time and so I'm gonna hand the mic

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over to you a goose toe to explain to

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the audience what we're gonna be talking

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about today I was looking at my next

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action list as it was getting behind and

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I couldn't understand why it's not a

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matter of the job it's not a matter of

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the tasks per se but the fact was what's

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getting behind and I started to get

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accumulated so the question for me was

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is this something because I've been

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extremely busy or this is something

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because a condition around my day-to-day

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change in my particular case was the

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second one a condition around my

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workplace my work day-to-day change so

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what happened was I begin changing or

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evolving my role from a person who spent

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a lot of time in the office to a person

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who spent almost none in the office in

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other words a world warrior again

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as I was looking at that I begin to

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consider or ask myself if the way you

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see your next actions and how is

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affected by the unconscious time you

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think you have to accomplish them so if

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you think for example on the two-minute

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rule the two minutes without any doubts

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in arbitrary number

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so we with practice we begin to identify

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what kind of task can be done on that 2

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minutes roll the same way that when we

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are when we have less time we change

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that 2 minutes to maybe a minute or 30

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seconds and everything else going to the

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system or when we have a ridiculous

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amount of time for example a long train

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trip coast-to-coast then we can go to a

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15-minute time because we'll make no

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difference we are not going anywhere so

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I begin to wonder if hold your next

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actions do conscious or unconscious

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begin setting that same time so when I'm

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sitting at work this is around the time

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I can do without being interrupted or

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without the next meeting coming or

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without somebody coming to my desk and

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ask me what I'm doing and you begin

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defining your next actions based on that

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interval if that's true then you should

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be able to adjust it one way or the

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other but I'm curious if people also

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observe the same thing in other words if

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they also notice that their next actions

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are defined to a specific interval of

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time or is just the way mine works

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enough yeah I'm thinking about this from

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the perspective of one of the questions

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that I always ask myself and I ask other

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people when they're trying to do task

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estimation is what's the amount of time

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that you think a task is going to take

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based on either assessment or

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historical values what's important I

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think related to what you're bringing up

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Augusto is that I don't know that it's

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necessarily contextual to the time you

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have available because if you think

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about traditional project management

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methodology you've got time cost and

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scope

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well if time becomes an inflexible value

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which is this is the amount of time I

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have in my calendar the only other two

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