Time is the quality of nature that keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working. —Anonymous (loc: 135-36)

First of all, if it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection bucket, that you know you'll come back to regularly and sort through. • Second, you must clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it. • Third, once you've decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system you review regularly. (loc: 238-42)

Managing Action Is the Prime Challenge (loc: 313-14)

No matter what the setting, there are five discrete stages that we go through as we deal with our work. We (1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. (loc: 388-90)

Let's examine the three requirements to make the collection phase work: 1 | Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head. 2 | You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by with. 3 | You must empty them regularly. (loc: 451-53)

The final success factor for collecting should be obvious: if you don't empty and process the “stuff” you've collected, your buckets aren't serving any function other than the storage of amorphous material. Emptying the bucket does not mean that you have to finish what's in your voice-mail, e-mail, or in-basket; it just means you have to take it out of the container, decide what it is and what should be done with it, and, if it's still unfinished, organize it into your system. You don't put it back into “in”! (loc: 468-71)

Is It Actionable? There are two possible answers for this: YES and NO. No Action Required If the answer is NO, there are three possibili- ties: 1 | It's trash, no longer needed. 2 | No action is needed now, but something might need to be done later (incubate). 3 | The item is potentially useful information that might be needed for something later (reference). These three categories can themselves be managed; we'll get into that in a later chapter. For now, suffice it to say that you need 33 THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE | PART ONE a trash basket and <Del> key for trash, a “tickler” file or calendar for material that's incubating, and a good filing system for refer- ence information. Actionable This is the YES group of items, stuff about which something needs to be done. (loc: 498-503)

Two things need to be determined about each actionable item: 1 | What “project” or outcome have you committed to? and 2 | What's the next action required? If It's About a Project. . . You need to capture that outcome on a “Projects” list. That will be the stake in the ground that reminds you that you have an open loop. A Weekly Review of the list (see page 46) will bring this item back to you as something that's still outstanding. It will stay fresh and alive in your management sys- tem until it is completed or eliminated. What's the Next Action? This is the critical question for anything you've collected; if you answer it appro- priately, you'll have the key substantive thing to orga- nize. (loc: 505-10)

Once you've decided on the next action, you have three options: 1 | Do it. If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined. 2 | Delegate it. If the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, Am I the right person to do this? If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity. 3 | Defer it. If the action will take longer than two minutes, and you are the right person to do it, you will have to defer acting on it until later and track it on one or more “Next Actions” lists. (loc: 516-19)

To manage actionable things, you will need a list of projects, storage or files for project plans and materials, a calendar, a list of reminders of next actions, and a list of reminders of things you're waiting for. (loc: 523-25)

Projects I define a project as any desired result that requires more than one action step. (loc: 531-32)

Projects do not need to be listed in any particular order, whether by size or by priority. They just need to be on a master list so you can review them regularly enough to ensure that appropri- ate next actions have been defined for each of them. You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. (loc: 540-42)

Project Support Material For many of your projects, you will accumulate relevant informa- tion that you will want to organize by theme or topic or project name. Your “Projects” list will be merely an index. All of the details, plans, and supporting information that you may need as you work on your various projects should be contained in separate file folders, computer files, notebooks, or binders. (loc: 544-47)

it makes sense to subdivide your “Next Actions” list into categories, such as “Calls” to make when you're at a phone or “Project Head Ques- tions” to be asked at your weekly briefing. (loc: 590-92)

There are two kinds of “incubate” systems that could work for this kind of thing: “Someday/Maybe” lists and a “tickler” file. “Someday/Maybe” It can be useful and inspiring to maintain an ongoing list of things you might want to do at some point but not now. This is the “parking lot” for projects that would be impossi- ble to move on at present but that you don't want to forget about entirely. You'd like to be reminded of the possibility at regular intervals. (loc: 602-5)

I suggest you include a scan of the con- tents in your Weekly Review (see page 46). “Tickler” File The most elegant version of holding for review is the “tickler” file, sometimes also referred to as a “suspended” or “follow-on” file. This is a system that allows you to almost literally mail something to yourself, for receipt on some designated day in the future. Your calendar can serve the same function. You might remind yourself on your calendar for March 15, for example, that 43 44 THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE | PART ONE your taxes are due in a month; or for September 12, that Swan Lake will be presented by the Bolshoi at the Civic Auditorium in six weeks. For further details, refer to chapter 7. (loc: 612-18)

The Weekly Review Everything that might potentially require action must be reviewed on a frequent enough basis to keep your mind from tak- ing back the job of remembering and reminding. In order to trust the rapid and intuitive judgment calls that you make about actions from moment to moment, you must consistently retrench at some more elevated level. In my experience (with thousands of people), that translates into a behavior critical for success: the Weekly Review. All of your open loops (i.e., projects), active project plans, and “Next Actions,” “Agendas,” “Waiting For,” and even “Someday/ Maybe” lists should be reviewed once a week. (loc: 651-55)

The Weekly Review is the time to • Gather and process all your “stuff.” • Review your system. • Update your lists. • Get clean, clear, current, and complete. (loc: 661-62)

There are four criteria you can apply, in this order: 1 | Context 2 | Time available 3 | Energy available 4 | Priority Context (loc: 684)

When you're getting things done, or “working” in the universal sense, there are three different kinds of activities you can be engaged in: • Doing predefined work • Doing work as it shows up • Defining your work Doing Predefined Work When you're doing predefined work, you're working off your “Next Actions” lists—completing tasks that you have previously determined need to be done, managing your workflow. (loc: 694-97)

there are at least six different per- spectives from which to define that. To use an aerospace analogy, the conversation has a lot to do with the altitude. • 50,000+ feet: Life • 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year vision • 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals • 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility • 10,000 feet: Current projects • Runway: Current actions (loc: 710-12)

Your mind goes through five steps to accomplish virtually any task: 56 1 | Defining purpose and principles 2 | Outcome visioning 3 | Brainstorming 4 | Organizing 5 | Identifying next actions (loc: 770-72)

Choose one project that is new or stuck or that could simply use some improvement. Think of your purpose. Think of what a successful outcome would look like: where would you be physically, finan- cially, in terms of reputation, or whatever? Brainstorm potential steps. Organize your ideas. Decide on the next actions. (loc: 815-18)

links to kb pim. capturing ideas. externalizing. organize later. emergent structure. (loc: 967)

Psychologists are beginning to label this and similar processes “distributed cognition.” It's getting things out of your head and into objective, reviewable formats. (loc: 979-80)

Few people can hold their focus on a topic for more than a couple of minutes, without some objec- tive structure and tool or trigger to help them. Pick a big project you have going right now and just try to think of nothing else for more than sixty seconds. This is pretty hard to do unless you have a pen and paper in hand and use those “cognitive artifacts” (loc: 983-85)

as the anchor for your ideas. Then you can stay with it for hours. That's why good thinking can happen while you're working on a computer document about a project, mind-mapping it on a legal pad of on a paper tablecloth in a hip restaurant, or just having a meeting about it with other people in a room that allows you to hold the context (a whiteboard with nice wet markers really helps there, too). (loc: 988-90)

The primary criterion must be expansion, not contraction. Go for Quantity, Not Quality Going for quantity keeps your thinking expansive. Often you won't know what's a good idea until you have it. (loc: 1001-2)

divergence convergence (loc: 1002)

If the next action is not yours, you must nevertheless clarify whose it is (this is a pri- mary use of the “Waiting For” action list). In a group-planning situation, it isn't necessary for everyone to know what the next step is on every part of the project. Often all that's required is to allocate responsibility for parts of the project to the appropriate persons and leave it up to them to identify next actions on their particular pieces. (loc: 1045-48)

When you've finished processing “in,” you will have 1 | trashed what you don't need; 2 | completed any less-than-two-minute actions; 3 | handed off to others anything that can be delegated; 4 | sorted into your own organizing system reminders of actions that require more than two minutes; and 5 | identified any larger commitments (projects) you now have, based on the input. (loc: 1519-21)

If There Is an Action . . . What Is It? This is the biggie. If there's something that needs to be done about the item in “in,” then you need to decide what exactly that next action is. “Next Actions” again, means the next physical, visible activity that would be required to move the situation toward closure. This is both easier and more difficult than it sounds. The next action should be easy to figure out, but there are often some quick analyses and several planning steps that haven't occurred yet in your mind, and these have to happen before you can determine precisely what has to happen to complete the item, even if it's a fairly simple one. (loc: 1620-25)

“Pending” stack of papers that have been processed. (loc: 1718-19)

The Basic Categories There are seven primary types of things that you'll want to keep track of and manage from an organizational perspective: • A “Projects” list • Project support material • Calendared actions and information • “Next Actions” lists • A “Waiting For” list • Reference material • A “Someday/Maybe” list (loc: 1746-49)

The Most Common Categories of Action Reminders You'll probably find that at least a few of the following common list headings for next actions will make sense for you: • “Calls” • “At Computer” •“Errand's” • “Office Actions” or “At Office” (miscellaneous) • “At Home” • “Agendas” (for people and meetings) • “Read/Review” “Calls” This is the list of all the phone calls you need to make; you can work off it as long as you have a phone available. (loc: 1808-12)