Tools for Thought

One of the overlooked advantages of using context lists to organize your next actions is the stark feedback they provide. It’s easy to see which contexts you’re good at working through, and which ones are getting less attention.

When I had a day job, I was always very good at getting next actions at work done, but as soon as I got home, I had much less motivation to complete the actions on my @Home list. This created a vicious cycle. Because I didn’t do the actions on my list, I was less inclined to look at them, and the less I looked at them, the less inclined I was to do them. Then I started unconsciously resisting collecting and processing these actions, so they would sit in the back of my mind at work, stealing focus.

After a while, I noticed that if I could force myself to do some of the actions on my @Home list, my resistance to doing the other items on the list not only broke down, but I was actually motivated to keep going until the list was as empty as I could get it. If I had to leave in 10 minutes, I’d try to see if there was one more thing I could get done before leaving, without having to psych myself up to do it. On the contrary, it was harder for me to get out the door because I wanted to get “just one more thing” done.

If I resolved to do at least one action on my @Home list before allowing myself to kick back, I figured that I would get the motivation I needed to continue working down the list. Sometimes this worked, but the results were inconsistent. In many cases I wound up just doing the one thing I committed to, and nothing else. Other times I would literally work through my entire list in one evening, or get very close to it. What accounted for the difference?

The Two Action Rule

Eventually, I figured it out. The answer lies in the phrase I used earlier: if I could force myself to do some of the actions. “Some” means a minimum of two. So I upgraded my resolution from committing to one task to two. From that point forward, I flew through my @Home list — or my @Computer list, when that one got stuck. It may seem like a minor point, but the difference between completing one task on your list and two tasks is huge.

Why two? Just as two points make a line, completing two tasks, however small, creates a sense of direction and perceived progress. The more quickly you can complete two next actions in a row, the greater the sense of momentum you’ll have that will feed itself into how you carry out the rest of the list. So the rule is:

To regain momentum on a stuck action list, commit to completing a minimum of two actions on it, however small, in quick succession, with a bias toward the oldest items.

If you get a couple of important, “big rock” tasks out of the way first, so much the better, but if you lack the energy to get started, just find a couple of small actions that can be knocked off fairly quickly, and you’ll probably find that you have more energy and motivation to get to the bigger things. Every time you close a loop, you release some amount of pent-up energy that becomes available for handling whatever comes next.

Resetting the comfort zone

Sometimes we resist working down our action lists because we get used to having a certain number of items on it. The first time I completed everything on my @Home list, I didn’t trust that I had really captured everything I needed to do at home. That’s because I was accustomed to having a dozen items on that list, so seeing an empty field was uncomfortable. We unconsciously reach a point where having a list becomes an end in itself, instead of actually completing the things on the list.

The problem isn’t whether or not your lists are empty, but whether or not they’re moving towards empty. If you can commit to reducing your lists by two items each time you review them, you’ll know you’re headed in the right direction. The rule applies primarily to when you’re only reviewing next actions, not processing your in-basket. When you’re processing, you might add four next actions, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting behind if you only do two of them.

Prioritizing the most outstanding items

An important factor in any action list is perceived turnover. The longer an action item sits on your list, the more inclined you are to grow numb to it. You see it, but you’re no longer “reading” it. The question is no longer when you’re going to do it, but whether or not you’re going to do it at all.

Therefore, the two best candidates for applying the Two Action Rule are the two oldest tasks on your list. If you don’t have the time to do those items, pick the two oldest ones you do have the time to finish. If there are items that stay on your list for longer than you consider acceptable, it’s time to rethink them. Consider whether the task can be delegated to someone else, or whether it can be deferred using your tickler file, calendar or Someday/Maybe list. Or just do a reality check and reconsider whether it actually needs to be done, or is just list clutter.

(Photo credit: A.K. Photography)

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