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What Now?

In the frenzy of anaverage workday, how can you be sure you're focusing on the most important work? Just trust your instincts — and check your lists.

Choosing Actions in the Moment
Evaluating Daily Work
Reviewing Your Own Work

During your real-time, plow-through, get-it-done workday, how do you decide what work to tackle at any given point? My simple answer is, trust your heart. Or your spirit. Or, if you’re allergic to those kinds of words, try these: your gut, the seat of your pants, your intuition.

But first, you need a framework. “Setting priorities,” in the traditional sense of focusing on your long-term goals and values, does not provide a practical framework for most of your daily decisions and tasks. You have to consider many factors before making the best decision about what to do and when.

Depending on your time frame, there are several approaches to making these choices. You can choose actions based on the moment or day, or on a broader perspective about your life and work. Once you learn these models, you can use them to help you choose actions in any situation.

Choosing Actions in the Moment

Much of our work just shows up in the moment, and usually becomes the priority. For instance, you need to pay attention when your boss shows up and wants a few minutes of your time. Or you discover a serious problem with fulfilling a major customer’s order, and you have to solve it right away.

These are all understandable judgment calls. But the angst begins to mount when you fail to review the other actions on your lists and renegotiate them with coworkers. Only if you know what you’re not doing can you tolerate the sacrifices of falling behind on your work. That requires regular processing of your in-basket (defining your work) and consistently reviewing complete lists of all your predetermined work.

So, how do you choose what to do at any given time, in any situation? Try applying these four criteria, in this order:

Context. You can do some things anywhere (like drafting ideas about a project with pen and paper), but most require a specific location (at home, at your office) or some productivity tool (such as a phone or a computer). These factors limit your choices about what you can do in the moment. If your “Next Actions” list is divided into categories — Calls, At Home, At Computer, Errands, Agenda for Joe, etc. — it’s easier to pinpoint actions you can take in your current context.

Time Available. How much time do you have before you need to do something else? If you have a meeting in two hours, find something on your list that might take that long. If you have 10 minutes, find a 10-minute job.

Energy Available. Some actions require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy. Others need more physical horsepower. Some need very little of either. The key is to match productive activity with your vitality level. Keep an inventory of things that require very little energy — like file purging or updating your address list — on your “Next Actions” list so you can still be productive in a low-energy state.

Priority. Given your context, time and energy available, what action will give you the highest payoff? This is where you need to make a judgment call.

Evaluating Daily Work

When you’re getting things done, you’re engaging in one of three kinds of activities:

Doing predefined work. This is work from your “Next Actions” lists — tasks you have previously determined need to be done.

Doing work as it shows up. These are the unexpected things on which you’ll need to expend some time and energy. But don’t lose focus on what’s most important — your “Next Actions” list.

Defining your work. This entails clearing up your in-basket, email, voicemail and meeting notes, and breaking down new projects into actionable steps. If you regularly define your work by processing your in-basket, and making sure your predefined work gets done, you’ll have more focused mental energy available to deal with life’s inevitable surprises.

Reviewing Your Own Work

Priorities should drive your choices, but you can’t identify your priorities without knowing what your work actually is. There are at least six perspectives from which to define your work. Try thinking of them in terms of altitude:

50,000+ feet: Life
40,000 feet: Three-to-five-year visions
30,000 feet: One-to-two-year goals
20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
10,000 feet: Current projects
Runway: Current actions

While the "50,000-foot level" is the most important context within which to set priorities, we can gain greater freedom and resources to work on our larger life goals by understanding and implementing all the levels of our work — especially the runway and 10,000-foot levels. This bottom-up approach is a critical factor in achieving a balanced, productive and comfortable life. When making decisions about what to do next, start at the runway.

Runway: Current actions. Your “Next Actions” list is the accumulation of actions you need to take — all the phone calls to make, errands to run and ideas to communicate. When you’ve transferred all the “incompletes” from your head onto a list, you’ll have a better sense of immediate priorities.

10,000 feet: Current projects. Your “Projects” list will help you use your discretionary time most effectively. Invariably, when people update their “Projects” list, they discover several actions they can do to move things they care about forward.

20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility. You create or accept most of your projects based on your job responsibilities. Use an “Areas of Focus” list, divided into professional and personal sections, to define the key areas within which you want to achieve results and maintain standards. At work, the list might include strategic planning, customer service, asset management, etc. Your personal list might include health, family, spirituality, etc. Listing and reviewing these responsibilities will help you evaluate your inventory of projects.

30,000 feet to 50,000+ feet. This is where you’ll primarily address your future, your direction and your intentions. Your thinking will be grounded in the question, “What is true right now about where I’ve decided I’m going and how I’m going to get there?” You can apply this question to perspectives that range from one-year goals in your job (30,000 feet) to a three-year vision for your career and personal net worth (40,000 feet) to discovering your life purpose and how to maximize its expression (50,000).

We can be easily overwhelmed by all the thoughts and possible actions we face during the course of a day, week or lifetime. The three models outlined here can help you make good choices about what to do next, whether in the very next moment or down the road. They take practice to master, but the more you use them, the easier it will be to cultivate a more enjoyable life.

David Allen is a management consultant and executive coach. This article was adapted from his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (Penguin 2001).