Choosing the Next Thing to To Do (GTD Method)
Having a system to help you choose what to tackle next will save you time and stress.
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Picking the next thing to do is hard. Where the hell do you start?
It’s helpful to have a process you can follow that will guide you in the right direction.
In David Allen’s awesome book Getting Things Done, Allen covers a great method to determine the very next thing you should do called the “Four-Criterion Model”.
This is a pretty damn powerful model for determining the very next thing you need to do. It’s quite simple, and involves four steps:
What context are you in? If you’re at work, it’s going to be pretty hard for you to clean the kitchen. The context you are in narrows down your list of possible actions considerably
How much time do you have available? How long until your next meeting or commitment? Having a meeting in an hour or in ten minutes will drastically change the number of things you can accomplish
How much energy do you have? After you determine your context and time available, look at how much physical and mental energy you have to get something done
What are the highest priority tasks that you’ll be able to accomplish with how much time and energy you have?
The great thing about this model is it reduces decision-making from a tedious chore to a systematic process.
The model works best with Allen’s productivity system, but it can truly be applied by anyone.