Most people, like me, have received a lot of advice over the years. Many have been extremely useful and implementable, others not as much.
The best form of advice that I have received from anyone (David Allen’s GTD book) has been the practice of asking, “What is the next action?” and immediately writing down both the result/outcome and the next action associated, whenever I need to get something done. At home, the next action could be as simple as getting out of bed early in the morning or logging in to my e-statements, to generate the list of payments that are due. If I am unable to sleep because I am stressed over something, marking the next action down on my calendar for the next day as an appointment is all that it usually takes to de-stress. If this doesn’t work, my mp3 player and headphones come in handy and music comes to the rescue and stops the otherwise never ending chatter.
No matter how complicated the situation is, this comes in handy. At work, my projects move on faster as it has become almost second nature for me to keep asking this question over and over again. Unless the result / outcome is not clearly defined and the next action is not written down, I usually don’t start working on tickets. We use a ticketing system at work, for our reports. Some times, I see half baked report requests ending on my queue. In such cases, the requestor has a vague idea of either what he needs, what is available, or in some cases is extremely busy to clearly define the requirements. In this case, the next action is usually just to schedule an appointment with him to clarify the requirements. Many times, my manager has already clarified the requirements so it makes things easier, but otherwise, I find this approach extremely useful.
So the next time you hit a brick wall, try the following steps
1) Ask yourself, “What is the intended outcome?”
2 ) Write it down
3 ) Ask yourself, “What is the next action?”
4) Write it down and then work on it until it gets done.
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until your project gets completed.
For a more detailed explanation on how and why this works and many more cool tips, I would suggest reading the book, “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.
A new dimension 