Andre Kibbe on “What’s the Next Distraction?”
Posted by Michael | Filed under GTD, Site
In terms of GTD, David Allen reminds us to always ask ourselves, “What’s the next action?” In a smart play on words, Andre Kibbe asks over on his Tools for Thought blog, “What’s the next distraction?”
Most of us make To Do lists that really aren’t so much about doing things, as they are lists of stuff without definition or context. We feel better knowing that we put everything on a big To Do list, but if my experience is any indication, I think many of us get “deer in the headlights” after we realize just how much “stuff” we have and no idea how to get it all done. In a 2003 interview by Management Consulting News, David Allen, states:
…what most people call a to-do list is incomplete and unclear, which is highly unattractive. Everything on your list is either attracting or repelling you psychologically. There is no neutral response: it’s either, oh boy, when can I mark that off or, get out of my face. If there are still a lot of decisions you need to make about items on your list, your brain glances at the list and says, I don’t have the energy to do all that thinking, go away.
Even if we can get out of the headlights and across the road, we’re still left wondering what to do next. This is a crucial moment of decision about whether to move forward (decide on next action) or stagnate / procrastinate / panic / etc. In his post, Andre Kibbe suggests that a common form of procrastination is what he calls “serial digression,” and he offers us the following example to illustrate his point:
Many To Do items that people write down are multiaction tasks, like “Set up Dell,” as opposed to a genuine next action like “Read Dell Quick Start Guide.” The aim of a next action is to keep your attention on the most immediate physical task instead of the outcome. A To Do like the one in the example is overloaded, conflating what needs to be accomplished with what needs to be done. Any project, no matter how large or complex, can be parsed into at least one next action that’s simple to do. Not everyone can get into Harvard, but anyone can download the admission form.
Put another way, David Allen remarks in the MCNews interview that, “You don’t usually see specific actions on to-do lists because most people haven’t forced themselves to sit down and finish their thinking about what has their attention. They collect items in their in-basket or think they have made a list, but there is another level of thinking that is required to move forward.”
What we’re left with are what Andre Kibbe defines as “Next Distractions” noting that, “Procrastination is more than not doing priority tasks; it’s doing non-priority tasks.” In terms of what Kibbe calls “Crutch Activities,” he argues that, “No task exists in isolation. A key consideration of any activity is not what the activity is, but what it leads to.”
So, whenever we go to check our RSS readers just before starting a project, fire-up our browser to find something on Wikipedia, or even write that next blog post (ahem…), be sure to remember the suggestions and quick tips that Andre Kibbe offers in his post. And watch out for the deer.
Tags: David Allen, GTD, productivity, To Do
