How to Use Next Action CardsTM to Organize Your Life
There are two principal ways to use Next Action CardsTM.
AS A PORTABLE COLLECTION DEVICE TO YOUR EXISTING PROJECT/TASK MANAGER.
For this usage, you carry with you about 10-15 cards in your pocket or purse. They are held together by a rubber band or a small binder clip. When you are out with a client, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, walking the dog, out to dinner, or any other time that you are away from your computer or other system where you keep track of your cards, and a project or a "to do" crosses your mind, you can quickly pull out a card and fill it out. You have thus recorded it before it was lost in your memory. Later, when you are back at your desk or office, or have time to enter items into your PDA, you will pull out your cards and enter the information.
AS A COMPLETE PROJECT/TASK MANAGER
For this usage, your cards will be your complete project manager. You will probably hold them together with a rubber band. If your projects and "to do’s" are a reasonable size, you will carry your pack around with you in your pocket or purse. You will then have everything you need to do with you, in an easily accessible and organized pack of cards. As new items occur to you, you can easily fill out a blank card and put it into your Next Action Card deck. Whenever you want, you can pull out the deck and conduct a weekly review. If you have organized them by context (such as @phone, @office, @computer), if you are out with some time to kill you can look at your @phone cards and catch up on the calls you need to make - if you are at your computer, you can knock off a few @computer tasks.
The cards are extremely flexible, in that there are multiple ways to organize them. This is a key advantage of the Next Action CardsTM - everyone differs as to how best organize their tasks and thus you can set up your deck in the manner that works best for you. Some typical methods of organization are:
By Project/Subproject
The top of each card has a blank for a "Project" and a "Subproject." The decks can then be organized alphabetically, first by Project, and then by Subproject, with Next Action or Waiting For cards easily accessible. For example, a small sample pack of 3 cards could look like:
CARD:
Project: Paint Living Room
N.A.(Next Action): Look through magazines for color ideas
Context: @home
CARD:
Project: Publish Book
Subproject: Find a Publisher
N.A.: Ask Bill who published his last book
Context: @phone
CARD:
Project: Publish Book
Subproject: Design Cover
N.A.: Go to portrait studio to have photo taken of self
Context: @out and about
By Context
The Context for each card can be written on the card. Context in this sense is a way of organizing cards by location where they can be accomplished or similar heading that allows them to be grouped together for doing. Common Contexts include:
@phone: telephone calls to make when you are near a phone
@computer: tasks that can be accomplished at any computer
@home: tasks that you will do at home.
You can then organize your cards by Context, putting all your @phone cards together, your @computer cards together, etc. Then when you are at your computer, you can go through your @computer cards and take care of those tasks. Simarly, when you are near a telephone you can go through your @phone cards.
Even if you use a different method of organizing the cards, you can still easily shuffle through them to find items by the proper context for accomplishing based on where you are at the time.
By Priority
The cards have check-off boxes numbered 1-5. These can be used to indicate the relative priority of items, so that really important items can be accomplished first. The card deck of Next Actions can then be sorted in number order.
Even if you use a different method of organizing the cards, you can still easily shuffle through them to find items of the desired priority to accomplish.
By Due Date
The cards also have a spot for including a due date (or a date of entry). Cards can be organized using the due date if desired.
By Delegated To
The cards have a spot for listing who items have been delegated to. Cards can be organized using this information if desired. |
