Ready for a simple way to customize the way you organize?
As humans, we like to customize our things–everything from license plates, bobbleheads, bathtubs and showers, toothbrushes, stickers, bicycles, camper vans, etc.
But have you considered how powerful it could be for you to customize the way you organize?
In today’s podcast, you’re going to learn a little bit more about the Context Based Next Actions List (also known as the CBNAL). It’s going to be a LOT of fun!
I’m going to give you 3 questions to help you customize your list, and then I’ll share some examples that will hopefully inspire you to get started!
It’ll kind of feel like magic as you realize that most of the tasks you might want to procrastinate can actually get completed as you live your “regular life.”
I used to let a lot of time slip by and I would end up checking my phone 50 times a day. But once I applied the ideas I’m sharing today, those little “pockets of time” became easy to use for the things that REALLY matter to me.
We teach David Allen’s methodology for a Next Actions List:
- The list is compiled and completed weekly
- It holds Next Actions, which are 10-minute tasks not dependent on anything else. These are usually related to projects or can be one-time tasks.
- They are organized by context: Home, Phone, Errands, Computer, and To Discuss
But sometimes people crowd this list and don’t check things off. Maybe it needs to be customized.
Here are 3 questions to ask yourself:
- When do I typically have an open space? (Where am I? What is they typical time of day when I check my phone or zone out? We don’t need to be productive every minute of the day, but these are helpful things to keep in mind.)
- What kinds of tasks could I do during that time?
- Is there any prep work I would need to do to set myself up for success?
Examples of Custom Contexts:
- If you travel a lot, you might create an “Airport” or “Airplane” context of things you want to do while in these settings.
- If you have a young baby or child that naps, you might have a context of “When Child is Asleep”
- If you find yourself with a few minutes of open time each time you prepare to meet with someone, you might create a context of “Waiting for Someone:
- To Pray For
- Reading
- Low Energy at Night
- While Watching TV
Recommendation: Keep the number of contexts on your list reasonable. The goal is to have all tasks checked off by the end of the week so you don’t have to rewrite them. You want the optimal number of contexts and the optimal number of Next Actions. It will feel like your work gets done without any extra effort needed!
I hope you enjoy creating your own customizations! I’d love to hear what you decide to creat in the comments. 🙂
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When I first learned about the CBNAL I knew I’d have to tweak the categories to suit my life. I’ve restructured it multiple times and haven’t yet mastered it, but each version is based on my energy levels: high or low, physical or mental (or both). I also have a discuss with/delegate to category. My current incarnation also has categories for my two biggest passions (writing and languages) so when I’m in the mood for one but no specific thing to do in mind I can look at my CBNAL and pick something. Maybe these should be dealt with under Projects, not sure, but I haven’t found a way to make the Step Projects system work for me anyway, which is why I made a special CBNAL category for my holiday in the weeks leading up to it so I could see all the things I had to do for it in one place.
Sounds like you have made some great adjustments! If you are feeling relaxed and moving everything forward at the pace you would like, then it sounds like this is doing it for you! If you ever find that you are looking in too many places and/or not getting enough traction, you might want to try shifting some things over to Current Projects and building project time into each day/week. But it’s so fun that we can customize our structure to work for us! Keep up the great work!!
I have a category “With kids” for things I need to do with them when they are around, and then a spot for each specific kid on my next actions list. I guess I could also schedule those on the calendar, but they’re not really time/date specific. Then the rest of the list is stuff I can do on my own.