Six words to use to move into action mode
LifeHacker linked to a super post over on 43folders called: “6 powerful ‘look into’ verbs (+1 to avoid)“. Premise, six steps to move a project forward and turn ideas into actions (I think this is what Scot calls GTD … Getting Things Done). I’m not going to scrape all the content from the post a) that’s wrong and b) it’s really wrong. But here are the verbs:
- web-research - Usually my first stop in learning the broadest possible information about anything. And, for me, that means I’m primarily visiting two sites: Wikipedia and Google.
- brainstorm - Try doodling, free writing, white-boarding, or mind-mapping to freely generate ideas, possibilities, and connections
- email - Once you’ve given yourself an independent education on a topic and feel that you’ve learned enough to ask good questions, consider writing a short email asking for advice and input from a colleague or people on your team.
- call - Some of the information you need to make decisions is almost certainly available in the brain of someone close to you.
- agenda - If you have a big pile of a little questions that can wait for now, just capture them all into your list for “agenda-boss,” “agenda-team,” “agenda-spouse” or what have you.
- write - Once you’ve gathered any amount of information — and, seriously, don’t go to committee forever on this stuff — try writing a letter, email, one-page-report, or even a theoretical blog post about your topic
Okay I don’t get the “agenda” one … but the rest are awesome. I’m thinking those will get printed out or written on something to go right next to my laptop screen. Look up and go, right, research, brainstorm, e-mail, call, agenda, write … It’s all about moving stuff forward. The word to avoid? Decide. Yeah, that is a tough word/concept to just grapple with. I think you really need to go through the 6 above before you can get to the decide point.
Oh and the article about mind mapping (a fav-rave around PYW), that’s a great read too.
Tags: GTD, Getting Things Done, action words, mind mapping
Tags: GTD, Time savers
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POSTED IN: GTD, General work pimps, Time savers
2 opinions for Six words to use to move into action mode
Scot Herrick
Oct 17, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Yes, Tris, this is all about an action verb on Getting Things Done.
The Agenda thing is actually pretty cool. What you do is create a task (like in Outlook) that is “Agenda: Tris” and then simply add in anything that I would need to talk to Tris about. So, you call me, I pull up my list, get my five questions answered and move on.
An agenda item is also perfect with Gyronix GyroQ. You set the tags and one of them is Agenda. When a Tris item comes up, do a Control-Q and put in the Agenda tag: “Tris: status of new blog” and add it to your mind map to get into your system.
If you were a GTD follower, you could, in fact, take the top five action verbs and have them be tags in GyroQ and simply add stuff as you go. Pretty slick.
Not that I’ve looked at GyroQ or anything…
Scot
Tris Hussey
Oct 17, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Now I get it! Yeah I can totally see that now … hmm I think I need to try to create some custom tags, me thinks.
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