Linking Projects to Next Actions — A ResultsManager non-issue
Kelly Forrester posted a new pod-cast she did with David Allen on the difficulty people have with the idea of not being able to link their next-actions back to projects easily. David rightly points out that if you are in the hardware store, you are much better off reviewing your next action list for that context (buy nails @hardware store) than a pile of project plans.
The beauty of ResultsManager is that you can have your cake and eat it too. You have all your project plans defined in maps and then extract your project and next-action by context lists from them automatically. This enables you to easily re-prioritize a project or drop it into the someday/maybe category and have its next actions taken care of automatically. It also enables you to generate lists around a subset of your areas of focus (e.g. family items on a Saturday).
The conventional wisdom is that you can’t take advantage of the futuristic “relational database” type functionality that ResultsManager provides unless you are computer bound, but with with extensions like , “You’ve got mail“, “Put it in Front of the Door”, “Next Actions to Go“, and “GTD Phone Home“, I think it is possible to keep the system functioning fairly well without being desk bound.
You can find a index of other David Allen podcasts available on the we in the earlier “GTD Audio” entry.
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