Use A “Next-Best-Steps” List To Get More Done

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A quick distinction that may help you get more done.

One of the challenges that plagues many people is a feeling that there just isn’t enough time in the day to get stuff done.

I know myself, I’ve often been guilty of poring over my “To Do” list with a vague sense of anxiety over what do do next.

Before I know it, I’m off down a rabbit hole, checking my ClickBank sales or “researching”.   Then I snap out of it and an hour has gone.

The problem with a traditional “To Do” list is that it’s no good for managing multiple, shifting priorities and projects.  It soaks up so much mental RAM that you don’t have any left to get done what you need to get done.

And that leads to the subject of this post:  most people have to much in the “Doing” pile.

Let me explain.

There are 3 stages in the task “Life Cycle”:

1. To Do
2. Doing
3. Done

You only get paid when a task is “Done”.  There is very little value in a task that is “In Progress” (Doing), whether it be a half-finished website, a 90% completed manuscript or a three-quarters serviced car.

But by NOT focusing on one task to completion, you end up with too many tasks in the “Doing” pile and not enough in the “Done” pile.

That equals a feeling of busyness and stress without the rewards of “Getting Things Done” (to appropriate David Allen’s phrase – GTD is awesome BTW).

Not a good place to be.

One of my solutions is what I call a “Next-Best-Steps” list.  In other words, a To Do list that must be done in order.

You do item 1 to completion, then item 2, then item 3, and so on.

This helps you remain focused on only your Next Best Step to get you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

It’s also vital that you have a clearly defined outcome of what you’re trying to achieve.

Here’s an example of one of my recent Next Best Steps lists.  The outcome is boosting traffic volume to the Marketing Results website.

Next-Best-Steps ToDo List

You may find my scrawl a little hard to decypher, but number 1 refers to Google Adwords optimisation.  Number 2 is On-page SEO optimisation – specifically, making sure that we’re not canibalising results for certain keywords by optimising for the same key phrases on multiple pages.

So instead of getting bogged down on the desired outcome of “more website traffic”, I was able to remain focused on specific action steps to bring about the desired outcome.

The Next Best Steps list is one productivity hack of many, but if translating desired outcomes into prioritised tasks, then real results is a sticking point for you, you may find it useful.

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