Lakhasly

• So we need to now clarify what it is that we had our attention on. And what does clarify mean? Well, in a way you could think of it as processing the stuff that you've captured. Most people still have some thinking and decision making about stuff that's on their list. Very often I'll see things on a to-do list that look like mom, or bank, or doctor, or strategic plan. And that's great, you captured something there, but then there's still some decision making you need to apply.

I mean, what attention do you need to put on mom and her birthday? What attention do you still need to put on the bank and your credit line? So that's the executive decision making you need to make about what do these things really mean? And what specifically are you going to do about them, if anything? So there's some very simple, but very profound questions you need to ask about everything that you've captured or collected. If you pick up something out of your in-basket, something you had your attention on, the first question is, is it something that is actionable? Is is something that you actually need to do something about? There are two optional answers to that question, yes and no.

Maybe is a no. So are you gonna do anything about mom's birthday? Are you gonna do something about the bank or the credit line? If you say no, and by the way, there's a lot of things that we capture or collect or that are collected for us, for instance, in your email, that there is no action on. There's a lot of those things. Yeah, I'm sure you take meeting notes. Those are captured ideas, but there's many things that are in those notes that you probably don't need to do something about. And the no, if there is a no answer, you still have three options.

First is trash. Now that I've seen it, I don't need it or I didn't need it to begin with. By the way, a lot of people need to make that decision about a lot of things sitting in their email right now, as well as things sort of lying around. As I say, trash self-generates, it does not self-destruct. Option two, if it's not actionable would be, well, there's no action on this now, but there might be later. That's a category that we call incubate. Incubate means I need to let this hold for a while. I either need to think about it some more, or I need to let some time pass before I make a decision.

So the bank, for instance, you might say, well, I don't really wanna maybe research that yet because we're looking at other options for cash flow. But it is a good idea and maybe we should rethink that in two or three weeks. And then the third category, reference material. I need to keep that. I need to be able to refer back to that. So three non-actionable categories, trash, incubate, or reference. So when you say okay, there is an action, then there are two really key questions that bring real clarity to what your work is.

And I use work in the very broad sense, call it anything you wanna get done that's not done yet. And those two key questions, first of all, what's the very next action? If it is an actionable thing, what's the very next thing that I need to do to move this forward? So when I say next action, I'm talking about very granular, very specific visible, physical action. Not all the actions that you need to take, just the very next one, that interestingly we've discovered that that actually lets your mind relax when you at least know what the trigger action is, not necessarily all the succeeding ones that will come after that.

So set meeting is actually not a next action because it could be an email, a phone call, you could task your assistant to set the meeting. The second question you need to ask and answer is if that one action won't finish or complete whatever this is about, what's the project? So just using the common language of a project and creating a list of all of your projects, you actually can't do a project. A project like give mom a birthday party, or handle the next holiday, or to launch the strategic plan, or to finalize the budget.

You actually don't do those things. You do actions about those, so a project is just an outcome that more than one action is required. The problem is if you don't actually then capture what's the project that's driving these things that have your attention, and you take one action and then you get distracted or you get pulled off to do something else, now you don't have a place holder out here in the world, your mind takes it back. Oh, I haven't finished yet, and it goes back inside your head. And that's what you don't want. So once more, clarify means, first of all, we've captured what's pulling on our attention, but then we need to put more specific attention on those things to discover exactly what they mean because to go to the next stage, which is to organize the results of that, clarifying what these mean and which category they go into is a primary step to begin with.