Next Action Decisions - What’s the Very Next Thing?
Summary:
S.E. Cupp: Next action decisions differ from what a lot of people put on their to do lists. What is the very, very next thing you need to do to get clarity? On mom’s birthday, or increasing your bank credit line, or hiring a vice president, or getting a life? You don’t wat the very next action. If you had nothing else to do but that, what would you go do? She says most people are need to train a cognitive muscle to answer those questions about the stuf.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
loved you degin to next action decisions. Thisis, this is really powerful concept and a really important distinction, a that many people do not have a whole lot of clarity on. S. Could you talk about next action decisions and how they perhaps differ from what a lot of people put on their to do lists? Sure.
Speaker 1
Well, when we talk about next actions, that means as granular as where, physically, visibly, are you going to go to do what to move the needle on this thing, on this commitment? Is that at your computer to write an email? Is that at your computer to serva webside? Is that at the hardware store to buy nails? As that at your life partner to have a conversation, what is the very, very next thing you need to do to get clarity? On mom’s birthday, or increasing your bank credit line, or hiring a vice president, or getting a life? You don’t wat the very next action. If you had nothing else to do but that, what would you go do? If people avoid that decision like the plague, they do. Could av fool me, but, you know, it takes, you know, when we coach people, it takes one to six hours for them to identify all the stuff they have attention on, and then the rest of a day or two togo through each one of those and say, what’s the very next thing you need to do? About cat food, about vice president, about geta life, about should you get divorced or not? You know, what’s the next thing? And, you know, and it takes people actually have to think to make those decisions. It’s not hard. There are actually two aspects of getting clarity that that, you know, that i have to tie together is, what’s the very next action? And if one action wnt complete whatever this commitment is, what’s the project? You knowif you look at most peoples todoless, you think you see things like mam, you know, in bank like tat. Well, i’m sure you had a mom, so why is it on the list? Well, or birthday’s coming. What ar you ging to do about aur birthday? Idono it is coi, right? So, you know, so taking something like that and then, tthe, well, you captured the idea. Great. So you let step one, but then step two is, you need te then clarify what exactly you’re going to do about that a. And you know what’s the final outcome? So gib bama birthday party goes on my project list. And call sis, my sistese. You know what? She thinks we ought to do forman’s birthday is the next action. As simple as that sounds, outcome and action are the zeros and ones of productivity. But most people have not actually identified the outcomes and the specific actions, you know, othe things that have their attention. Gould to fool me. But there’re very few people that are exceptions to that. And most people have tonues of stuff. Anybody listening to this right now, just pull out your to do list, and i’ll show you what i’m talking about, you know. And most of the things on your todo list are not the very next action you need to take about those. And probably the things onr do list are not the complete outcome that you’re trying to achieve by whatever action you need to take. So it’s funny that that the zeros mones of productivity people are avoiding in getting things done. You need to know what done means. You get tho market off as complete when what’s true? And what is doing look like? And where does it happen? Oh, that’s a phone caller. That’s a thing to buy at the store. That’s a conversation i need to have with somebody. So i know it’s kind of a du damn, but it’s it’s something that most people are need to train a cognitive muscle to answer those questions about the stuf, because it requires thinking. Thinkthing’s hard. (Time 0:37:27)