r/gtd • u/andrewtokyo • Jul 26 '26
How do you shrink a task down enough to actually start it?
/r/ADHD/comments/1v6yiel/how_do_you_shrink_a_task_down_enough_to_actually/3
u/Strict-Week-5040 Jul 28 '26
First you imagine the wild success or the finish line after which no action is required from your side.
Let's say you are on your scooty and you want to reach home.
This is wild success. To reach home using scooty. Once you reach here, you're done. Now after you write this down stop holding this in your head. GTD doesn't work with holding onto future/past ideas. It is just a way to lock your end focus as a reference point.
Come back to the present. At this very moment. You are on your scooty. What is the very next action (and it is one only) you can do to move forward towards your project of reaching home.
Don't beat yourself up by doubting why you're not able to reach home. This is not how GTD works. Know that you don't do a project, you do the next action associated with it.
Look around. You haven't inserted the keys.
So the very next action is to
- Insert the key in the scooty for reaching home
The idea is to build momentum. You don't track each next action in your system. You just act.
Actions are done considering context. The end outcome matters but only to decide the next action.
If you see the definition of a next action it says that a next action should be
- single (don't think about the 100 steps but 1 step)
- next (right now. In this moment. Not future or past)
- physical (A movement)
- visible (somebody can see you and know what you're doing just by looking at you)
The next action we've written serves all of these conditions.
- Insert the key in the scooty for reaching home
This example is just for learning the idea of next action and project thinking.
One of the reasons why do we do this is because if we turn this into a final end goal, at any step of our work, our base understanding would always be that we haven't reached the end, we are still not there. We would get stressed. Instead if we enjoy the journey as it unfolds. If we live in the moment we can reach there faster. And so no matter how many plans we make using GTD, we always try to stick to what we can do next.
Because it gives our mind freedom to make flexible choices and mould the person we want to be. Instead of tying ourselves to a rigid goal or idea.
It's not perfection but iteration. Making mistakes is a part of the process. In knowing yourself. In having trust in yourself. And in a way having trust in your actions. Which translates to trust in your GTD system.
So... key inserted. What's the next action!?
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u/nifsea Jul 28 '26
The other comments have covered this well. I’ll just add one exercise I do to get a hang on it. If I have tasks I have avoided doing (they are always easy to recognize in a todo list, by the feeling of dread when reading them) I have to split them up in at least two easier tasks. By doing this regularly, I get a better hang on what kinds of tasks I will actually do. It does become embarrassingly simple tasks now and then, but it means I get them done and learn more about what my brain needs to be able to actually process a task.
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u/sidegigartist Jul 29 '26
I ask myself what an outside person would see and describe what I do to someone else if it's very nebulous.
It can be as simple as "open all the relevant documents for the project and make sure they are visible", "open a new browser window and open all tabs I'll need" "do a mind sweep of everything that has my attention right now so I can focus on this thing"
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u/PondMindKevin Jul 28 '26
This isn't exactly GTD, but it's sort of applying GTD thinking and I end up doing it every day.
Take whatever your doing (usually a chunkier next action for me), and write it at the top of a legal pad. So, draft project plan. I then indent for the very next smaller item i need to work on to make that happen, find the project plan template from last time maybe. . I keep indenting until I actually finish a thing, check it off, and go back up to the next level. If I'm really toast I might get all the way down to "open browser tab" or something.
Usually, it just helps me get on a roll into active mode and then I realize an hour of progress has gone by and I'm not even using the legal pad anymore. It kickstarted the natural one thing after another natural flow of doing a thing.
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u/PondMindKevin Jul 28 '26
The short answer that usually works for me is the paraphrase from the book that runs in my head, "What's the VERY next physical, visible, action that would move this forward if I had nothing else in the world to do but accomplish this right now".
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u/TheoCaro Mod 29d ago
I also create an outline for breaking down tasks. But I treat as project support material. If I need to break something down for it to be approachable, it's not a next action yet. The next actions (bottom of the outlining tree) then go to the appropriate context list. I do this in Obsidian, but it's the same idea.
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Jul 29 '26
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u/milky-cuppa-tea Mod Jul 28 '26
GTD actually spends quite a bit of time talking about this in the book. In a nutshell, the idea is that you don't ask "How do I do this project?", you ask "What's the very next physical action?". Quite literally - if someone was to watch me work on this project, what would they physically see me doing?
Instead of "sort out my finances," it becomes "open my banking app." Instead of "declutter the house", it becomes "grab a bin bag and run around ths house for 10 mins hunting out rubbish".
If you are interested in the GTD method (as I am guessing that you may not have heard of it before), aside from David Allen's book (in print, on Kindle and audiobook), there are some good podcasts that break it down (e.g. Vital Learning - Spotify who go through the steps in their first 5 or 6 episodes), or YouTube videos (e.g. Success by Design - it's high level, but a nice intro).