Next Actions - how do you manage them in Dynalist?

Iā€™m still undecided how to setup next actions in Dynalist. I know I can mark each task in the project with a tag so I can have an instant Next Actions list. Thatā€™s really amazing.

I am curious to see how other folks approach Next Actions in their GTD practice.

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I use a singular list now, after a couple of revisions. It makes it extremely easy to look at too

WAITING ON
TO DO - HIGH PRIORITY
TO DO - LOW PRIORITY
INBOX
SOMEDAY - HIGH PRIORITY
SOMEDAY - LOW PRIORITY

Items near top are higher priority, items lower on the stack are low priority

If I donā€™t know where it goes, it goes in inbox (e.g. massive dumping of tasks from another source like todoist)

If its something I have to do this week, it goes in TODO- high priority
if its something that I have to work on, but might not finish TO-DO low priority

If its something that needs to be done later, goes to someday -high priority / low priority

During week, cross out items as they are finished with CTRL+ENTER

Hide finished, CUT the items not finished, and paste into next week

Add more tasks as needed at any point in time

Add project tags, before, during , or after completion of tasks, but do it at least once a week on Sunday if not

If you want to have a daily bucket list, write it on a stickynote and cross it out throughout the day, adjust the lists in dynalist after

Can scale up and add as many items as you want

If I think of a task, then do it right away, make a oneliner task somewhere in my dailylog notes and cross it out

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I donā€™t use Dynalist for work projects so I have only one todo list for personal stuff (most of my lists are of reference material).

At that todo list, there are some itens: today/tomorrow, next days, later, when possible, scheduled, to schedule and waiting responses (Iā€™m not a native English speaker so some of the precedent words may sound a bit weird in the context).

At today / tomorrow sub-list I order tasks from top (next action) to bottom (lower priority).

This system is an ongoing refining work.

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I use a simple @na tag but employ it in two different ways as needed:

  • If a bullet is a next action in itself I will just tag that.
  • If not the above, I define a next action in the note of the projectā€™s highest level bullet.

Depending on the type of project both of these can be handy, and I find no problem having them in the same search and acting on them simultaneously.

Importantly, a major component of my weekly review is to make sure all projects have a well defined next action, and that the next action has a context tag and the appropriate urgency (which I use red, orange, yellow and #someday for so that I can easily visually scan for urgency when searching by context) - this makes life as close to irritation free as possible for the next week.

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Within:today

I know Iā€™m violating GTD principle of scheduling only appointments on a calendar but Iā€™m trying out actually meeting goals set for a day

The idea of a Next Action tag is a bit of computer dirt that has crept into GTD. In GTD paper version there is no Next Action list: there are context lists.

Actions are put on a context list. So if an action is on a context list (in Dynalist: if it has a context tag) then it is a Next Action.

Advantage? No messing around with 2 tags (#tag #nextaction etc). Clean.

Multiple steps in a project can each be an immediate next action, in one or more contexts, as long as they donā€™t rely on each other. And according to GTD youā€™re ā€œallowedā€ to just continue with actions in a project if you so desire.

So in my case I have a Single Actions list where I put single next actions, each with a context tag. Then I have a Projects List where each project has at least 1 next action (so designating by assigning it a context). I set these during my weekly review and/or upon completion of a task. If I want to do more right then on the project, I just drill down into that project list.

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I finished setting up my dynalist today (it took me 6 weeks to get something seriously optimized for myself)

I only have one document. In all its entirety, this is what it is now. I massively simplified it so its easy to navigate

Yearly is where I keep my daily log, and my tasks / goal lines

I will post more information on the actual GTD of tasks list, goals, , formatting, etc later

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