This phrase became the mantra on the award winning series The West Wing. After every serious issue that had to be dealt with no matter how long the conversation or difficult the task the president would always ask what’s next?
That is a very good question that all of us have to answer each and every day regardless of whether we realize it or not. Inherent within the question is the intention to find the most important things on our must do list and place them at the top.
Most of us allocate a considerable amount of time to plan our weeks and certainly each individual day with pre-determined goals and priorities. However, in today’s wired culture we are constantly receiving new information throughout the day that must be processed.
David Allen is recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on time management and personal productivity. In his book Getting Things Done he list four key criteria about processing new information that help him to answer the what’s next question:
- Context—A few actions can be done anywhere but most require a specific location or having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer. These are the first factors that limit your choices about what you can do in the moment.
- Time available—When do you have to do something else? Having a meeting in five minutes would prevent doing many actions that require more time.
- Energy available—How much energy do you have? Some actions you have to do require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy while others need more physical horsepower.
- Priority—Given your context, time, and energy available, what actions will give you the highest payoff? This is where you need to access your intuition and begin to rely on your judgment call in the moment.
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