It’s been a while since I posted on productivity, perhaps I should have written this post some time ago.

Every been stuck on a project? Had something that needed doing; but just couldn’t seem to get around to it?

Most of us face this sort of procrastination from time to time and it can be very difficult to get a project moving once it’s run aground. However one technique you can use to get a project going again is to work on the project’s Next Action.

The Next Action is the very next thing that needs to be done to move a project forwards. Sometimes I think I have a good idea of what the Next Action for a project might be; but when I look closer my Next Action is actually something very vague and not actually actionable at all. This is a sure fire way of ensuring a project doesn’t make any progress at all.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose I have a ‘project’ (a.k.a ‘dream’) to buy a house in the country. I kind of know that the next action for this project is to check my financial standing to see what I could afford.

Well months and years go by and I’ve still got this dream to buy a house in the country; but why am I no further forward with the project? It’s because my Next Action, ‘check my financial status’ or ‘see what I can afford’ isn’t an action at all – it’s some sort of nebulous fuzzy idea designed to make me feel like I’ve control of the project whilst not providing anything actionable.

When I find a stuck project like this I take my fuzzy Next Action and begin to break it down into something more concrete:

• What should I do to check my financial status?
• How can I see what I can afford?

From this comes something a bit more tangible:

• See mortgage advisor to find out what I can afford
• Get current property valued

Finally some real Next Actions can be written down:

• Call Bill at "Mortgages For You" to make appointment
• Call surveyor to get property valued.

If there’s a lot of resistance to doing something you might have to set very find grain Next Actions. Remember that every journey starts with a single step.

Maybe you have some tips and techniques for setting Next Actions for your projects. Please don’t forget to share them in the comments.

The project is called KPInator, it’s a business intelligence application that displays key performance indicators (KPIs) in a web browser. In addition the user can set up charts to display historical data.

If you’re in business then you just have to know what your key performance indicators are and what their current values are. If you don’t have this information to hand then you’ve no real idea as to how well your business is doing at any one time. For example, if your business manufactures widgets then you might have a KPI that measures widget production per hour. If widget production per hour falls below a certain level then KPInator will flag this by changing colour.

The application release 0.1.0 is fully functional, if a little rough around the edges. Over the next few weeks I’ll have the sand paper out plus I’ll be enhancing the existing feature set. Please check the KPInator project web site for more updates.

A very simple idea, you provide the frequency you want to be hassled in days, the text of the hassle, like “Go for a ride on your bike”; and a number of email addresses. HassleMe then emails you a reminder at roughly (not exactly) the number of days you’ve asked to be hassled. The slight randomness helps to prevent the hassle just becoming part of the routine “select / delete” part of email processing.

Try out the service (it’s free). If it works for you then great, if not then simply put it back on the shelf.

To be really productive you have to be focussed and this means concentrating on one project at a time. Every time you switch projects it takes some of your productive time to get into the mind set for that project, pick up the tasks and get yourself organized. All this is time that is not actually moving the project forwards. If you spend your time doing a bit here and doing a bit there then you’ll make little progress across a broad spectrum of projects. This can rapidly become demotivating as seemingly little progress is made on any front.

With the index card system it’s easy to maintain the focus. Every morning, as part of the morning routine, review the Current Projects list:

1. Has a waiting project become active? Then mark it as active.
2. Is an active project now waiting for something? Then remove its Active sticker
3. Which project is needs to be focussed on now? Mark this project with a different colour.

Here’s my Current Project list for this morning:

This immediately puts me into the mind set I need to do focussed work on this project and makes the project stand out from the rest. Every time I glance at the Current Projects list I know just where I must focus my attention. Once I’ve completed all the tasks I can on this project then I’ll move the Focused Project sticker to the next most important project and start to focus there.

Soon we’ll look at breaking goals and projects down into the individual tasks needed to get them done and looking at how these fall into the organization structure.