WHAT SPECIFICALLY ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?
Once we have captured every open loop, which refers to any incomplete item that is pulling at our attention, we need to clarify the captured items.
The purpose here is to take the raw thoughts currently in your inbox and clarify the next physical action you can take.
Why do we need to do this? Because you're going to run into a series of problems down the road if you have an unclear inbox.
I appreciate what David Allen discovered when working with countless people on their productivity systems... he says, "most people's productivity system consists of incomplete lists of unclear things."
More specifically, he says that the typical to-do list usually looks like this:
- Dinner party
- Garage
- Team meeting: My new idea
- Sam's number: 469-825-3533
What do all these things mean?!
Remember, the purpose of a mind sweep is to clear your mind of everything. If, after two days, you look at your inbox and don't understand what you meant by the item "garage", then you haven't truly removed the thought from your mind. You've simply discarded it.
I understand that when you see a dinner party, you might think, "Oh, I need to drive to pick up drinks and chips for the party". However, the problem is that your mind is still burdened with the context of the thought.
If you still find yourself holding onto the deeper meanings behind each of these tasks, then you haven't successfully cleared your mind yet.
The best approach is to extract all the necessary thinking from your head and make the items in your inbox explicit.
You want to reach a point where looking at your to-do list requires no further thinking, only action.
WHAT'S THE NEXT PHYSICAL ACTION YOU CAN TAKE?
To clarify your inbox, the best thing you can do is write down the next physical action you can take to make progress on each item.
Let's examine an example together.
On the left-hand side, you can see what would typically be found in an inbox. It's essentially a collection of all the thoughts in your mind.
Starting there is acceptable, but you shouldn't stop there.
Your mind will continue to work on anything that is still undecided.
If you don't have a clear next action for each item in your mind, there will be an infinite gap between your current reality and what you need to do.
Now, let's explore some examples of how we can transform these inbox items from red to green.
Just to clarify, my personal inbox after a mind sweep is in disarray. If you were to see the fragmented sentences that I wrote down, you would have no idea what I was thinking.
But that’s okay... Sometimes, when you're
- walking into a restaurant,
- getting in the car,
- getting out of the shower,
- about to lay down for a nap,
- In a meeting,
- whatever... You just need to get the item out of your head.
That's what the capture stage is all about.
Clarifying the inbox is the process of picking up where we left off. We take the raw idea and convert it into something more meaningful before it becomes too late and we can no longer understand our own chicken scratch.
- For actionable items, write out the next action. This will be added to your task list or project list.
- For non-actionable items, write out where you will save the resource for later. This can be your resource app or your calendar.
Remember,
It's not how you start; it's how you finish.
You can quickly capture anything to get it off your mind and into your inbox, but you need to clarify that item before it leaves the inbox.
ACTION STEP
Clarify the meaning of each item in your inbox by determining the next physical action step you can take.
See you tomorrow,
Hunter