Im not saying single-actions don't exist or anything. I'm simply saying that people in general way too often throw projects with multiple actions into a SAL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ngilmore031
"Create a new savings CD" really is only a single action. I should have worded it differently. Maybe, "Fill out online application for flex CD on Bank of America website". But that is the only step i need to do for that. I see no reason to create a project.
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If I asked you to start filling out that form RIGHT NOW, I bet you couldn't do it. You would have to go to the bank of america website first. You would probably need to find the form hiding on some webpage there first. You might even have to log in to to fill it out. There might be information that you need to gather before you can complete the form. I'm not exactly sure what a flex CD is but there might be other stuff too. Microscopic tasks like this create mental resistance that in turn creates avoidance behavior. But lets not get silly, maybe this action really is a single action to you; maybe you hav the address memorized and maybe its just a question of typing in your email and press a button. Maybe you do this 3 times a week and its all natural to you. In that case sure. Otherwise you might need to put a next action in there...
The trick is to bypass all the nightmare-ish thoughs about the task that your brain conjures up and trick your brain into letting you start the task. Once you get going you usually realise that it wasn't so bad and you can safely complete the rest of it.
E.g. If you have a mentally taxing document to write, your brain often won't let you. If you can somehow fool yourself into thinking: "I'm not actually going to write the document, I'm just going to open Word and type type in the title of it" - the rest of the document usually sort of writes itself.
This is one of the corner stones of GTD but I didn't think of it in this way until very recently and I've been doing this for a fare amount of time.
And yes, the need to put individual actions to on-hold is absolutely there.
Email omni about it otherwise they won't put a vote towards it in their database.