Shobna Khunkhun
After one as initiated the processing of the in-basket, chapter 7 comes in to set up the right buckets in keeping track of actionable items, non-actionable items and projects. It seems the central theme was the necessity for lists, folders and mainly reviewing these inner workings of the organizational system in a consist manner. I found this chapter to be a bit overwhelming at first in regards to the different types and sheer amount of lists. But one notion I took from it was that when you create a “next-action” list the sub headings should be specific to a context, action, or category. Sorting the items and categorizing the action reminders in a specific manner will make it a lot smoother and easier to follow that item as it moves through the organization chart from “next-action” to “waiting for” to “read/review.” I started categorizing my next action list in two sections school and errands. Under the errands section I sub categorized it as calls to make, on the go, and at home. Under the school section I sub categorized it by class/subject and items for my thesis. Doing this really helped me be able to get the open loops out of my head, on to paper and be able to follow the progress I’m making in completing them.
Like you said, classifying a task's next actions according to its context or category is really useful for being able to act on it quickly. For instance, having separate lists for calls, emails, and applications (which can be broken down into discrete parts of the app) makes going through them serially and just getting them done way easier than trying to pull them out individually from a list containing elements of all different types.
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