Sometimes you reach a point with a project where you can't say that there's a single "next action." Or rather, if you can isolate a discrete "next action," it's one that's going to take several months.

One example: Writing a novel requires research, and so on, but there's a time when you sit down to write. What's your "next action" there? Write chapter one? But there's only an arbitrary mark dividing it from chapter two.

Or another: One of my projects is advancing my level of Japanese, and as part of that, I'm working on 6 characters per day. It'll take me several months to get through that, but every time I finish for the day, my "next action" is still exactly what it was before.

Is there something obvious that I'm missing?