Hiya,

First of all I will qualify this post by saying that I am a GTD newbie. I am currently reading Dave Allen's book. It all seems to make sense but I do not understand how the 'next actions' processing would allow me to track progress on particular projects.

The process of generating next actions and placing them within particular contexts makes sense. However, I am more concerned about what happens after I tick the big "done" box next to the action. How do I relate completed actions back to the projects? In a larger context, how can I keep track of what I have achieved. I feel that I will need a way to say "projects X and Y were not progressed in the last two weeks because I was doing A on project Z and B, C and D popped up and had to be dealt with." That sounds awfully negative. I do work in a little bit of a blame culture, so I feel that I need to guard myself against that but, in general, I think it is useful and positive to be able to see what progress I have made on my goals (particularly on personal ones that I set myself).

Does that make sense? The only thing I can think of is to keep a kind of diary for each project and set aside a small chunk of time at the end of each day to look over my "done" actions and write down how each project has been affected (I would imagine that this chunk of time would end up generating a tonne of project-related next actions too).

Any thoughts?

David