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A 'Next actions' question -GTD newbie question

Hi all ,
After reading most of the "getting things done " book , there is one thing that I don't really understand as far as Next actions are concerned.

Let's say that I have a project which is to mail some books to a friend of mine .So first I need to get her adress :this contains of an action of emailing her ,then waiting for her reply.
Then there's the action of packing the books [@home ] and then there's an "errands" type of action of going to the post office and mailing it.

What I can't figure out ,is whether I should have all those listed as next actions in their separate contexts ,for the same project ,at the same time -ort should I enter the first action,then complete it ,and only then add the next action to it's context? I mean ,in most cases there are numerous and dependent actions in a project ,which belong to different contexts,right?

I'm using the "nextaction" tracking tool for managing my next actions,and there's no way of defining dependency there -but the mail question is ,how is this supposed to work,the real-GTD way?

Thanks :)

michaelramm's picture

This is how I would...

This is how I would do it:

Project: Send Books to Friend

1. @Calls (my context for email and phone): Email Friend for address and at the same time @Home: Pack up books to send to Friend

2. After you send email, @Waiting For: Friend to send address

3. When you receive address, @Errands: Mail books to friend.

For me, I may list all of the actions for a particular project, but they do not go 'active' until the preceding action has occurred. You can add the Packing Books NA to the context anytime because it is not dependeny on any other action.

Hope that this helps,
Michael

 
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