See your next actions

If you use WorkFlowy to organize your life, to direct your routine and to determine your next actions, how easily are you able to see your next actions and only your next actions?

How much distraction do you have in your WorkFlowy system? Does your data distract you, or do you see only the information you need to see, when you need to see it?

Narrow view vs. bird's-eye view

Many of the folk I've coached have set up a dashboard in WorkFlowy to see everything they've got going at a glance. I've seen the most elaborate setups that allow people to see all areas of their life, as their default view, on their home page. They find it very convenient to have a bird's eye-view of everything – at least in theory, because those same folk will tell me that their setup causes them to easily be drawn to tinker with peripheral things – when they should be focusing on the one, specific thing at hand.

Getting a constant overview of your life, when you don't need to, is kind of like the following:

Imagine your kitchen was a supermarket… and you had to walk through that supermarket every morning to get your breakfast. There'd be so much to see, efficiently organized into neat aisles. Overhead signboards tell you where to find the canned goods, cereals, beverages, frozen foods, dairy, meat and seafood, fresh produce, etc. So convenient and so beautifully laid out. But all you really want… all you really need, is some bacon and eggs, or a bowl of oatmeal.

Breakfast would not be an in-and-out affair. You'd be distracted by donuts, snacks, and 101 other things. You don't want to have to think about everything. You want to keep it simple, and get on with your day.

And so, with my WorkFlowy timeline, I've structured it so that I only see what I need to see, moment by moment each day. You've already seen it… and it might seem so needlessly narrow – but it gets me to hyperfocus.

Here's what my home page looks like with everything collapsed:

Here's what I'm focused on right now:

I'm in the middle of a couple of writing blocks. And all the resources I need are right there… my book outline is just a zoom away.

And if I expand the other top level-bullet, not only do you see what I have for the rest of my day, but it also contains the rest of my life:

If you know that what you're doing in the current block of time (or the current day) is exactly what you should be doing (because that's what you'd planned to do)… and if you know that nothing is falling through the cracks—that you're not neglecting something important—then you don't need to have anything else in front of you. You just get into the zone and do the next thing up, with nothing else tugging at your attention. You don't need to be reminded of all kinds of things that you might possibly be overlooking, because there's nothing you're overlooking. There's nothing you're forgetting.

When you need to focus on the here and now, and get things done, you don't want to be surveying everything in your life in WorkFlowy. There's a time and a place for everything else – not while you're in the thick of things, and needing to take action on the item(s) that you'd previously decided to take on and do from hour to hour.

Our timeline consists of the present hour, which stretches into the rest of today… which stretches into the next days and weeks ahead. All of life's demands and opportunities lie ahead of us, and we'll encounter those things at the exact time we've predetermined.

True, you can zoom into any node anywhere in WorkFlowy and focus, but… what if you were to actually structure your digital life, so that at the topmost level of your digital brain, it really reflected the fact that you can only live and do certain things in this present hour? This current moment is all you've got, and it's a good start (or a good place to pick up with).

All the rest

Everything else on my one, straight timeline, lies subservient in importance to the things I'm currently focusing on.

I'm not a particularly distracted person. But even so, the structure I've set up is conducive to getting in the zone. It won't allow me to get distracted by all the other cool things I have in WorkFlowy.

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