Get Things Done with Microtasks for Daily Work with Well Defined Paths to Completion

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• Business and Productivity

Steve Pavlina over at Personal Development for Smart People proposes a solution to avoiding the “enormous blob of complexity” when working on large projects.  Many of the regular projects we work on daily have an already well defined path to completion.  Steve proposes breaking those types of projects “down into a lengthy list of ‘microtasks,’ planning it all the way from beginning to end if possible”.  In doing this preplanning upfront, we can move into the project and just flow from microtask to microtask until completion (next action to next action for us GTD users). 

Steve wrote an example list of microtasks involved in writing a new blog article.  You can find his original steps here:  http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/07/microtasks/

I have modified his list for my own purposes.  Below is Steve’s list with my modifications highlighted in yellow.

Writing a new blog article. 

The steps are in sequential order:

1. Define a primary objective for the article (inform, persuade, entertain, or inspire).
2. Brainstorm topic ideas, or review the list of reader-submitted topic suggestions, starred and shared Google reader items, recent delicious links, article ideas in someday list.
3. Select a topic.
4. Do a quick and dirty, free-form writing session to get ideas down without regard to structure.
5. Decide how to organize the ideas for clarity (chronological, topical, hierarchical, sequential, etc).
6. Sort the output of #4 based on the desired structure.  Define the main sections and subsections.
7. Identify supporting material to include (examples, analogies, quotes, statistics, images, stories, links, Wikipedia, etc), and add it to the outline.
   • Checkhttp://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/where-to-find-g.html
   • http://www.sxc.hu/
8. Refine the outline from #6 and #7 for completeness and balance.
9. Expand each section of the outline into paragraphs (and bullet lists if appropriate).
10. Insert meaningful subheadings into the article.
11. Write the opening.
12. Write the closing.
13. Edit the article for content, clarity, and conciseness.
14. Spell-check the article.
15. Brainstorm possible titles for the article (clear, interesting, keyword-rich).
16. Select a title.
17. Select blog categories for the article.
    • Look at delicious  for examples
    • Look at technorati for examples
18. Decide when to post the article (now or future-post).
19. Publish the article.
    • Post with Live writer or on-line editor.
    • View post on-line.
    • Look for display problems.
    • Verify tags and images are fine.
20. Tag with delicious, digg, and other places.
21. Email and tell people you know who would be interested in the article.
22. After the article has been online for several hours, evaluate reader feedback and fix any reported typos.
23. Make sure I am subscribed to all places this article might receive a comment on.
    • My own blog
    • Digg
    • Delicious
    • Technorati
24. Set date to check back on article in one month for stats.
    • See who’s linking.
    • See where other traffic is coming from.
    • See what search phrases land people on the article.
    • Evaluate opportunities for further promoting.

--modified from http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/07/microtasks/
--(used by permission)

Steve Pavlina has a number of great articles on his blog Steve Pavlina's Personal Development for Smart People . Another favorite of mine is Freeing Mental RAM at: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/08/freeing-mental-ram/ .