Thanks! I have read the book, and I tried the context organization suggestion. The problem I have is that some of my next action steps actually have a higher (or much higher) priority than others. When I have bits of time, the context works fine for hammering out calls or emails or things like that. When I sit down with several hours that I could theoretically use on any of the categories, I’d actually like to do the more important next action steps. I (and my most important/pressing next actions) tend to get lost in the huge list of all the steps, even if organized categorically. How do you make sure the more important next actions get done sooner?

Thanks again for your reply, Chris!

(By the way, I am also generally a fan, and despite this problem definitely increased productivity after my first pass through GTD).

I’m a big fan of David Allen so thought I might pipe in here. I would highly suggest reading David Allen’s first book Getting Things Done (although Making it all work is useful too). Once you’ve done all the brain dumping / mind sweeping of ALL your to do’s it can be overwhelming, but the idea is that you should sort all of them into different contexts (@email, @calls, @errands, @home, @office, @internet, etc)…. that way you can knock them out in the most efficient way possible…. also some of them will be projects. In a lot of respects David Allen’s system is really about just being as efficient (read lazy) as possible!