More often than not my GTD setup works pretty fine recently. I’ve got a working workflow for incoming inputs, a decent number of active projects, I’ve become pretty skilled in extracting doable next actions, and I actually do a decent amount of those. There are times though when I just don’t seem to get my ass up and going.

A little hack I developed for tricking myself into just start doing next actions could be dubbed as aleatoric next action.

Breaking with the rule of scanning the pool of next actions by context / time / energy / priority and deciding on the adequate next action to act upon next, I take a bunch of next action notes, mix them, close my eyes, take any one out, and do it. Obviously this is not the most efficient way of doing things, but it works for me (sometimes, not always), probably because:

it doesn’t require making a decision between all current next actions
it encourages focus, because you are constantly switching contexts so you have to adapt and concentrate
it creates some state of outer-ego flow
it’s great fun since you never know what’s up next and I’m usually really looking forward finding out

If anyone is trying this – drop me an email with interesting / weird next action series that popped up, I’d love to hear some.