Speed Update: Day 3

I’ve now taken action on 201 tasks over three days, making a daily average of 67 tasks.

There are 59 unactioned tasks on my list, which means that the number of days’ work left in the system is 0.88 days - a slight increase each day.

The oldest tasks (seven of them) on the list date from yesterday.

Speed Update: Day 2

I’ve now taken action on 130 tasks over two days, making a daily average of 65 tasks.

There are 51 unactioned tasks on my list, which means that the number of days’ work left in the system is 0.78 days - a slight increase over yesterday.

The oldest task on the list dates from today.

Commentary

The average number of tasks actioned per day has increased from 61 yesterday to 65 today, but the number of days’ work remaining has also increased from 0.64 to 0.78 days. So although I did more tasks than yesterday, I added more tasks than I did.

Every one of the 100 tasks put on the list yesterday has now been actioned.

Now before anyone gets too excited about this, please note that I was achieving even higher speeds with AutoFocus when I first started with it. See http://www.markforster.net/blog/2008/12/19/future-developments-update-no-1.html

What eventually happened with AutoFocus was that the list gradually got longer and longer and as a result it took longer and longer for me to action the tasks which I was resisting the most. In other words there was a high speed of actioning easy stuff and a much slower speed of actioning the difficult stuff.

Another result of the list getting longer was that urgent tasks had to be dealt with outside the system.

For various reasons I don’t think this is going to happen with the Final Version. There certainly won’t be a problem with urgent tasks - that’s fully covered. It’s also much less easy for difficult tasks to languish. But what I do need to verify is whether the size of the list is going to stabilize at a reasonably small size. My earlier experience of testing the system encourages me to think that it may.

Speed Update: Day 1

Today I managed to do 61 tasks off my new list, with 39 remaining in the list.

The number of days work left on the list is therefore 0.64.

The oldest unactioned task on the list dates from today (which is hardly surprising as the list was only started today).

One of the tasks I accomplished today was a walk of over 15 miles, which took me away from 11.50 a.m. to 7 p.m. as it required some travelling to get to the start.

Speed of the New System

In my last post I reported on my surprise at the speed at which the Final Version is getting work done. (Yes, I know, it’s still me who does the work unfortunately).

I have decided that this is something worth monitoring. So I’ve picked on two key indicators to monitor how fast the system is working:

1) The number of days’ work left in the system. The tendency of all to-do lists is to expand faster than the tasks on the to-do list get done, and the number of day’s work your current to-do list represents is a good way to monitor this. It can easily be measured by dividing the number of unactioned tasks on the list by the average number of tasks actioned per day. So for example, if you have 200 unactioned tasks on your to-do list and you take action on an average of 20 tasks per day, the 200 tasks represent 10 days’ worth of work.

2) The age of the oldest task on the list. The tasks that have been hanging around longest tend to be the ones you least want to do. So monitoring the age of the oldest task is a good way of showing how well the system deals with the more difficult or challenging tasks.

I’m starting a new list in order to monitor how the list expands right from the beginning. I’ll post my first set of results tomorrow.

Get everything done fast

Since last reporting on progress with the Final Version on Monday, I’ve made a few minor changes to the system to fine-tune the balance.

The result of my latest test is a bit different from what I was originally expecting. I had been talking in earlier posts about this being a universal capture system which would filter out the dross and focus on what was really important. The implication being that quite a lot of the tasks entered wouldn’t get done.

But what is happening at the moment is that it’s all getting done. And not just done, but done fast. In fact so fast that I’m almost taken aback at the speed at which everything is happening.

No doubt I could put enough work into the system to break it if I tried. But it’s keeping pace at the moment quite happily with the speed at which new work arrives on my desk (or in my mind) without the need for any filtering or auditing.

Key Principles of the New System II: Universal Capture

The human mind is endlessly inventive.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the human mind is endlessly inventive at thinking up new things to do, especially when they are ways of avoiding doing productive but difficult work.

The result is that any attempt to make a list of tasks becomes subject to the law of expansion:

A to do list always expands faster than it is possible to get the tasks done

This would be relatively easy to counteract if it were not for another law, the seed-bed law:

Good ideas arise from a seed-bed of bad ideas

This is a very important law which is often forgotten. We compare modern novels with the glories of Dickens, Eliot, Austen, Balzac, Hugo and so on, forgetting that 90% of 19th Century novels were complete rubbish, just as ours are today.

Governments try to institutionalise “best practice”, forgetting that “best practice” can only happen if there’s some “worst practice” to develop the ideas for “best practice” from.

Unfortunately if you cut off the bad ideas, the good ideas disappear too. “Best practice” is a recipe for lack of creativity - and we see the evidence of this all around us.

This law is incidentally why I have developed so many time management systems. Some have been better than others, but each has brought new insights, stimulated new thought and provided a step-up to further development.

Anyway all this is by way of getting round to saying that all those “bright ideas”with which you fill your to do list will be at least 90% rubbish and - maybe - 10% gems. But if you don’t record the rubbish, you won’t get the gems either.

The ideal time management system needs to have a “universal capture” capability. What I mean by this is that you don’t need to do any pre-editing of tasks that you put into the system. Anything and everything that you think of can be entered and the system itself relied upon to filter out the rubbish.

Another aspect of the human mind’s inventiveness is that we tend to take on too much work because we can’t resist a good opportunity, or what seems to be a good opportunity. Never mind that we don’t have enough time to do it - we believe that somehow we will fit it in to our already groaning schedule.

This gives rise to another law:

Just because something would be good to do, or profitable to do, or enjoyable to do, doesn’t mean that we have to do it.

So not only does a time management system offering “universal capture” have to filter out the dross, it also has to filter out those good things which would dilute one’s focus.

The Final Version system automatically carries out this filtering in a flexible way. The system is designed to produce the right load for the time available, but it is also designed to ensure that this load consists of the right stuff. Not only that, but in the process goals will be clarified and worthwhile emerging new ideas exploited to the full.

New System Update

Having tested the Final Version successfully by initially putting everything I could think of into it (including all my old to do lists), I decided yesterday I had better also test it with an alternative method of start-up - which is to build the list up gradually. Using this method one commences by just writing down a few tasks which one wants to be getting on with, and then by adding further tasks as one thinks of them or as they come up in the normal course of work. This is the method I would usually recommend people to use.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods:

1) With the “everything at once” method, you can be sure you haven’t forgotten anything. On the other hand some of what you put in the list may not be relevant any longer, and during the period during which the system reduces the list to a manageable size there is a lack of focus of effort. You could of course spend some time editing and weeding the tasks before entering them in the system but, since the whole idea of a “universal capture” system is that you don’t pre-edit, it might be considered contrary to the aim of the system.

2) With the “gradual build-up” method, there is less initial strain on the system. All the tasks will be current and fresh and the weeding out will be much less drastic. There is however a danger that some important work may be forgotten - though in practice I have always found this is less of a problem than one would think.

Once the list has grown to a reasonable size, I’ll report back to tell you how I am progressing.

So where has it got to today?

Last Friday I said that over the next week or so I expected the Final Version system to weed out my list of tasks to a sustainable number. At that stage I had 129 separate tasks on my list, which included 74 which were supposed to recur at least once a day.

As of this morning (Tuesday) I have 76 separate tasks of which 36 are supposed to recur at least once a day. Many of the recurring tasks are housekeeping tasks which only take a few minutes (or even seconds) - provided they are kept on top of. I’ve also split some of the previous tasks (such as “Exercise”) down into small packets so the reduction has actually been greater than the figures suggest.

There may be some more weeding over the next few days, but most of it has now been achieved.

The question now is of course: “Is what is left the right stuff?”

My feeling is that it is, though it will take some more time to be absolutely sure.

So far then I am very encouraged.

Critical day today

Today is a critical day for the testing of my new Final Version system. What I am hoping is that it will complete the process of bringing down the number of tasks on my list to match the amount of time I have available to work on them. This is one of the most crucial parts of the system.

Of course it’s not only got to reduce the list. It’s also got to ensure that that tasks that are left on the list are the right ones. Tomorrow I am hoping I will be able to see whether this is what has happened. My hope and expectation is that once this initial stage is over I will be in the sunlit uplands of time management, where the right thing always gets done effortlessly at the right time. We shall see!

Key Principles of the New System I: The Time Equation

One of the unique features of Do It Tomorrow was that it was based on the novel idea that the average amount of work coming in each day must equal the average amount of work going out each day. In other words one’s “Out Tray” must contain the same amount of work as one’s “In Tray”. I say “novel idea” because, although it seems incredibly obvious once it’s pointed out, very few people indeed seem to take on work on that basis.

DIT was the first time management system that I am aware of to make this equation its basis. 

In the subsequent systems which I developed - AutoFocus, SuperFocus and the like - this principle tended to be lost sight of in favour of trying to find a balance between the rational conscious parts of the brain and the intuitive unconscious parts.

In the new Final Version system the time equation has been re-established - albeit in a more flexible format than in DIT. Unlike DIT, the system has been designed to be self-adjusting so that there will only be the right amount of work in the system for the amount of time available. At the same time the principle of balancing the rational and intuitive brain has also been adhered to, making a synthesis between the unique principles of DIT and the subsequent systems.

The result is an easier, more flexible and self-adjusting time equation and a better balance between the rational and intuitive, thus getting the best of both worlds.

Overload

I’ve now put every task I can think of into the Final Version system - that is to say every single thing that I would like to get done, ought to get done, would like to be doing or ought to be doing. I’m not sure that deliberately overloading the system in this way is what I would recommend to others using the system, but it’s important for the purpose of testing.

As of this moment I have 129 separate tasks on the list, which include 74 which are supposed to recur at least once a day. Obviously this is not sustainable even in the short term.

What I am hoping will happen over the next week or so is:

1) The system will weed this down to a manageable size.

2) That I’ll be happy both with what I’ve got done and with what is left on the list.

Of course the alternative would be to sit down and weed the list without using the system to do so. But the trouble with using one’s conscious brain to do this is that it tends to concentrate on what one “ought” to be doing. The result of this is that one is usually left with a list that is logically right but feels wrong.

Some more characteristics

Here’s some more characteristics of the Final Version which I wrote down more or less at random while working the system today:

• The system is self-regulating in that it adjusts the amount of work in the system to the amount of time available to do it.
• There is a built in check on the number of urgent tasks. 
• It quickly removes projects which are going nowhere from the system.
• Only active stuff remains in the system.
• There is one very clear condition about when tasks that have been removed from the system can be re-entered.
• The number of daily recurring tasks is kept under control.

All these things happen naturally in response to your rate of work, psychological readiness and time available. There are no imposed quotas or limits.

Progress Report

Unfortunately I allowed myself to get a bit distracted on my return from France on Monday evening. Not having used the new system for almost a week because of my absence, I had returned with a “brilliant idea” for improving it. The trouble with testing brilliant ideas is that, unless they only involve trivial changesl, I have to start from scratch with a new list.

I very quickly discovered that the brilliant idea wasn’t so brilliant after all, so yesterday morning I had to start again with the second new list in two days. When will I ever learn?

Anyway the system hasn’t changed from my last post, is working very well so far, even though the testing has gone back to square one.  I have taken a mighty oath not to try out any more brilliant ideas but just to stick with the system until I know one way or the other whether it is as good as I think it is.

I don’t often put photos in my blog posts, but I thought you’d like to see one of my holiday snaps. This is our banquet menu on Sunday. And no those aren’t choices - each is a separate course!

Amazing Progress

The new Final Version system is beginning to show its real capability as more and more things get sorted. Today I succeeded in shifting the most enormous work load while experiencing absolutely no resistance.

Getting the basic stuff under control goes without question. There’s not been the slightest doubt that my email, paper and phone calls would remain cleared all day, that my office would remain tidy, that the household chores would be done right on time, that comments on this website wouldl be read and answered. That’s just the light relief.

What is hugely more impressive is the progress that I’ve made on more serious projects. Things are really beginning to move, although it’s early days yet on most of them.

In spite of this, the system is running too fast at the moment because the workload isn’t heavy enough. One of the great advantages of the Final Version is that you can precisely balance your workload to the system. It does this in a much more sophisticated way than Do It Tomorrow did. This is a bit of a new experience for me - I haven’t had a time management system before which tells me that I’m not giving it enough work!

Tomorrow I’m away for most of the day on a visit to the Houses of Parliament so I’ll be interested to see how the system deals with a very short work time.

Larger and larger

When you start working on a to do list it has a natural tendency to get larger and larger.

It even happened to God. On Day 1 His to do list was:

• Create light

By Day 6 His list was :

• Create cattle
• Create creeping things
• Create beasts of the earth
• Create man
• Create woman
• Bless the above
• Issue instructions about food
• Review progress so far
• Plan day off tomorrow

So the phenomenon of the expanding to do list is nothing new. It has been with us right from the beginning.

I became very aware of this when yesterday I transferred my existing to do lists into the final version of my new time management system. It was “to do lists” in the plural because over the last few months of frantic testing I had accumulated a whole raft of them - with many duplicate items. So my first task in implementing the final version was to consolidate everything and remove the duplicates. Apart from the duplicates I did no editing at all because I wanted to give the new system plenty of work to do. It is designed to have anything and everything thrown at it - so I gave it anything and everything that I had.

I ended up with just under a hundred tasks, which is not too bad. The worrying thing though was that no less than forty of them were supposed to be done at least once a day. Although some of these were the sort of task that only takes a few seconds to do (“Check diary”, “Share price index”), others were altogether more substantial (“Go for long walk”, “French Vocabulary”). So this list badly needs weeding.

One of the selling points of the new system is “Tasks are sifted and filtered by working the system itself”. A list of forty daily tasks will challenge that to the full. I am hoping (and expecting) that the system will narrow my focus without losing the things which are really important to me. Actually I expect it to do more than that - I expect it to tell me what things are really important to me. At the moment I feel like someone clearing out an attic (“Oh, I can’t possibly throw that away - that was given to me by Aunt Myrtle”)

New System Under Development

Those of you who follow the discussions on the forum will know that I am currently developing a new time management system. In fact I think it would be truer to say that I have been developing this system for ten or more years now and all the other systems I have produced have been nothing more than stages on the way.

I now believe I have succeeded in producing the final version.

The characteristics of this system reflect most of the concerns which have surfaced during these years of development:

• It is a “universal capture” system into which you can put all your ideas for action without prior editing.
• Tasks are sifted and filtered by working the system itself.
• It produces the most productive degree of tension between the intuitive unconscious mind and the rational mind.
• It removes procrastination by ensuring that you are psychologically ready to do each task.
• It automatically removes tasks which are going nowhere.
• It allows one to judge exactly whether one has the right workload and provides automatic adjustment of the workload to fit the time available.
• It enables you to deal efficiently with both urgent tasks and “must do” tasks without less pressing tasks being ignored.
• It deals highly effectively with tasks which recur daily or at greater or lesser intervals.
• It ensures that once you have started a task, however large or small, you work through to completion.
• It is simple to operate and has minimal overhead.
• It makes one’s work feel effortless, while being extremely productive.
• It makes use of available periods of time, however short.
• It ensures that the important tasks get done so that you are not just processing loads of trivia.
• Tasks and projects can be put into the system at any level.
• There is no need for time-consuming reviews or pre-selection of tasks.
• Although it is designed as a paper-and-pen system it can easily be implemented electronically.

Over the next weeks and months I intend to publish frequent updates on how I am getting on with the system.

The Magic Notebook

Click on the pictures to read

Part 1

Part 2

Evernote Developments

Evernote has just come up with some major new changes for version 4.4, which greatly improve its suitability for time and project management.

The first is that you can now link to a note from just about anywhere, including other notes. For time management purposes you can now put a note in Outlook Tasks (or an equivalent program), which means that you can use Outlook’s powerful reminders and alarms in conjunction with Evernote.

The other effect of this change is that you can use Evernote as a Wiki if you want to. From any note you have the ability to link to any number of other notes and websites. This is invaluable for project management.

Another important change (though not quite so relevant for time or project management) is that pictures in Evernote can now be directly opened by any of the normal graphics programmes and can also be dragged and dropped like any other picture. For photographers this means that Evernote is now a place suitable for keeping your best shots.

What I’d like to show you now is how I am using Evernote to write my Dreams Manual.

Ok, to show you that I need to open Evernote and click on the Dreams Manual notebook. I’ve got one note per chapter, so today I think I’ll do a bit of work on the last chapter “Putting It All Together”, which I’ve so far only put a few thoughts in. So I open that note in a separate window (you can have as many notes open as you like). In this arrangement, I can instantly get at any of the chapters without disturbing what I’m doing with the one I’m currently working on.

I’d like to show you my arrangement - that’s easy with Evernote.  I can use Evernote to do a screen clip - let’s do that. Now it’s just a matter of dragging the screen clip onto my desktop and uploading from there directly into Squarespace:

All that took about 30 seconds.

Click on the thumbnail to get the full size picture.

The left window is the main Evernote screen, with in the left column the list of chapters and on the right the index page with a link to each chapter.

The right window is the open note for the chapter I want to work on.

And you can see this post being written in the background.

Of course I can resize/move any of these windows and columns to get the best working environment.

Pretty cool, huh?

Present Reality

As promised earlier today here are my initial and current Present Realities:

27 May

I am fed up with endless lists of things to do, which never seem to be anything but a treadmill and still leave me disorganised. I long for the sort of peace I have described in my Future Reality. I feel frustrated and that I don’t have much time left to get things right. I am though encouraged by re-reading “Dreams” and a good start to doing what I feel like today. Although my health is on the whole good, I am overweight and unfit. I keep intending to go for long walks but keep failing to get going. There are people I would really like to get to know better and make enduring friendships with, but I never seem to be able to make the necessary effort.

12 June

I’m keeping on top of email, paper and the other daily commitments in my life, though my office still leaves a lot to be desired. I’m still keeping on developing the principles of Dreams which means I haven’t really got moving on the Manual yet. On the fitness side, every day I’m taking a daily long walk and doing yoga, and have just started the 100 push-ups challenge. I’m working hard with my French both aural and reading. The …. blog is up and running and for the first time I am editing news videos to go on it. I’m feeling now that things are really beginning to move and it’s exciting.

I’ve remarked before and it’s still true that “Dreams” has so far proved just as reliable as any other method in getting stuff done. In addition it’s proved invaluable for sorting out the things I really want (you should have seen some of my alternative Future Realities!) and for getting moving on them.

Creativity

Part of my Future Reality vision is to do with being creative. So I thought some of you might like to see my photography portfolio at deviantART, which I’ve been working on since starting my current vision.

Click here to see it.