One of the things which is coming out of the discussions about Autofocus for me is that it is not advisable to start off by transfering every single task that you had listed in your previous time management system. This is particularly so with systems like Getting Things Done, where one is encouraged to keep lists of things which are “someday/maybe” items.
It’s not that Autofocus is incapable of handling long lists of items like this. It’s that the way it will handle them is usually by causing most of them to be dismissed. There is also a problem in the effect of a long list of items on the owner of the list. For someone just beginning on the Autofocus way to have a huge number of undigested items all at once can cause feelings of overwhelm.
Certainly someone who has been using Autofocus for a while will have plenty of items on their list. Currently I have 103 tasks spread over 14 active pages. But they are all related to things which I am currently working on - in other words they are fresh in my mind and part of a general movement. It doesn’t feel like overwhelm, more like being in the flow.
So my advice is not to start the list by entering every possible thing you can think of, but instead just list a few items, start work on them and add others as you think of them or as they come up. You will quickly build up a list of tasks which are currently viable for you. When I started the Autofocus system myself, I started with just three items: Email, Tidy Desk, and Wash Up. By the time I’d completed those three items the list was already over a page long and growing fast - but the point is that what was on the list was currently in my mind and relevant.