DIT2? AF5? Who cares what it's called? This is what I'm working on at the moment...
Monday, February 1, 2010 at 11:17 Usually when I release a new time management system I have tested it quite thoroughly myself. This is important because often any drawbacks only become apparent quite a while down the line.
But in the case of the new DIT2/AF5 system, I think it might be more helpful to have other people working on it with me at the same time so that we can share our experiences of it together.
So what I am going to do now is to share the basic outline of what I’m doing now, so others can run with it and see what they can make of it. I’m not going to go into much detail because I think that would destroy the purpose of the exercise - the detail should appear from our experience of working the system.
This is what it consists of:
1. You need a page-a-day diary with plenty of lines. Also some form of bookmarking for today’s date and the two entry pages (see below) - though turned down page corners are probably quite sufficient.
2. All new tasks are entered on the page which is one calendar month from today’s date. Example: Today’s date is February 1st. New tasks are entered on the page for March 1st. Tomorrow I will enter new tasks on March 2nd and so on.
3. All re-entered tasks are entered on the page which is one week from today. So any task I re-enter today (Monday February 1st) goes on the page for for next Monday (February 8th). Tomorrow (Tuesday) they will go on the page for next Tuesday 9th and so on.
4. Nothing is ever entered on any page, other than the pages currently one month and one week from today’s date.
5. All active pages are treated as if they were one long list and you continue to circulate round them doing the tasks that stand out.
6. All tasks which are on pages earlier than today’s date have expired. They are dead, done for, dismissed, deceased.
The thinking behind this is that you can put anything you like into the system. If you do nothing about it, it will remain there for a month and then expire. If at any time you commit yourself to a task by taking some action on it, you are put under increased pressure to get it finished by being given only seven calendar days to do some more work on it. Of course many tasks are done in one go, so can be deleted without being re-entered.
That’s all you need to get started.
Reader Comments (158)
<< So far, Mark hasn't explained the process of working through the list >>
Yes, I have. Para 5.
<< ... Eventually my list is cluttered with items I keep doing 5-10 minutes on every week or so, all at least 1 month old. >>
This could happen I suppose, but I think it is more of a theoretical worry than something that is likely to happen much in practice.
<< I'm also a bit worried about how, in AF, I generally had a good overview of everything on the list - I'm not sure it will be so easy in this system. >>
Bear in mind you are continually cycling round the entire set of active pages. You should have a pretty good idea of what is in them.
<< Hi Brian, From my understanding, there should only be 3 active pages (today, next week, next month) that are cycled through and not upto 30 active pages as you stated. >>
No, Brian is correct.
<< This is pretty much the flowchart for DIT2/AF5 as it is. Please correct me if I'm mistaken / confused.
http://create.ly/fzr4bk5y3 >>
I tend to be "flowchart blind", but it looks ok to me as far as I can see!
<< How does the new system, in any way, take on the spirit of DIT i.e. Knowing that you've completed a full day of work? >>
Does it matter?
<< what do you do when a task is complete and is recurring? Add it 30 days from today, or 7? >>
Seven. One of the problems with daily recurring tasks is that they can multiply so as to take up the entire day. Giving them only seven days grace will hopefully weed out the unnecessary ones.
<< I am thiniking of daily recurring tasks and I am fighting my inclination to just add them to tomorrow's date. :) >>
Remember that the dates are not actual dates but the expiry dates of the tasks. If you add them to tomorrow and you don't get round to them for some reason, you've lost them.
<< Madness. Sheer madness. >>
Would you care to explain why you think that?
Mark, upto 30 active pages? I'm out!
e.g. Tomorrow, 7 days - instead of 7 days, 1 month? The overhead of cycling through 30 days seems a little heavy for me.
<<Yes, I have. Para 5. >>
My mistake ~ You did indeed say that the list is to be cycled through, in a way that is very much like the various incarnations of Autofocus.
I tend to wonder, though, if this list could work equally well with a DIT-style method of working ~ using this as a master list, to decide what is to be done on a day-to-day basis.
I see a tension between the need to have a complete inventory of tasks (one that does not become overwhelming) and the need to have a finite view of what should be accomplished in a day.
To me, it would seem that the "cycling-through" does not address the second part of the tension, and I am afraid I would start making a daily list on an index card.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Sarah J
Thanks, Mark. You're right. Thinking of tasks in this way takes some getting used to. Let me see if I can explain my question better now that I've thought about it in that light. Sorry in advance for the length.
I can see how this works for tasks that have no due date. But my school assignments are due on x date, and so they actually "expire" on that date. In a way it seems logical to simply enter them there. But then when I work on them, I reenter them 7 days from now, which in effect changes the expiry date. At first I hoped that your new system would preserve the natural urgency level of my assignments and allow me to track due dates at the same time. Now I can see it won't work quite the way I had thought, and I would have to keep a separate listing of assignments with their due dates.
Also, I might find it difficult to trust the system if I'm entering a task with a different expiry date than its inherent one. Say, for example, if my reading assignment is due on February 6th but I enter it on March 1st because it's a month from now, it feels like there's more time to get to it than there is. I'll have to see how this works out in practice.
Somehow I'm thinking that using a binder with printed pages with the dates as smaller "page number type" dates instead of using a proper calender would help to not think of the dates as date in a calender but as "best before date"/dismissal dates.
Seeing an ordinary calender page somehow gets me thinking that I am planning *that* day instead of just using a timed dismissal system.
/jonaz
<< Mark, could it be done on a shorter time scale? >>
You're welcome to experiment.
«I tend to be "flowchart blind", but it looks ok to me as far as I can see! »
The flowchart says to start at the beginning of the list every day. Is that correct or do you start where you left off?
<< I tend to wonder, though, if this list could work equally well with a DIT-style method of working ~ using this as a master list, to decide what is to be done on a day-to-day basis. >>
There's nothing wrong with having a master list and selecting from it what you want to do each day. But doing that is neither DIT nor this new system.
<< I see a tension between the need to have a complete inventory of tasks (one that does not become overwhelming) and the need to have a finite view of what should be accomplished in a day.
<< To me, it would seem that the "cycling-through" does not address the second part of the tension, and I am afraid I would start making a daily list on an index card. >>
If you can't do without that, then you would probably be better off sticking with DIT. In the new DIT2/AF5 system the only things you *have* to do today are the tasks on today's date (or they'll be dismissed).
<< Seeing an ordinary calender page somehow gets me thinking that I am planning *that* day instead of just using a timed dismissal system. >>
You'll soon get used to it.
<< The flowchart says to start at the beginning of the list every day. Is that correct or do you start where you left off? >>
I don't think it matters that much. You might like to experiment and see which works best.
Tasks which absoluterly MUST be done on a given day can be given a high priority to ensure that they appear at the top of my list - sorted by priority, then due date - but I"m using everything else in precisely the way Mark describes it.
The auto-dismssal idea is brilliant, as is the idea of having a weekly window in which to tackle each task.
Just to be safe, and allowing my own inclinations play out - I made duplicate month lists on paper and PC, and will then see which one I will be attracted to more.
I meant no disrespect. But in looking at my list of things to do -- with their multiple deadlines over the next two or three weeks -- I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the prospect of transferring these items to a page dated one month from now -- and then separating out those items that were due a week from tomorrow, and those due in two weeks and those due in three weeks, etcetera.
Hence - -my comment: "Sheer madness." It reflected my mental state!
best,
Steve
Steve:
<< Madness. Sheer madness. >>
Would you care to explain why you think that?
I'd like to verify something about re-entering:
Lets say that today (01/02, format=dd/mm) I enter a task, and place it at 01/03, according to the instructions.
Tomorrow, when I start working, the first page with tasks is 01/03. I work a little on some task, and I need to re-enter it.
Where should I re-enter it, on 08/02 or 08/03?
From the instructions, it seems like it's 08/02, but I wanted to be sure.
08/03 would also make sense, since the task earned some more time after I just worked on it.
Thanks,
Walter
Yes, you're correct. Tasks are always re-entered 1 week from the current day, regardless of what date you got them from!
This looks great. Do you put tasks that HAVE to be done today on today's date in the diary? I understand where to add new tasks (one month hence) and task one has worked on and still not done (one week hence).
-David
Another comment: Evidently tasks closer to today should be worked on more than distant tasks, in general. How that influences the process of cycling through tasks, I guess is up to you.
It is interesting, but I think I'll sit back and watch developments.
At first it didn't seem like there were any closed lists anywhere, since you process all the active pages like one long list, and that was making me nervous.
But on further reflection, each active page does have its own unique time pressure. And only two pages are "open" at any given time. Considering these two factors, it appears there are still some "closed list" dynamics here, just not as clear-cut as in AF1 or AF4.
Well I will give it a try and see what happens.
Mark, what about keeping it as one long list, but just writing expiry dates next to each task? As you process each item, you would look to see if it expired that day, if so cross it off, if not, consider whether to work on it, etc. When you work on it, if you need to re-enter it, you cross it off and re-enter at the bottom of the list with a new expiry date.
This would make it easier to think of the list as one where your instinct can guide your actions.
OK, isn't this really as simple as:
+ New tasks get entered on the list with a 30 day expiration period.
+ Re-entered tasks get entered on the list with a 7 day expiration period.
+ Unactioned tasks expire after 30 or 7 days, respectively, and simply get deleted.
I think referencing a calendar confused people when these three rules seem to sum it up. Thoughts?
That would be the straightforward online implementation.
"That would be the straightforward online implementation"
And that is how I am working it today (In Excel). So far so good...
Example: If page 17 has todays date "Monday 2010-02-01", I write recurring tasks on page 24 (=17 + 7) and new tasks on page 47 (= 17 + 30).
Tomorrow morning I write "Tuesday 2010-02-02" on page 18 (the next page without a date), recurring tasks go to page 25 and new tasks to page 48.
The clou is: If I miss one or several days (vacation, hospital, major desaster... ;-)) I can start the next day after that with the next page. Example: If I miss 2010-02-03 to 2010-02-10, I will write "Thursday 2010-02-11" on top of page 19, without having to renumber any pages.
This even takes care of the 28. February problem: New tasks always go 30 pages from now, a real date won't be assigned to the page until it becomes my "today-page".
Mark, what do you think about that?
I'm trying this in Omnifocus.
I am doing this in my iPod Touch. You do have to sort, though, by due date.
In a digital task manager, you could do this no problem by simply sorting the list after every addition. In a paper format, there has to be a way to re-add an item somewhere in the middle of the list (seven days in the future) between the top and the new items added at the end. A day by day calendar is an easy solution.
One aspect of all AF systems is that you have to regularly work through the list. If you are a student who has regularly scheduled HW, especially if it is every day or week, and you do not regularly make it through your list, you would have to do something different. One solution might be to keep a separate HW calendar and simply add "Do Homework" in AF5/DIT2." This entry would quickly end up no more than seven days in the future and would be re-added nearly every day. Of course, the seven days in the future is not when I would work on the assignment. It just places it on the list nearer the "top". I do not like to keep such a large list of stuff that I cannot easily make it through the list every day.
There is another strong motivational tool in AF, namely group dismissal: if one don't do a due task now, one have to dismiss not only this task, but the the whole group of due tasks. So one's incentive to act ("now or never") is mulitplied by the number of tasks. Is there any way to incorporate this powerful tool into DIT2?
<< There is another strong motivational tool in AF, namely group dismissal: if one don't do a due task now, one have to dismiss not only this task, but the the whole group of due tasks. So one's incentive to act ("now or never") is mulitplied by the number of tasks. >>
I think it often works the other way: "if I don't do this task now, I can get rid of all those pesky tasks that I don't want to do".
Tasks on list to be done today: High priority
Tasks on list not to be done today: Normal priority
Task backlog: Low priority
New tasks: Use “Task Recurrence” as needed
Pro: Simple, flexible
Con: Requires Microsoft Outlook
Couldn't you just do this by expiring AF items that are 30 days old or is there some benefit from post-dating them?
Richard - me too! I'm using a numbered notebook, but your point about adding the dates on the fly is simply brilliant! Solves the days-away-from-list problems in a flash.
I need some comments on this situation:
I have a new task that I put 30 days from today.
I do something on this task. Where do I re-enter it ? 1 week or 1 month ?
B.R
Henrik
Yeah I know it is a week re entry. But my task was first 30 days away ( as new)
then I move it to 8 days away. so expired date just get shorted....
I hope you see my issue ?
First exp date is 30 days and then I move it to 8 day