Review of the Systems: Autofocus 2

The rules for AF2 can be found by clicking here.

Brief Summary

AF2 was an attempt to solve the problems AF1 had with urgent tasks and tasks that needed to be done in a particular order. It used the same undifferentiated list of tasks as AF1, but dealt with them in a different way.

Instead of treating each page of the list as a unit, the complete list was treated as one unit, thereby making the number of lines on a page or the number of tasks remaining on a page irrelevant. Selection of the next task was done by going to the end of the list (i.e. the last task entered) and moving back from there until a task “stood out”. There was also a dismissal process in which the first block of unactioned tasks was put on notice of dismissal each day.

Advantages

All tasks on the list were potentially able to be done at any time (unlike AF1 where you were restricted to tasks on the current page). It was a good system for keeping track of a myriad of urgent tasks.

Disadvantages

Although better than AF1 at dealing with urgent tasks it was even more liable than AF1 to favour easy tasks over more difficult ones. With a long list, it could also take a considerable time to decide on the next task as often many pages had to be gone through before a tasks could be selected.

Conclusions

AF2 was one of the less successful methods, and I don’t think many people use it now. However if I was put into a situation where I had to juggle a lot of urgent tasks, I would certainly consider it as a method of keeping them under control.