Review of the Systems: Conclusion

The review of AF4 (Revised) concludes the review of the systems which I have produced since Do It Tomorrow.

The complete reviews can be accessed by clicking here.

All these systems represent attempts to answer the basic conundrum of time management:

How does one get the correct balance between the easy and the difficult, and the urgent and the non-urgent?

Or to put it another way:

How does one slog one’s way through the difficult stuff without neglecting the many essential small things?

Or another way:

How does one get all the myriads of small things done without neglecting the big things?

Human nature being what it is the tendency for most people is to go for the easy and urgent things at the expense of the more difficult and non-urgent. But just because something is easy and urgent doesn’t mean that it isn’t necessary to do it. So systems which try to throw the balance too far in opposing direction of the difficult and non-urgent often end up collapsing because neglected minor tasks can quickly build up into a backlog which is both urgent and difficult to clear.

None of the systems I have reviewed here get the balance quite right, though many of them introduce interesting new concepts and advances on existing time management theory.

I believe though that the forthcoming revised instructions for SuperFocus do achieve this balance. I have been engaged in testing them over the last week and so far they have proved to work perfectly. The testing will have a few weeks to go yet, and then if all has gone well I will release the instructions. You can follow progress on the Discussion Forum.

Comments

[Alan Baljeu]

"How does one get the correct balance between the easy and the difficult, and the urgent and the non-urgent?"

This has been the visible thrust of many of these systems. AF4R has proven very good at getting some difficult, important things happening, with sporadic intervals of covering the dealing with easy and/or urgent things.

It's possible flaw is that it's easy to get caught up in the Unfinished list, which is why i've been taking great care to try to make it around to the other stuff regularly.

Seeing this post inspires me to try again. While the important big stuff deserves most of my time, the remainder deserves faster response time. Besides, mixing things up is more "fun" and leads to more sustained productive energies.

So I'm blending some ideas and altering my processing patterns to better approximate this vision. I don't intend to share these as I'm going to wait for v3.

[Will]

"I believe though that the forthcoming revised instructions for SuperFocus do achieve this balance. "

Hmm: I fear we have heard this before. And, as before, I can't wait!