SuperFocus: The Last Page
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 at 17:04
Mark Forster in Articles, SuperFocus

A phenomenon which users of the latest version of SuperFocus may not have yet have come across is that unfinished tasks in Column 2 of the last page may end up being re-entered on different pages.

This happens when Column 1 of the last page is filled and a new page is started. So the last page stops being the last page. The result is that some unfinished tasks may be re-entered at the beginning of the active list and some may be re-entered on the new last page.

For example, if you have two lengthy tasks in Column 2 of the last page:

Read War and Peace

Write Review of Project X

War and Peace may be actioned before the Column 1 of the last page is filled up, and so will go to the beginning of the list. Project X may only be actioned after a new last page has been started, so will go to the end. Project X will only rejoin War and Peace once the new page has finished being worked on.

This phenomenon worried me a bit when I first encountered it, but I’ve come to realise that it’s actually an advantage. This is because it prevents too long being spent at the end of the list. There was a tendency in the earlier AutoFocus systems to “chase the end of the list”, that is for the list to be growing faster due to re-entries than one is advancing through it. Too many Column 2 items on a last page which has only a few items initially would exacerbate this. As it is though, some re-entries get diverted to the beginning of the list which allows the end to be reached faster.

Article originally appeared on Get Everything Done (http://markforster.squarespace.com/).
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