The concept of dismissal is distinctive to the AF/SF family of systems. Dismissing tasks is one of the most essential part of SuperFocus.
It is important to realise that the rules about dismissal effect the way one treats all the tasks in the system, not just the ones to which the dismissal rules are being applied. Therefore for the system to work properly, it is very important that you keep to the rules about dismissal.
If you are working the system properly then dismissal should be an automatic process. You don’t decide which tasks should be dismissed or not dismissed. The only question is whether a task has “stood out” for action and, if not, whether it is now liable for dismissal.
When a task is dismissed it should not be seen as a failure in any way. In fact, it simply means that the system is working as it should.
Consider the types of task that may be found on the pages of a SuperFocus notebook:
These different categories of tasks provide a hugely effective sifting process, which classifies tasks more or less automatically for action, urgent action, little-and-often work, review and final deletion. Because of this sifting, the system does not need pre-sifting. You can enter all potential tasks and projects into the system, and let the system deal with them.