Started work at 8.20 am today (Wednesday).
Had routine items out of the way in time for breakfast at 9.30 am. That meant I was up to date with email, Facebook, tidying, comments, journal, calendar, blogging, moderating groups, finance, blog reading, computer housekeeping, Evernote, etc.
One thing I have to be careful of with this system. There’s a tendency - which arrived about mid-morning for me today - to say “Well, I’ve done everything I have to do today” and then to start drifting. I’ve not experienced that with any other systems, probably because I’ve seldom got to that point so early in the day!
I think this could actually be a serious problem if not addressed. Fortunately though I’m fairly confident that I know what’s causing it. It’s the fact that the dismissal rule isn’t stringent enough for this type of list.
So I’m going to change the dismissal rule to a new more activity-orientated one. Accordingly delete the present Rule 5 and insert new rule as follows:
5. At the start of each day’s work all pages which were filled with tasks more than one day ago are dismissed, together with all the tasks remaining on them. This is controlled by dating each page as soon as it has been completely filled with tasks. For example a page which was filled with tasks on March 29th is dismissed at the start of work on March 31st.
I’m also going to introduce a new rule about what happens when entering new tasks:
8. When a new task is entered at the end of the list you are only allowed to move forward and can no longer circulate through the page. This means that entering new tasks becomes a separate phase from working on old tasks. You can enter as many new tasks as you like in accordance with Rule 1, but once you have entered all you want you return to the beginning of the active list.
And a finally a new rule about where to start at the beginning of each day.
9. At the beginning of each day you start by dismissing any pages under Rule 5, then proceed from the beginning of the first remaining page.
The effect of these amendments is that progress through the list consists of three phases:
IMPORTANT AFTERNOTE
For those who are trying this out themselves, please remember that I am experimenting here and have no more idea than you have whether the new rules will have the desired effect.