Failure!
Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 13:55 I had great hopes yesterday that speeding up Autofocus would result in being able to do everything - or at the least more of everything. Unfortunately it had exactly the opposite effect. It speeded up the rate at which the list grew and increased the sense of oppression that comes from having a list that is growing faster than you can deal with it. Not good!
Which leaves me with The Next Hour of Your Life as the method which so far gets nearest to enabling one to do everything. I’m going to concentrate on that for a bit to see exactly where it leads. It’s going to be particularly interesting as I’m about to go through quite a rough period of moving out of my house on a so far unknown date to a so far unknown location for a so far unknown period to allow the repairs to be done to the damage caused by flooding. That’s quite a test for a time management system.
Reader Comments (3)
If the Next Hour of Your Life withstands the floods, then this is certainly the Ark I want to be in to ride the waves.
I am currently using Activefocus, in combination with reminders on Google calendar and various lists to run my system. Examples of lists would be, discussion lists, list of calls to make, follow up lists, emails, etc. So the task in Activefocus is often to do the routine lists.
It works well, but as you point out, the scanning and choosing can be a challenge. There's a lot repetition too, as I tend to re-write tasks that are already further up the list, but now are now on my mind to perform.
I will use the Next Hour method, because switching has little overheads, and see how it works out.
I wonder whether the real secret to "getting EVERYTHING done" is to develop a habitual way of working whereby I naturally find myself staying in the desired limits. In other words, reducing my overall commitments and expectations but not feeling that I am putting limitations on myself by doing so.
Making EVERYTHING get smaller without realizing it's getting smaller.
In practice, I have found that no-list creates precisely this effect. And it feels really good. It feels real. It feels like I am finding the right things to focus on. Other stuff falls away naturally, painlessly (no painful processes like Audits or Dismissals or Weeding—or at least, these feature much less prominently).
Similar thoughts here:
http://www.netobjectives.com/blogs/personal-blog-about-working-hard
Yes, that's been my experience too. I'm finding The Next Hour of Your Life particularly good in that respect. The overall feeling is that one's getting more done and that there isn't a huge backlog of undone stuff hanging over one.