Addition to Simple Scanning Rules

I’ve added a couple of suggestions to the rules for Simple Scanning:

• Draw a line across the page at the beginning of each day. This helps to remind you whether you’ve done a daily task that day and enables you to see how long any task has been on the list.
• When re-entering a task, do it in the following order: 1) Re-write the task at the end of the list 2) Cross out the old one. This will prevent you from failing to remember to re-enter a task, and also from losing your place.

Comments

[Christian]

Quick question: How do you keep your place in the list from day to day? Or do you start from the beginning of the list each morning?

[nuntym]

LOL Mark! I was just about to post about my minor tweak to Simple Scanning that I have been using for weeks, and it involves beginning every day by drawing a line across the list and tagging said line with today's date and day of the week.

This improves clumping to the point that it fosters daily and weekly habits, while also accenting attenuation by showing how old particular tasks are.

Now add processing the list using FAF rules but using days instead of pages (like I hinted in your previous blog post) and it is a very intuitive system: unlike in vanilla Simple Scanning I never had problems with "standing out" in this one.

And yes this is the system that I said I found to be better that RAF.

[nuntym]

@Christian: If you have started closing your list with lines at the beginning of every day, you will find that starting from the top of the previous day is the best place to begin your morning, mainly because the first recurring tasks you do at the start of the day can be found there.

For example, in my list "Coffee" and "Medicine" are almost always in the previous day's top part.

[Caibre65]

nuntym

I'm using this day based FAF as you describe it. I always write the date at the start of the day so my list has the info needed for the division by day.

[Mark Forster]

Christian:

<< Quick question: How do you keep your place in the list from day to day? Or do you start from the beginning of the list each morning? >>

Personally I start again from where I left off the previous day. I keep my place by either not closing the last task I was working on or by selecting the first task I am going to do tomorrow and dotting it. Starting at the top of the previous day, as nuntym recommends, also works well. We tried this with AF1 at one stage and it got the day off to a good start.

[Mark Forster]

nuntym:

<< Now add processing the list using FAF rules but using days instead of pages (like I hinted in your previous blog post) and it is a very intuitive system: unlike in vanilla Simple Scanning I never had problems with "standing out" in this one. >>

I tried that for a bit but I found it discouraged me from moving fast enough round the list.

[nuntym]

@Mark Forster: <<I tried that for a bit but I found it discouraged me from moving fast enough round the list. >>

That shows the difference between a "standing out" novice and a master!

That speed is probably what was making me trip up with Simple Scanning, or maybe my intuition was not getting enough information. Whatever the reason I think I will stick with my present method until my intuition gets better.

[JD]

Am I right in thinking that if I finish a task, but that task will recur at some point in the future (such as watering plants), it gets re-entered immediately? If so, that probably explains what I'm doing wrong!

[Mark Forster]

JD:

<< Am I right in thinking that if I finish a task, but that task will recur at some point in the future (such as watering plants), it gets re-entered immediately? >>

If it won't recur until after three or four days, it's probably best not to re-enter it immediately but to put it in some reminder system to put it back on the list when you want to do it next. Try it out and see what works best for you.

[Ben Vallack]

This is turning out to be very interesting. I'm making sure to use strikethrough instead of removing done items. However, I see no reason not to delete all consecutive completed tasks that exist from the very start of the list. i.e if the first 10 items are all done, they can be removed permanently.

[Vejas]

I am really excited about starting to use simple scanning system as it seems to feet my intuitive personality. How do you guys reconcile this system with habit building system? I like to keep a list of daily habits that I must do (healthy eating sexual transmutation, meditation, workout, cold shower, Instagram post, approach stranger a day, etc) - these also a general outline of my day. I like to keep them on my white board and thick it when I complete it so I can see my habit chain. Do you guys would simply re-write each daily habit in the long list each morning, or fuse these systems by having long list for outcome tasks and habit tracker for progress tasks?

[Alan Baljeu]

I would write prospective habits on the list. If it's something I want to be doing automatically (before going to bed, charge the phone), I won't necessarily depend on seeing it on the list to do it, but seeing it will be a reminder, and if I see and have already done it, I would cross it off and reenter it. Once something becomes a reliable habit, take it off the list.

It's also nice to have a chart of habit progress day by day. And if you prefer, maybe you just write Habits on the list and refer to the chart for your details.