Testimonial: Secrets of Productive People's 5/2 System

I’ve received the following testimonial from a reader of Secrets of Productive People who wishes to remain anonymous:

I would like to express appreciation for the very simple and effective time-management technique in chapter 9 of your book “Secrets of Productive People.” 

At the end of last week, my work was in a mess. For several weeks I had been overwhelmed by the amount of work I had to do, and most days I had been doing very little real work at all. I didn’t know where to start.

My office was untidy and I had a mountain of jobs to do, stacks of papers, unanswered emails, and unfinished projects, with no idea of what I had done and what still remained to do. 

I read your five-task system over the weekend and started using it on Monday morning. I can honestly say that I have had one of the most productive weeks of my life. Not only that, but I enjoyed every minute of it!

The time flew by. I could see I was making progress constantly. A lot of the jobs I had been frightened of actually took very little time. Some didn’t actually need to be done at all! 

I enjoyed the fact that I always had a choice about what job I wanted to do next.  I had time to prepare myself mentally for some of the more challenging tasks, seeing them there on the list.  I was easily able to cope when unexpected extra jobs came along. And at the end of each day, I could see exactly what I had achieved, with the satisfaction of a list of tasks crossed off.

I cleared my entire backlog, set up some new systems, and even took some new initiatives. All this in between meetings, despite fairly regular interruptions from colleagues as well as the fact that I was suffering from insomnia for most of the week!

So thank you very much for what is a very powerful productivity system. I thoroughly recommend it and am looking forward to trying some of your other suggestions.

Comments

[Skeg]

I agree its a very good system but find that it loses its appeal after few days once you clear the decks. I have used it to focus on short term projects rather than more strategic projects. For those I use the "current initiative" technique

[Don R]

Rereading the chapter was good for clarifying the technique, but more importantly what I did not realize what the frame of mind of what the goals of that system are. I’ve actually recently used 5T method (last weekend) but it didn’t have the same mentality behind it to make it work. I had “little and often” in mind but not the rest. I always thought there was some unresolved conflict between other systems who tell you to focus on fewer things, and what I had interpreted Mark’s systems as trying to do everything, but this actually does consider what you should be doing in one day and evaluating whether you are spending your time the best within a day. I always used a feeder list to hold options for items to add to 5T as an overflow but I sort of understand why it says not to do that. Having the completed items for reference helps, perhaps, with not worrying about forgetting the areas you are working on or maybe you internalize it.

[Vincent]

I can't remember if you wrote it or if it was Oliver Burkeman in his (sadly) defunct Guardian column : just like diets, every time management system works when you start using it. What really matters is whether you can stick to it in the long run or not.

I've been using 5T regularly over the last 4 years for long periods of time, alongside with most of the advice from SoPP and Do It Tomorrow, and it genuinely changed my life. For that, Mark, I will be forever grateful.

[jens]

I cross-read SoPP and especially chapter 9.

Don R: <<I always used a feeder list to hold options for items to add to 5T as an overflow but I sort of understand why it says not to do that.>>

Proably I misunderstood 5T completely, but I can't imagine how productive people can only rely on their intuition and not use a feeder list. To provoke a bit, I suppose that 5T is suitable for freelancers with not much todo, nearly no deadlines and less dependencies on others. And, those how have bosses in good health ;-)

This sounds probably offensive - so I think that the issue is on my side and I don't grasp the system in whole :-/

I believe that intuition is an underrated tools, which gets not the trust it deserves (refer also to Paul Loomans Book "time surfing"). But relying on intuition in an productive working field - I don't now if this is wishful thinking and will not calm the mind as it is supposed to.

[Mark Forster]

jens:

<< I can't imagine how productive people can only rely on their intuition >>

The chapter describing the 5/2 system does not mention the word "intuition" once. Neither for that matter does the whole book.

You don't get a calm mind from intuition. You get a calm mind from being on top of your work.

[Mark Forster]

Skeg:

<< I have used it to focus on short term projects rather than more strategic projects. For those I use the "current initiative" technique. >>

The Current Initiative technique works very well with the 5/2 system. You just make your current initiative the first item on the day's list, and take it from there.

[Mark Forster]

Don R:

<< I always used a feeder list to hold options for items to add to 5/2 as an overflow >>

That's a mistake. The whole point of 5/2 is that you ask yourself many times a day "What should I be working on now?" A feeder list will get in the way of that because a feeder list inevitably gets longer and longer with more and more stuff which you could be doing but which isn't necessarily what you should be doing. If you're going to use a feeder list you would be better off using FVP.

[jens]

Mark:

Thanks for your reply. This is a very interesting subject.

In the book (chapter 9) you wrote:

"1. Write out a list of five tasks..."
Few lines after it says:
"Don't feed your list from another larger list. The contents of the list should come __fresh_from_your_head__".

What is this for you where the tasks came from - if not intuition?

IMHO it -must- be the subconsciousness where it came from, thus intuition. If it comes from the mind through careful consideration of tasks and projects and probably excessive thinking, it would make a hell lot of stress (for me) and thus a long list would be much more better.

Probably 5/2 is not for the capability my brain provides :-) although this kind of process is very appealing to me.

I read the book twice - and as I prove here, I missed the point :-))

[Mark Forster]

Jens:

All you have to do is just write down five things which you want to do or need to do. When you've done three of them write down another three things.

That's it.

Don't make it more complicated.

[Aaron Hsu]

I've decided to use this system over a long list system because of my clear tendency to suffer distraction and a lack of focus/too much diffusion with any length list. I'm just getting into it now, but it's going really great, and there are a number of surprising side-effects, such as reducing bad habits of distraction, that are working really well from a psychological standpoint, and I'm getting a lot of good, focused work done.