My Conclusions about GIRKIR (Get It Right Keep It Right)

“Get it right, keep it right” is an excellent principle, but this post is not about the principle but about the time management system named after it.

First the good: 

• The system lives up to its title pretty well. The slow build up caused by only entering one new task per pass really works. I amazed myself by the number of things which I only had to expend a minimum of effort on to keep right once I’d got them right. 

Now the bad: 

• Inevitably as the list gradually gets longer and longer so the system slows down. Eventually it becomes unresponsive to new work coming in. Trying to put this right was the subject of most of my experiments, but I never succeeded in solving it. The two most obvious solutions are to start a new list or to weed aggressively. But both result in losing the good effects of the system for a period.

 So my conclusion is that this would be is an excellent system for getting on top of a lot of work which has got well behind (think, return from vacation as an example), but it’s not really viable for long-term use unless your work-load is comparatively light. 

This is a great pity as I had high hopes for it.

Looking forward:

My experiences with GIRKIR led me to look at trying to find a new system which would concentrate on speed and flexibility. No sooner did I express the wish, then the answer dropped into my lap. More soon!

Comments

[Aaron Hsu]

My experience is about the same as yours. Looking forward to what your next experiment is! For me, I'm working with no-list FVP right now and the moment I started using it I think I felt something akin to relief as I began working it, so it feels like a much better fit right now, but we'll have to see how things go.

[Ville]

For me GIRKIR has worked quite well so far (for a few of weeks), but I'm wondering if I have misunderstood something. I have a few additional lists in Evernote, one for each project I'm working on. My hand-written GIRKIR list just mentions the names of those projects. There is only a handful of additional tasks.

This has kept the list fairly short, as I don't always have anything to add to it.

[Alan Baljeu]

Or maybe you found an approach that makes the system work better!

[Mark Forster]

Ville:

<< I have a few additional lists in Evernote, one for each project I'm working on. My hand-written GIRKIR list just mentions the names of those projects. >>

Yes, that's a perfectly normal thing to do.

[MrDone]

Hi Mark, on your comments about too many tasks coming in and the list getting longer and longer etc, is that more to do with you taking on too much rather than the system?
As you have said before no system will cope if there is too much coming in that can be done.
Solution = reduce commitments?

[Mark Forster]

MrDone:

<< is that more to do with you taking on too much rather than the system? >>

I didn't make it clear in the blog post that a long list is supposed to have a "seed bed" effect. That is to say that the really good stuff rises out of a bed of stuff which is going nowhere. Without the stuff that's going nowhere, you don't get the stuff that is going somewhere.

That's why the characteristics of long lists like attenuation are so important. They throw into high relief the stuff which is going nowhere.

The problem with GIRKIR is that it's not very good at that job because of the slowing down of the list as it gets older. Other systems like FVP and Simple Scanning handle this much better.