Stabilizing Your Systems

One of the problems many people who visit this website have (including myself) is finding a stable time management system to stick with. 

Here’s a method which may help you in finding one, while still allowing you to experiment with others.

What you will need is an app in which you can drag bullets from place to place within a list. I’m using Roam Research but there are hundreds of others. You probably have one already.

1. Make a short list of time management systems which you feel you might want to use (you can add more at any time to the end of the list)
2. Drag the system you are currently using to the top of the list
3. Use it for as long as you want to
4. Select the next system you want to use and drag it to the top of the list.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 ad infinitum

The result will be that the systems you most often use will be at the top of the list while the others sink towards the bottom. This should gradually (or not so gradually) have the effect of introducing more stability into your choice of system.

Comments

[Chris Cooper]

Applying Forsterian task-management principles to whole time-management systems.

This is peak meta.

[Mark H.]

How could this be applied to pencil and paper?

[Mark Forster]

Mark H:

<< How could this be applied to pencil and paper? >>

1. Make a short list of time management systems which you feel you might want to use (you can add more at any time to the beginning of the list)

2. Write the system you are currently using at the end of the list

3. Use it for as long as you want to

4. Select the next system you want to use cross it out and rewrite it at the end of the list.

5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 ad infinitum

[Mark H.]

Mark Forster, Thanks.

[Dan M.]

One could also just use a stack of index cards with one system written on each. When you want to read the list, you could just lay the cards out on a desk or other surface. When you work with a system, move it to the top of the pile. The methods you use most frequently will naturally migrate to the top. Effectively this is this method: http://lifehacker.com/the-noguchi-filing-system-keeps-paper-documents-organiz-1593529432

[Mark Forster]

Dan M.

I never could get the Noguchi system to work with single documents, but I have been using this method with files and books for years (possibly decades) now - and it works brilliantly.

Another way I use it is with the icons on my desktop. The apps I use the most gravitate to the left side of the screen.

And what answer did I get from keeping the list of time management methods? The winner by a long way was NQ-FVP http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2017/4/29/no-question-fvp.html . No other system came anywhere near it.

I am experimenting with a small amendment to NQ-FVP at the moment. Too early to say if it works yet, but if it does I will publish the result as a blog post.

[Mike Brown]

I think another paper/pen way to track this is to use the polka-dot method.

Write a list of the systems.

Every day that you use the system, put a dot after it.

The system with the most dots is the winner.

(This riffs on a technique for handling single pieces of paper, back in the day. Dot the corner of the paper every time you pick it up. When you pick up a paper and see lots of dots in the corner, either do something with it or throw it out.)

[Mark Forster]

Mike Brown:

<< Dot the corner of the paper every time you pick it up. When you pick up a paper and see lots of dots in the corner, either do something with it or throw it out. >>

I've tried that in the past and it was quite effective.

I can't remember who thought of it - not me, I think.

[Mark Forster]

Myself:

<< I am experimenting with a small amendment to NQ-FVP at the moment. Too early to say if it works yet, but if it does I will publish the result as a blog post. >>

It didn't!

[Alan Baljeu]

>>(This riffs on a technique for handling single pieces of paper, back in the day. Dot the corner of the paper every time you pick it up. When you pick up a paper and see lots of dots in the corner, either do something with it or throw it out.)

I don't understand the directions. Where are these pieces of paper that you're picking up? Loose around the house, or in a filing system? Why pick them up and put down? What might you do with them that's different?

[Mike Brown]

Alan Baljeu:

The dotting-papers method was for handling any and all sorts of papers flowing through an inbox. For my boss, it was printed out emails, forms, notes he'd made to himself, etc. For me at home, it would be bills, mail I'd received and not sorted, a printout to read, etc.

So, when I helped my boss work through his piles of paper (we met weekly), I would dot any paper that he did not or could not deal with in the moment. After a few weeks, any papers he had not actioned that had lots of dots really could not be ignored anymore.

Don't know if that makes the process clearer. It was a simple tool to help one be more mindful of how many times they'd picked up a piece of paper without taking action on it.