Get Everything Done

Yesterday in the first part of this article I wrote about why I keep coming back to NQ-FVP, and promised that in part 2 I would answer the question of why I keep leaving NQ-FVP in the first place.

It’s a question which I haven’t seriously asked of myself until now. So the answers I come up with will be just as interesting to me as to anyone else, and possibly more so.

The easy short answer is that I am always looking for the perfect system and, although I feel that NQ-FVP isn’t the perfect system, it’s the best I have.

That raises a lot of questions which are much more difficult to answer:

Is it actually possible to have a perfect system?
What would the perfect system look like?
Am I right in thinking that NQ-FVP isn’t the perfect system?
Are there changes I could make so that NQ-FVP becomes the perfect system?

Is it actually possible to have a perfect system?

I think the answer must be “no” and for the same reason that there’s no perfect car, perfect house, perfect phone or anything else. The most one can say is “That’s my perfect car/house/phone”, meaning that it perfectly suits your personality and your present needs and circumstances. My perfect car wouldn’t be your perfect car, and so on.

So I’m forced to the conclusion that, no, I can’t come up with a universally perfect time management system. But you can have my perfect time management system and if we’re lucky it will suit you too.

What would my perfect system look like?

That’s easy to answer. It would have to be a system into which I could feed everything I have to do, want to do, or should do. Everything would then come out in exactly the right order, allowing for importance, urgency, and desirability. It would respond immediately to changes in circumstances. It would deal equally well with things I want to do, and things I need to do but don’t want to do. It would reduce resistance to a minimum, and have minimum overhead. It would provide both motivation and momentum.

Am I right in thinking that NQ-FVP isn’t my perfect system?

Let’s mark it out of 10 for each of the above qualities (bearing in mind that these are my answers for my perfect system and your answers might well be different)

Everything I have to do, want to do, or should do. 10
Exactly the right order, allowing for importance, urgency, and desirability. 6
Respond immediately to changes in circumstances. 8
Things I want to do 10
Things I need to do but don’t want to do. 4
Reduce resistance to a minimum. 8
Minimum overhead 7
Motivation 8
Momentum 8

That’s 69 points out of 90 or 77%, which isn’t a bad score, but still a fair distance from being perfect.

Are there changes I could make so that NQ-FVP becomes my perfect system?

I don’t know that I can get it to 100% perfect - is anything? But I can certainly think up some pointers to increase the score. These are all about how I use the system, rather than changes to the system itself.

Don’t overload it with tasks
Even the most perfect car won’t take too many passengers or too much weight, and it wouldn’t be the perfect car I want if it did (my car’s a two-seater and that’s the way I want it). It’s exactly the same with a time management system. NQ-FVP will grind to a halt if I put too many tasks in it. The system can enable me to get stuff done more efficiently and effectively, but what it can’t do is get me to do more than I am physically or mentally capable of doing. So I must either avoid putting too much into the system in the first place, or aggressively weed tasks so that my work becomes more and more concentrated and targetted.
Don’t overload it with dots
Dotting too many tasks at a time slows the whole system down and makes it inflexible. I aim to never have more than five dotted tasks at a time. That’s what I’ve got dotted at the moment on my current list of 66 tasks, and includes the one I’m working on at the moment.
Scan quickly
Scanning time is the main overhead in this system. If I scan slowly, weighing every task, it takes an unacceptably long time. But even worse, it encourages me to dot too many tasks. And even worse than that, it takes a long time to correct if I miss a task that I should have dotted. Fewer dots gives much more flexibilty without any penalty.

Conclusion

I think it would be very difficult to improve the actual system of NQ-FVP. Most attempts to do so are trying to cure problems caused by incorrect handling. The quickest way to kill it is to have a huge ponderous list of unweeded tasks, covered in a multitude of dots caused by long exhaustive (and exhausting) scans. Keep the list well-weeded, scan quickly and aim at a maximum of 3-5 dots in the whole list.

Next…

In Part 3 I shall be dealing with how NQ-FVP can be used as a long list, a short list and a no-list system all at the same time.