Blog Comments and the Discussion Group

I thought I’d just draw your attention to one of the features of this website, which is that it is extremely interactive.

There are two basic ways in which you can contribute. One is by making a comment on a Blog entry, and the other is by joining in on the Discussion Forum. No form of registration is required for either, and you do not have to leave your email address or website details (though you can if you want to). You can either use your real name or a pseudonym. I’ve never yet had to remove an objectionable posting, which is a tribute to the readers of this website, but obviously I reserve the right to. What I have had to do is remove extended quotations of copyright material which go beyond the “fair use” criteria. So please watch this.

Comments on Blog Entries

Feel free to comment on any blog entry, however old. The button for doing so is at the top of the entry. All new comments are automatically drawn to my attention, so you can be sure I will read yours and will reply to it if I feel a reply is required. There is also an RSS Feed for blog comments, so the subscribers will be aware of your comment as well.

Discussion Forum

Also feel free to join in any discussion or to start a new one. Again I see all new contributions automatically and will reply if I feel a reply is required. Whenever a new posting is added to a discussion subject, however old, that subject is moved to the top of the list of subjects so your posting will be seen by other people.

The Key to Keeping Your Work Focused

Judging by the questions that readers ask in the Comments and Discussion Forum, people have a lot of difficulty grasping one of the major advantages of Do It Tomorrow.

This is that it provides a powerful way to check that your work is in focus.

The way it does this is by insisting that you have to be able to process one day’s incoming work per day on average. This is such an important point that I resist strongly all suggestions from users of the system that they should try to schedule some of their current work for dates further away than tomorrow. The reason I resist this is because all it achieves is to disguise the fact that they are not able to keep up with their work as it falls due. They will then be allowing their focus to disperse and the quality of their work will suffer - and so probably will their sense of well-being and control.

Remember that DIT allows a 4 to 5 day rhythm to your work. So if you get behind on your Will Do list for a couple of days, you can catch up within the next couple of days. This is perfectly ok, because the amount of time available on any one day is rarely going to balance exactly the amount of work to be done that day. But it must balance out over a fairly short period.

This is often a problem for people who have multiple projects to juggle. And it is in precisely this sort of situation that it is most easy to lose track of one’s focus. So with regard to major projects here are some principles which DIT offers:

1. Projects without deadlines are best handled one at a time. This is generally speaking the quickest way to get them on-line and earning you money (or preventing you from losing it!).

2. Projects with deadlines should be commenced at the beginning of the time available, not at the end of the time available. This allows you to take advantage of the “little and often” principle and prevents the project being disrupted by unforeseen circumstances.

3. You should aim to be up-to-date with all actions on all active projects. This means that all “next actions” relating to active projects should be in your Task Diary for tomorrow. That represent the real amount of current work which you have. As I’ve said above, any attempts to schedule some of this for further away than tomorrow will simply disguise how much work you have, and lose the benefits of DIT focus.

Related articles:

Dealing with Projects That Don’t Have a Deadline

Auditing Your Time Management

Wikipedia Entry

I’ve just discovered that I have a Wikipedia entry!

I wonder how long that’s been there?

October last year apparently.

And who wrote it?

“Wirefree” - no other details.

The writer’s done a reasonable job but there are a few inaccuracies.

Never mind!

Better than Mind Maps?

A reader, J.S. Smith, has drawn my attention to an intriguing variation on the mind-mapping theme - the Universal Organiser (UNO).

If, like me, you find mind maps difficult to follow because they confuse the levels of hierarchy, you might find this an improvement for certain types of work.

Stever Robbins interview with Mark Forster

There’s a great audio interview with me by Stever Robbins on his The Get-It-Done Guy blog. The subject is mainly about how to handle email.

Length of interview approximately 19 minutes.

Too Much Work?

In my recent article Auditing Your Time Management I said that I would write about each of the three parts of the audit procedure in turn. The three parts are:

1) Have you got too much work?

2) Are you working efficiently?

3) Have you left enough time to do the work?

So now let us look at the first of these. If you are carrying out an audit of your time management, then the question should be posed in the 1st person “Have I got too much work?”

As I have often remarked, being on top of your work leads to a hugh boost  in your energy. You can’t be on top of your work if you have too much of it. So the net result is that not only do you end up overburdened, but you also lose the energy to handle it all.

In spite of the benefits of focus and energy in keeping on top of your work, many people have a great deal of resistance to admitting that they have too much work. One of the causes may be that they see it as the equivalent of admitting that they are incompetent. But also I’m convinced that the amount of work that someone does is important to their self-image. Only if they realise that they will have a far healthier source of self-image by having the success (however they define success) that energy and focus will bring them, will they start to let go of some of the work.

The fact is that humans take on work and commitments like bushes grow in my back garden. Each now and then, I have to go and prune them back.

So how do we go about auditing our work?

The most important principle is that you don’t audit tasks, you audit the projects and commitments from which those task have come.

The easiest way to do this is to enter all the tasks you are behind with into an outliner or mindmapper. If you have failed to complete the tasks in your Task Diary for four or more days (which is the signal for carrying out an audit), then your are probably going to have quite a number. Now group them together under projects, so that you end up with a hierarchy of commitments.

The next stage is to look at the projects. Your aim is to cut the number of projects you have committed yourself to so that you have time to do all of them as well as they deserve. In order to do this you need to identify exactly what your real work is. If you are self-employed this will be the work that impacts the bottom line. If you are an employee it’s the reason why your employer thinks it worthwhile paying your salary.

Of course this audit can apply just as much to your private life as to your work life. What are the projects and commitments which are going to take forward your life goal and vision?

Also bear in mind that one and the same rule applies in life and business: it’s better to concentrate as far as possible on one thing at a time. You may have loads of ideas for your business, but it’s better to focus on one of them until it’s up and running successfully, rather than disperse your focus by trying to implement too many ideas at once.

Don’t be afraid to cut your commitments ruthlessly. The harder you prune a bush, the more vigorously it will grow.

And remember - there is no point at all in going through the audit procedure if you don’t do something about the results!

Buy Do It Tomorrow

Comments and Discussions

I’d like to draw your attention to some important recent discussions in the Comments and on the Discussion Forum.

Getting Going Again Day 20 Update. I answer a reader’s question about how to deal with a really large backlog of paper.

Task that Do Not Need to Be Done this Week But Later. A question about why a task which is due in 2 weeks time should be put in the Task Diary for tomorrow. I say why I think it’s important it should be.

Task Diary and spreading out tasks over the week? Should tasks be scheduled forward to days when you know you are going to have some time? I say why I think they shouldn’t be.

Getting Going Again: Day 20 Update

Exactly as I forecast on Saturday, today I succeeded in getting back on top of my work. Everything is now either scheduled for tomorrow or in the backlog from last week (which I cleared approximately half of today). I finished work by 4.30 pm. Tomorrow I have an easily doable list in my Task Diary so should have no problem finishing it - I hope most of the backlog will be cleared too.

If I hadn’t taken action when I realised that I couldn’t catch up last week, I would probably have fallen even further behind today. It’s amazing how quickly a backlog can be dealt with once it is recognised as such.

Getting Going Again: Day 18 Update

There are a couple of lessons that I have been learning:

1) How easy it is to go wrong

My failed experiment has had a severe knock-on effect, not helped by the fact that I have been out of the office a lot in the second half of this week. As a result I have not succeeded in re-establishing the Do It Tomorrow system. Today I am conscious that I am beginning to slip behind badly. Now this is the point at which a lot of people start saying things like: “I’ve got too much to do to use DIT at the moment. I’ll get back into it when I’ve caught up with my work.”

What they should be saying of course is: “I’ve got too much to do NOT to be using DIT at the moment. I’ll get back into it straight away and then I’ll easily catch up with my work.”

2) How easy it is to get right again

To get back on top of my work I need to do three things:

1. Admit that I have got behind and declare a backlog.
2. Draw up my normal Will Do list for Monday and put “Clear Backlog” as the Current Initiative.
3. Get moving on the Will Do list on Monday.

That’s it! What could be simpler? I’m now instantly back on top of my work!

Related articles:

How to Get Rid of Backlogs

Previous posts in “Getting Going Again”

Buy Do It Tomorrow

Exceedingly busy people

Some extremely important points about how time management systems, specifically GTD and DIT, can cope with the demands of extremely busy people are raised by a university professor on my Discussion Forum.

Read his post and my replies at http://www.markforster.net/forum/post/364395

Seminar Availability Update

The March 14th seminar is no longer available for booking.

There are still places available on the March 25th seminar.

Further details and booking form

My Bookstore

Do pay a visit to my recently updated bookstore. It contains a great selection of the books which I have found most useful myself in my life and business, plus plenty of other recommended books in related fields.

Mark Forster’s “Get Everything Done” bookstore

Experiment Failed!

Normally I try at least to keep an experiment going for a reasonable time before abandoning it. But in the case of the “BBC” system, I’m having to admit defeat on only the second day.

Although I felt quite optimistic yesterday, today I realised that the system was just making me procrastinate. There was none of the sense of purpose that comes from DIT. It was also very cumbersome and I seemed to spend more time making lists than actually doing any work.

So with a sigh of relief I’m going back to DIT tomorrow!

Experiment: The "BBC" System

I should know better than to talk myself into a new experiment just as I’m getting back into the swing of a well-established system - but here goes!

In my recent blog entry Inspiration from the BBC I talked about whether it was possible to make a time management system out of the 7-30-7 pattern which the BBC iPlayer uses for timing out downloadable TV programmes.

Anyway I’ve decided that it is. And, as always, the first person who gets experimented on is myself. So if there’s a long gap in blog postings, you will know that it hasn’t worked!

I’m going to continue to keep a standard Will Do list for things like Email, Paper, Voicemail, Daily Tasks, etc. I will also be continuing to use the Task Diary for follow-ups and tasks that relate to specific dates. But for all other tasks I’m going to use the “BBC” system. This is how it will work:

I will be using three lists:

• Possible Tasks
• Probable Tasks
• Active Tasks

Possible Tasks. Every task that I consider taking on has first to be written down on this list. There is no need to assess tasks at this stage. The tasks on this list time out after seven days if they haven’t been transferred to the list of Probable Tasks.

Probable Tasks. When I decide that a task on the Possible list is feasible, I transfer it to the next list: Probable Tasks. This list times out after 30 days, though to make it easier to keep track I will make it a calendar month rather than exactly 30 days.

Active Tasks. Before any task can be actioned it must be transferred to the Active Task list. Tasks on this list time out after seven days.

What do I see as the advantages of doing things this way? I hope that it will prove the solution to a problem which any list based system is prone to, and that is the fact that lists tend to expand uncontrollably. Even with the Task Diary in the Do It Tomorrow system, there is a tendency for each day’s list to be longer than the day before until it is impossible to keep up. DIT solves this problem by insisting on an audit when this happens. What I am hoping is that the “BBC” system will tackle this automatically. There is a three stage process of sifting tasks. It’s impossible for the list to grow to unmanageable size because of the timing-out procedure.

Another great advantage is that there is no need to assess tasks when writing them down initially. The sifting process will deal with this. This means that any passing thought or impulse can be written down. This may well have the additional effect of reducing distractions too.

Anyway this afternoon I started off the system by drawing up a Possible Tasks list which consisted of all the tasks in my Task Diary, plus any others that came immediately to mind. There were 60 tasks on this list (to which I have subsequently added four more).

Then I did my first “download” of 30 items from these “possibles” onto a Probable Tasks list. And finally I put 10 of the “probables” onto the Active List - writing this blog entry was one. I have already completed 5 of these tasks, and have nearly completed the 6th. Time to make a few more active, I think.

I have to say that my first impression is that this could work very well. I won’t really be able to tell until the first week is up and I start timing out some tasks. The crucial factor will be whether it’s the right tasks that get timed out!

Blogroll

I’ve started a Blogroll of useful blogs for time management and personal organisation. You’ll find it at the bottom of the left-hand margin. I’ve only got a few entries on it at the moment but will be adding more as I go along.

If you have a blog relevant to the subject and would like me to consider it for inclusion, please let me have the details by email ( mf@markforster.net ).

Dealing with Projects That Don't Have a Deadline

If we look at projects from the point of view of deadlines, we can identify three types:

1. Projects that have deadlines. These are the normal projects that we deal with day-by-day. We need to get them finished by a certain time, either because we have been given a deadline, or because the task needs to be completed to fit into a wider picture, or because there are certain expectations associated with the task, e.g. people expect us to reply to emails within 24-hours or so.
   
2. Projects that go on for ever. These projects don’t need deadlines because we intend to continue carrying them out for a long period of time. I am thinking here of things like learning a language, learning a musical instrument, getting fit. Of course there may be intermediate exams at certain points but basically the effort is continuous.
   
3. Projects that don’t have any deadline. These are the projects about which we say things like: “I really must get the outside wall repainted sometime” or “I’ve been meaning to update the fire regulations but I haven’t had the time” or “I really need to run a publicity campaign, but I just haven’t been able to get round to it”. They are necessary, indeed possibly crucial, but because they don’t have a definite date by which they have to be done they tend to get pushed aside by more urgent things.

Most people have a problem with dealing with Type 3 Projects - the ones that don’t have a deadline. Sometimes they try to get them done by pretending that they are Type 1 Projects, in other words by giving them an artificial deadline. This can work - but often, because the mind knows that the deadline isn’t a “real” deadline, it gets ignored in favour of the projects which really do have to be done by a certain date.

Most of us have got a huge number of things which we want or need to get around to “sometime”. How can we deal with them?

Here’s my four stage process for getting these projects done:

Stage One: Draw Up a List

The first thing to do is to make a list of all the projects you ought to do, should do, would like to do, have been meaning to do or haven’t been able to get round to doing. Don’t hold back when you make this list. Don’t worry if some of the items are contradictory, or you’re not sure about them. Include everything. If you’ve done the exercise properly, the list should be quite an impressive size.

Stage Two: Edit the List

Ok, you’re really going to get these projects done now. So first you need to edit the list to make sure that you really do want to do them. Remove the ones you’re not sure about (you can always put them back later), the ones that would get in the way of other ones, and the ones which it’s not feasible to do now.

Stage Three: Order the List

Now take the items on the list and decide what order you are going to do them in. No, you’re not going to attempt to do them all at once. You’re going to do them one at a time (see below). So what order should you do them in? This is for you to decide, and there may be all sorts of things which you need to take into account. One important consideration is that projects which would make the other projects easier to complete should be done early on (for example sorting out your office procedures might make it quicker and easier to expand your customer base). Don’t get too hung-up on getting exactly the right order - you’re going to do the lot anyway!

Stage Four: Action the Items One by One

This is the secret to getting this type of project done - do them one at a time. This is far the quickest way of doing them, not just because it’s easier to focus on one at a time but for mathematical reasons as well.

To illustrate this, imagine that we have three projects to complete each of which will take a week and we have three weeks to complete them in. All other things being equal, is it quicker to do them all together, or to do them one at a time?

The answer is that it is quicker to do them one at a time. Why?

If you do them all at the same time, all three projects will be completed at the end of the third week.

If you do them one at a time, the first project will be completed at the end of the first week, the second at the end of the second week, and the third at the end of the third week. You will have gained two weeks on the first project, one week on the second project and the third project will finish at the same time as before. If these projects earn money as soon as they come on-line, you will have gained three project/weeks income by doing them one at a time.

If you want to refine this further, there are another two things you can do with the list before you start actioning it:

Stage 3B. Estimate how long each project will take

It’s a good idea to estimate in working days how long each item on your list will take. Don’t just leave it at that though - when you complete an item, write down how long it actually did take and compare it with your estimate. That way you will continue to get better at estimating - a very useful skill.

Stage 3C. Put an estimated completion date for each project

Since you’ve already worked out an estimate for how long each project will take, it’s easy to put a completion date for each item on the list. If you do that, you will arrive at a completion date for the whole list. That’s right - instead of having loads of projects hanging around with no idea how you are going to fit them in, you now have a date on which you expect to have them all done. That in itself will give you a real psychological lift. Try it!

Related articles:

From Pipe-Dream to Project

Space Invaders

Caffeine Consumption Update

The day following my horrific experience of the 19 cups of tea, my consumption went down to 12. So I decided for the next day (yesterday) I would set myself the target of drinking the same number of cups. Interestingly by the late evening I still had a couple of cups to drink and had to force myself.

So I have come to the conclusion that the best way to proceed is to follow the same pattern of two alternating days - one day drinking as many cups as I want without restraint, followed by another day in which I have to drink the same number as the previous day.

Today is a no restraint day, and I am on my 4th cup of tea as I write this at 3 p.m. So it looks as if I will be well under the previous figure of 12 cups by the end of the day.

It’s early days yet, but I do get the impression that the method is reducing my cup of tea consumption. I’ll be very interested to see if this continues.

Previous Posts on This Subject

Inspiration from the BBC

I have often said that it is structure that controls our actions - and that given different structures we will act in different ways.

So here are two different ways in which I act:

• When I get a rental DVD from amazon.co.uk it tends to lie around for a long time before I watch it. I seldom if ever get up to my monthly maximum.
• When I download a TV programme from BBC iPlayer it gets watched promptly.

Why the difference?

Amazon has no time limit and there is no penalty for not returning a DVD. As long as I continue to pay my monthly subscription they are perfectly happy!

The BBC iPlayer site has programmes available for 7 days after they are broadcast. If you download a programme you can keep it for 30 days before it is deleted automatically. But once you start watching it, it is deleted automatically after only 7 days.

So the result of the BBC’s system is that I never fail to watch the downloads.

My question is: could this 7-30-7 pattern be adapted into a time management system?

Any suggestions as to how that could work?

Auditing Your Time Management

One of the essential parts of the Do It Tomorrow system is the auditing procedure. You need to go through this whenever you get behind on your Will Do list for more than 3 or 4 days. Miss out on doing this and the entire system will collapse. Carry it out properly and your work will reach new heights of focus and effectiveness.

The DIT system has the great advantage that it preserves the link between the amount of work coming in and the amount of work going out. This means that it is easy to see what the problem is if you are having trouble keeping up with your work - much more so than with any other time management system I am aware of.

Remember that the aim of DIT is to get everything done. If you are going to get “everything” done, then it is essential to keep under close review what “everything” consists of. The most common failure in time management is to fail to keep “everything” focused enough with the result that you don’t have a hope in hell of getting it all done.

If you carry out the DIT auditing procedure properly, it will virtually automatically ensure that you keep focused. That’s not to say that it may not present you with some tough choices or some tough confrontations, but you will be quite clear what needs to be done.

Although the auditing procedure works best with DIT, it is also effective with other time management systems - or none at all!

This is what the procedure consists of:

1) Have you got too much work?

2) Are you working efficiently?

3) Have you left enough time to do the work?

Every problem with time management is caused by at least one of these. Often of course all three are involved. Of course, it’s not enough just to carry out the audit - you need to do something about the answers as well!

What I am going to do over the next few weeks is write about each of the three stages of the audit procedure. As I write each one I will link back to this article.

Related Discussion:

When the “Free” Time Gets Booked

Buy Do It Tomorrow

Google Page Ranking

I’m delighted to see that this blog has been promoted back up to a Google page ranking of 5, having been a 4 for most of the last year.

Google’s PageRank assigns each website on the internet a number between 1 and 10, representing a relative importance factor (in the eyes of Google). This number is determined by the number of credible links to your site that Google can identify. The higher your site’s PageRank is, the more precedence your site is given within search queries on terms that your site references — it’s your credibility rating with Google. Most sites on the internet have a PageRank 0. It becomes exponentially harder to move up in PageRank as the numbers increase. For example, there are only around 25 or so websites with PageRank 10.

According to the Google Backlink facility, there are around 235 sites linking to this blog.