Get Everything Done

Which would you like first? The good news or the bad news?

The good news is that Trafalgar (a US distribution company) will be distributing Do It Tomorrow this autumn and it will feature in their next catalogue. This means that it should be available in the States very soon.

The bad news is that the first print of How To Make Your Dreams Come True has sold out and it is not planned to reprint it. I intend to ask the publishers if they are willing to let the distribution rights revert to me so I can publish it as an e-book.

What do you do when the inevitable happens and all your systems for time management collapse?

Typically this happens when you get an unexpectedly high work load, or you go away for a period and fail to get going again on return. Or perhaps your computer crashes and it takes three days to fix - and everything else gets thrown out of the window. Or perhaps you’ve just goofed off for a day or two and are now experiencing the knock-on effects.

Under all this pressure, you tell yourself that you’ve got too much of a crisis to be systematic. In fact you may well tell yourself “I can’t get the system going again now - I’ll wait until things settle down a bit”.

This is of course exactly the wrong approach. When things are really tough is the precisely the time that you most need to be systematic. When you find yourself in a crisis, you need to tighten up on the system not let go of it. Because it will be the system that enables you to get through the crisis in good shape. 

Remember: When the going is difficult is when you need your system the most. 

It can however be very hard to get the system going again because often people don’t know where to start.

With the Do It Tomorrow system it’s easy - provided that you focus on the right place. And that is to get your Will Do list ready for the following day, or if possible even for the current day.

Everything else can be dealt with by making a Backlog of it. Make the Backlog the first item on the Will Do list and you are on top of your work again.

So, to sum up, when things get out of hand don’t try to struggle on and catch up. Declare a backlog, and focus on getting your Will Do list going again.

Related articles:

Getting Going Again 

Backlog of Backlogs 

I’m just in the process of drawing up a schedule of seminars for the rest of the year. My current plans include running the introductory three-hour “Do It Tomorrow” seminars again, which I haven’t run since 2006, plus some more one-day follow-up seminars. I might possibly do both as a package for a reduced price. I’ll also be investigating the possibility of doing some teleseminars for those who are unable to make it to the South East of England.

I’m also thinking of doing a few seminars on other subjects. One subject which is particularly attractive to me is “How to Manage Other People’s Time”. This is a subject which will interest anyone who has ever tried to get other people to do things on time (or indeed at all) - that is to say, everyone!

Another possible subject is “Accessing the Unconscious Mind”.

I’d welcome suggestions for other subjects.

Meanwhile here is the feedback from the one-day “Do It Tomorrow” seminar which I ran last Thursday:

“A really good seminar that will start the process for me to get back to basics with my time management. I am going to start using the processes discussed straight away (and read the book at the same time!)” James Reed.

“A great seminar - everything fell into place. I now feel confident that I will be able to put some order and structure into my work/life straight away. The day also helped with personal goal setting and achievement. Confirmation that we don’t need to overcomplicate things.” Neil Herries.

“Very useful to implement the Do It Tomorrow system. Helped to focus on my particular problem areas. Self-coaching technique was also helpful.” Lorraine Wakefield.

“A very useful review and very good clarification of points I had been unclear on - fixed some holds in my own time management.” Mike Collins.

“Thanks for being patient with me. I hope I can put it into practice. It’s heartening that the system is designed for people who aren’t naturally organised and that you’ve kept it simple!” Dominique.

“Very good seminar going through a number of aspects of the book in detail. The seminar (I hope!) will provide a greater focus to getting things organised in my working life and, by default, my personal life.” Mark Reed. 

One of the problems with any time management system is that there is a tendency for the list of actions to expand until it becomes too large to be handled. This is because many of the tasks that you engage in result in your thinking of several others. For example, you might have a task for today “Investigate Program X”. That is naturally going to result in several further actions. Or you carry out the “next action” for some project, and that naturally leads you on to a further action with the same project. Although many tasks are one-offs without further action needed, they are outweighed by the tasks that lead on to further action or actions. This is just as true of the Task Diary in Do It Tomorrow as it is of any to do list.

You may also have random thoughts and ideas during the day which don’t arise out of other tasks. The best thing to do with these is to put them in the Task Diary to “think about”.

The result of all this is that the daily list of tasks in theTask Diary expands until it is no longer possible to get through it. When this happens some people try to deal with the problem by spreading the some of the tasks over the next few days. This is not a good idea as all it achieves is to disguise the fact that you now have more tasks than you can handle.

Although the “long stop” in DIT is the auditing procedure, it is much better to keep your Task Diary pruned so that you rarely or never need to go through this procedure.

A simple principle can achieve this:

Just because you have written something in the Task Diary doesn’t mean you have to do it.

It is a very good idea when you draw the line to close tomorrow’s list to go through the items and ruthlessly weed them of all items which are not 100 per cent necessary to your chosen focus. Everything that will disperse your focus or lead you off into sidetracks must go.

Doing this before you start on the list rather than after you are failing to get through it will strengthen your sense of achievement and focus rather than induce a sense of failure.

So to sum up:

By all means add everything you think of during the day to your Task Diary for tomorrow, but weed it thoroughly before you commit to actually doing it.

Related Discussions:

Task Diary

Task Diary and Spreading Out Tasks over the Week

Tasks That Do Not Need to Be Done This Week But Later…?

Related Article:

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

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

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.

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

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

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