Dynamic Lists v. Check Lists

I’ve been talking a lot about dynamic lists recently, and it may have occurred to some of my readers to wonder what’s wrong with the good old checklist.

In fact, what’s the difference between the two anyway?

To answer the second question first, the difference is that a dynamic list is made fresh every day, while a check-list remains the same from day to day and will get amended only occasionally.

So again, what’s wrong with check-lists?

The answer is that there is nothing wrong with them at all. In fact they form one of the staples of good time management. In Secrets of Productive People I stress how important it is to build up good routines and systems - and frequently a checklist is the most effective way of ensuring that you stick to a routine.

I’ve described already how parts of a dynamic list can solidify into a constant routine. At this stage it turns into what is basically a mental checklist. There’s usually no real need to write it down because by this time it has become internalized. The exception of course is if you need to share it with someone else.

However most checklists are the result of codifying good practice. Some examples of checklists include :

Medical diagnosis

Action in Emergencies

Servicing cars

Aircraft pilots

Packing

A very simple checklist which deserves to be pinned up in everyone’s house or office space is the checklist for doing any task:

1. Prepare
2. Do
3. Put Away

No task is finished until Step 3 is completed. Paying more attention to this step would save an awful lot of untidiness and disorder at very little cost.

Dynamic Lists

In my book Secrets of Productive People I advise the use of “dynamic lists” along with the simple five task system described in Chapter 9. They can in fact be used with any no-list system.

What is a dynamic list and how does it work?

Like the no-list system itself, the dynamic list is intended to keep your brain actively involved and your creativity at high power.

There’s nothing at all difficult about dynamic lists. A dynamic list is just a list which you draw up of what needs doing for a specific project and which you add to as you think of new things to do. The tasks on the list can be done in any order.

You may be thinking to yourself, “There’s nothing new about that” - and you’d be right! However there are a few extra rules:

1) The list is drawn up fresh each day without referring to any previous lists.

2) At the end of the day, you feed the list through your shredder (or equivalent) and keep no copy.

3) The next day you draw up the list again from scratch.

To give you an example, at the moment I am working from a dynamic list which relates to the project/task “Blog”. This is the second time I’ve worked on “Blog” today (Friday).

When I started the Blog task earlier this morning I drew up a dynamic list which read:

Draft “Dynamic Lists”

Write “Trending this Week”

Statistics

Twitter?

Facebook Link

In my first “Blog” session I did a first draft of this article - which consisted only of the title, the publishing date/time (which I always do first so I have to finish the blog post or it’ll be the draft that gets published!), copied text from a comment I wrote earlier, and a few extra thoughts in rough. After that, I looked at the web stats and wrote Trending This Week from them. Finally I linked yesterday’s article to Facebook.

At that stage I decided I’d done enough for the time being. My Dynamic List now read:

Twitter?

Draft “Dynamic Lists” (re-entered)

Links in the Text (an extra task I added)

Now that I’m on my second visit I’m working on the draft again. It’ll probably take another two drafts before it’s ready for publication.

While drafting, I’ve added another couple of tasks - “Also see…” and “Check Chapter Number” (for the reference in the first paragraph of this article) :

So by the time I finished this session on “Blog” the list read:

Twitter?

Links in the Text

Also see…

Check Chapter Number

Draft “Dynamic Lists” (re-entered)

(Later) On my third visit the list had expanded a bit because I’d added a few points I wanted to include in the article:

Fate of “Twitter?”

Solidified Dynamic Lists

Examine 3-T list for granularity

One of the advantages of Dynamic Lists is that you can add thoughts like this without gumming up the main list.

(Later) The day ends with only one task outstanding: “Twitter?”

You’ll notice that this task was on the list right at the beginning of the day so it’s survived the whole day without being actioned. This was because I was thinking of opening a Twitter account for this website but was unsure about it. I haven’t felt ready to do that today. It’ll be interesting to see if it makes it onto the list tomorrow. This may remind some of you of the questioning techniques in “Secrets”. You’re right - that’s exactly what it is.

At the end of the day before you shred your no-list, it’s worth having a look through it to check whether some of the tasks would be better off on a dynamic list. A good example of this would be communications tasks, such as Email, Comments, Facebook, Voicemail, etc. So rather than having to keep re-entering these individually on the no-list, you could have one task “Communications”.

A dynamic list used in this way may solidify into an unvarying routine. Once it has done that, you can just write the task “Communications” and do the whole routine from memory. Since good routines and systems are one of the basics of productivity according to “Secrets”, you can see how easy it is for the no-list to progress from questioning to system.

The basic idea behind a dynamic list is that you work off a list which remains fresh, relevant and above all creative - rather than off a huge depressing list of things which you haven’t got around to doing yet and which you are very likely never to get round to doing.

I use dynamic lists a lot and they are very effective. I very seldom forget things these days, and when I do it’s usually because I’ve deviated from the system for some reason.

A word of warning: You might be tempted to use a “dynamic list” for everything during the day. This doesn’t work. They need the tight boundaries of a specific project. However I do find it works to have a dynamic list called “Minor Tasks” for one-off tasks which are short enough to be done in one go. Of course this needs to be destroyed at the end of the day like any other dynamic list.

Also see:

Discussion: Getting More Focus with FVP

Types of Lists VIII - The Dynamic List

The Dynamic List is similar to the Open Daily List except that it refers to one project only. It is a way of ensuring that your action on a project is up to date with your latest thinking on the subject.

The technique is simplicity itself:

1. List some of the things you need to do for the project

2. Start working on them in any order.

3. Add new things as you think of them.

The list is valid for one day only. You should construct a new list the following day.

If you need to refer to notes, reminders, etc, then that should itself become a task on the list (e.g. Check Project Notes).

Dynamic lists are extremely effective, but unfortunately I have not yet succeeded in constructing a whole time management system out of them. They lose effectiveness when not constrained by the limits of a single project.

Tomorrow:

An effective “No List” system?