Testing the New System - Update

I’m sorry to report that the test of my new system has crashed and burned.

That’s not because I wasn’t getting the work done which I’d planned . It was working absolutely fine.

It’s because in the middle of the trial I was struck with an idea for an entirely new way of doing things. Well, I say “entirely new” but of course these ideas are always building on ideas that I and others have had in the past.

It was such an amazing idea that I couldn’t wait - I just had to get going on it right now.

So what I’m now planning to do is to play around with it for the next few days, and then start a formal week’s trial next Monday.

I’m sorry to keep delaying things, but if this works out it will be worth the wait!

A few pointers to whet your appetite:

It uses some of the techniques in my first book Get Everything Done but with an entirely new angle

It’s a sort of “no-list” system, but not like any of the ones we’ve had up to now

It has a minimum of rules and you don’t even have to keep to those

It gets work done very fast

It’s especially ideal for tackling big projects, small tasks, easy tasks, difficult tasks, backlogs, boring stuff, exciting stuff, stuff you’re stuck on, distractions, interruptions, emergencies. Did I leave anything out? If I did, it’s ideal for tackling those too!

It prevents you from taking too much work on, but allows you to get a whole lot more done than you ever did before!

Most Popular Article This Week

Overcommitment and the Catch-All List

… You get everything on your mind down on paper so you no longer have the worry of trying to remember it all. There is however a problem with this. The work does not stop arriving just because you have written it all down. In fact writing it all down may make it less likely that you will get everything done, rather than more…

Productive v. Unproductive

Charly: Were you always this stupid, or did you take lessons?
Mitch: I took lessons.
(from The Long Kiss Goodnight)

My last two articles The Top 10 Ways of Being Unproductive and The Top 10 Ways of Being Productive have a number of lessons for us - on top of what they say about productivity.

First lesson: a Top 10 List is a very good way of exploring a subject. They can be applied to almost anything. If you want to know what books to read, write a Top 10 List of books you’d like to read; if you want to recommend some pointers to someone starting in the same line of work to yourself, write a Top 10 List about how to do your job. And so on.

Even better, when you have a behaviour you want to get rid of, realise that you are an expert in that behaviour.  All you have to do then is to imagine that you are giving advice to a pupil on how to be just like you and write your Top 10. In this case the list was about ways of being unproductive. It could just as well have been how to be overweight, or how to be unfit, how to be in debt or how to have disastrous relationships. If you are overweight or unfit or have insufficient money or have disastrous relationships all you have to do is brief someone else on how to be like you. That can be a very illuminating exercise!

And then all you have to do to produce a recipe for action is to turn each item on your list into its opposite.

I’m sure you have arleady spotted that every item on my Productive list is the opposite of the same numbered item on my Unproductive list:

Never say no
Learn to say no

Don’t be systematic
Be systematic

Keep starting things you don’t finish
Finish what you start

Build up huge backlogs
Keep on top

Take on more work than you can possibly do
Be very selective about what you take on

Keep chopping and changing
Be persistent

Don’t sort things out
Take remedial action immediately

Don’t identify any long-term goals
Be clear about your long-term goals

Avoid doing anything that takes you out of your comfort zone
Don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone

Do first things last
Do first things first

The Top 10 Ways of Being Productive

1. Learn to say no
   The number one time management tool is the word “no”. Learn how to say no effectively. And remember that the most important person to say no to is yourself!
2. Be systematic
   Good systems are at the heart of being productive. You can’t work creatively if you are constantly having to sort out some mess that has happened because your systems don’t work properly.
3. Finish what you start
   This is one of life’s most important rules. When you start something you should keep going on it until either you have finished it or it has proved not to be a worthwhile project for you.
4. Keep on top
   Being on top of your work is one of the best sources of energy. But you can only keep on top of your work if you don’t take on more work than you can do.
5. Be very selective about what you take on
   This follows on from the previous point. You should only take on what you have time to do properly. You will know when you have taken on too much because you will not be able to keep on top of your work.
6. Be persistent
   Keep working on something until it is the way you want it to be. And then make sure you can maintain it that way. Things won’t be the way you want them unless you are persistent in aiming for what you want.
7. Take remedial action immediately
   When something goes wrong, don’t wait around to put it right. Do it now. Nothing drains your energy so much as things which aren’t working correctly, whether they are equipment, systems or projects.
8. Be clear about your long-term goals
   Your long-term goals are what give direction to your present work. Without them you are just drifting or stuck.
9. Don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone
   Productivity always involves going out of your comfort zone. Remaining in your comfort zone is known as “being in a rut”. If you do the same old thing over and over again you will set it in stone in your life.
10. Do first things first
    Identify what the most important thing is that you want to do each day and do it first. Then the second and the third. After that you can worry about the routine minor stuff.

The Top 10 Ways of Being Unproductive

1. Never say no
   Be careful not to say no to other people in case you cause offense. And of course never say no to any of your own impulses - that would be to limit yourself.
2. Don’t be systematic
   Establishing good systems would take a lot of time which you don’t have - mainly because of the huge amount of time you have to use sorting out the mess caused by your lack of system.
3. Keep starting things you don’t finish
   Having loads of unfinished projects is a sign that you are a person with huge potential - even if it hasn’t yet translated itself into any form of achievement.
4. Build up huge backlogs
   Backlogs are a sign that you are a really busy person, and therefore a really worthwhile person.
5. Take more work on than you can possibly do
   Too much work provides the perfect excuse for not actually achieving that much.
6. Keep chopping and changing
   If you stick to projects until they come to fruition you will miss out on loads of opportunities (which you will also fail to stick to).
7. Don’t sort things out
   When something goes wrong you have two possible courses of action: 1) give up, or 2) work round it. The third course of action - sort it out - would obviously be far too impractical.
8. Don’t identify any long-term goals
   It’s much more fulfilling to live in the present.
9. Avoid doing anything that takes you out of your comfort zone
   Life is for enjoying, so why spend your time struggling to make things happen?
10. Do first things last
    Always have plenty of easy trivial tasks to give you a reason for not tackling the more difficult things which really matter.

The Order You Do Things Is Important

“The order in which you do things is important” sounds like a statement of the blindingly obvious - and it is. But the fact that it’s a statement of the obvious doesn’t necessarily mean that we remember to apply it when we need to. One area in which it particularly tends to be forgotten is setting up the beginning of your day. This is significant because he beginning of your day is a key point because it’s then that the sort of day you are going to have is decided. If you get off to a rocky start the rest of your day will be disjointed. On the other hand a good start-up routine will give you a firm highway for the day.

Many people start the day by clearing the small items first and then working up to the more weighty matters. Unfortunately the small items have a habit of extending themselves over most of the day. The result is that oft repeated phrase “It’s four o’clock already and I haven’t done a thing!”

We tend to fall into a routine at the start of the day without really noticing it. Like all routines it needs to be examined with the aim of improving it. Do this especially if you are finding that you are reaching the end of the day without doing the things which you intended to do.  The beauty of a no-list system is that you can examine the evidence easily because it shows you exactly what you have done and the order you in which you did it - something which a conventional to do list doesn’t do.

Here are some of the mistakes that people who work from home often make (I speak from experience):

Not getting up at the same time every day. You can’t develop a steady routine if you have no firm base from which to start.

Leaving breakfast until after you’ve cleared routine minor tasks. The usual result is that breakfast and lunch merge together and the morning is frittered away on minor stuff.

Not making the most important thing you have to do the first task. This is the best way to ensure that the most important thing you have to do doesn’t get done.

Doing the short easy tasks first and the longer more difficult ones last. Short easy tasks have a habit of expanding to fill the whole day.

If you are an office worker the first two don’t apply so much, but the last two do.

The most important part of auditing your routine is “Look at the first task”. If you get that right, the rest will naturally follow. A good rule of thumb is that the more time you need to spend on something the earlier you should get it on your list.

Testing the New System

I’ve arrived at what I hope is the working model of my new system. What can I tell you about it at this stage?

Mainly that it’s intended to be an improvement on 5T in ease of use, flexibility and lack of resistance.

I’m going to test it out for a full 7-day week, starting today (Monday). During this time I’m going to make no changes to it whatsoever.

There are certain things which I will specifically want to be able to achieve by using it.

Daily blog post

Daily maintenance of zero inbox for email, paper, Facebook, Evernote, etc

Visit the gym at least twice

Go for a minimum 3-mile walk on four out of the five days I don’t go to the gym (allowing one day’s rest)

Issue my newsletter

Write marketing plan for local association [first draft]

Write article for association’s magazine, plus photos

Daily book reading

Do the monthly tax claim for local charity

Sort the remaining two drawers in my office

Dispose of one year’s business vouchers, statements, etc, kept for six years according to Inland Revenue policy

Draft outline for new book and discuss it with my agent

And basically keep up to date with everything else

I’ll keep you posted!

Update on Sunday, March 6, 2016 at 18:18 by Mark Forster

I didn’t finish the testing because I got some better ideas for the system. Nevertheless I managed a good number of the items on the list. I’ve crossed out the ones I succeeded in doing.

My Book Challenge - Update

I’ve finished The Soldier’s Art and am now starting on the second part (of three) of Napoleon the Great. Reading one book at a time throws into relief the difference in speed between reading different types of book. So far I’ve had a popular science book (very fast), two fairly literary novels (fast), a history (slow) and a prose poem (very slow).

As well as being a slow read the Napoleon book is also very long, so it may be a while before I finish the second part. But finish it I will. No-list systems, such as the ones I have been testing, are ideal for just continuing to chip away at a reading project like this.

Anyway, I left Napoleon, having overthrown the Directory, poised to take on the mantle of First Consul…

Living the No-List Way

With his permission I’m reposting a recent forum post by Wooba

—————————————————————————

This is how I have been doing things for a few weeks now:

I don’t use a task list of any kind. I am as No List as you can get.

I have a list of projects. It is short and covers all areas of my life including entertainment. I also have a list of life and work goals that I update as needed.

Every time I finish a task, I ask myself what is the best thing to be doing now, and I do that until I have had enough or it is finished. I try to go through my whole day like that.

I have been operating inbox empty techniques for years and try to always be ahead of the curve. This colours my answers to the question of what is best to do now. Inboxes aren’t just email, post, voicemail and stuff like that, they are shows in your Netflix queue, piles of books to read, dishwashers to empty, kitchens and bathrooms to clean. I clean as I go, tidy while waiting for the kettle to boil, and use triggers to initiate small actions.

If some new urgent task turns up, I deal with it immediately or at the next task change.

If I am interrupted, I stop doing what I am doing and deal with the interruption. That might be by giving it time, or by dealing with it quickly so I can get back to what is the best thing to be doing now.

I use checklists for repetitive projects that I don’t do often enough to have made them routine, such as taxes and accounts.

I (now) use dynamic lists for more complex projects where the next action isn’t obvious. This list is destroyed at the end of the day or more frequently if appropriate.

I don’t have very complex projects that involve lots of people and resources, so I rarely need to plan.

I wouldn’t say it gets as much done as, say, AF1 or FVP, or especially the random method did for me, but it gets the right things done, which those other systems didn’t. I am not busy, because all those small tasks that are written on catch-all lists just don’t crop up, because they either never needed to be done in the first place, or only needed to be done at the moment they were written down, or were just busy-work to make my list look longer and me look busier and thus more important. Now, I have time to breathe, to think, to rest, the urgent is under control and the important stuff is progressed. And I have the capacity to deal with emergencies with less stress.

OK, some of it doesn’t always work, but on the whole my life in general and work-life in particular are running smoother than I have ever known.

Thanks Mark. I couldn’t have got here without you.

"Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play"

Get Everything Done was my first book and was published in 2000. The ideas in it were developed for a very successful series of seminars which I had been running.

It was one of the first books on the subject of “time boxing”, although no one to my knowledge had thought up the term in those days. The time-boxing system which I describe in it is still extremely effective. It also goes very well with Dynamic Lists.

As a bonus, it also contains a no-list system called the “Resistance Principle”. I still use this on occasions, especially when I am confronted with a situation in which I’m uncertain how to proceed.

When I wrote this book I was still working full-time as an employee. My ambition was to become a full-time life coach and I’d been working at it in my spare time for several years. I felt I was ready to become full-time from the life-coaching point of view, but I knew I needed to be a lot better organized if I wanted to work for myself. I set about reading existing books on time management and didn’t find most of them to be much help. So I decided to see if I could develop my own time management methods.

The methods I developed allowed me to resign from my job and go full time. Almost immediately I was earning more than I had been paid by my employment.

———————————

Some random quotes from the book:

p. 43. Everything she was doing was in competition for a share of her life. The only way one thing could get done properly was by another thing being neglected.

p. 54. If we start thinking that contacting clients is higher priority than paying attention to having a good filing system, we will end up by having our records in such chaos that we start losing clients.

p. 66. The problem with going with the flow is that most of us do not have a firm enough structure to make our lives flow properly.

p. 144. “I have kept kept the most important bit of advice till last,” said the wizard. “Whenever you sense that you are resisting something, treat that as a signpost to where you should be going.”

p. 154. One of the times we are most vulnerable to an impulse getting control of us is after an interruption.

My Book Challenge - Update

I finished David Jones’ In Parenthesis today, sixteen days after starting it. It’s a book that can’t be read fast and has to be taken in small chunks.

I’m pretty sure if it hadn’t been for my “one book at a time” rule I would never have finished it. But I’m glad I did even though it took longer than I was expecting.

Before I go back to Napoleon the Great (of which I’ve completed the first of its three parts) I feel the need for a bit of easier reading. So I’m going to read The Soldier’s Art, which is the eighth in Anthony Powell’s cycle of twelve novels A Dance to the Music of Time.

So for in my book challenge since January 24th  I have read:

The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley

The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell - set in the Second World War

Napoleon the Great (part 1) by Andrew Roberts - set in the French Revolutionary Wars

In Parenthesis by David Jones - set in the First World War

and am now starting a second book set in the Second World War.

I didn’t deliberately set out to read quite so many war books - it just seems to have happened that way!

Upset!

Oh dear! The new development which I mentioned in Thursday’s post let me down badly yesterday - with the result that I’ve gone back to the fully no-list system I was working on before.

That’s the trouble with sharing progress along the way. I have little more idea than you do what the final system will look like - and anything I say about it at this stage will probably change.

My New Time Management System - Update

Since I last updated you on my new time management system it has developed in a totally unexpected direction. It’s showing great promise, but I’ve yet to test out the new direction thoroughly.

It’s been a fascinating process for me so far, and most of the articles I have written written recently have been based on my experiences of working on this

Where have I got to?

As is so often the case when coming up with something new, it’s the result of combining tried and trusted principles in a way they haven’t been combined before.You’ll all recognize the base system, but the way it’s used is quite different from how it’s been used in the past.

The really good news is that I seem to have found a way of having a list which resists the expansionist tendencies of a catch-all list, but doesn’t need to be destroyed every day. I say “I seem to” because one can never be sure of these things until they have been tried out over a reasonable period of time.

What I’m finding really interesting is the feeling of working with a closely focused list that gets carried forward from day to day. I’m finding that I can work a large portion of my day virtually on autopilot. So it’s giving maximum conservation of energy!

Overcommitment and No-List

As you may have noticed I have been writing a lot recently about no-list methods of working.

The hyphen in no-list is important to distinguish it from working without a to-do list at all. Nor does it mean having no lists of any kind whatsoever.

What it does mean is that, instead of having a long to-do list that gets carried over from day to day, you work from a short buffer of tasks which you write from the contents of your own mind. There a many possible ways of doing this, but a typical example is the one given in my book Secrets of Productive People in which you write down five tasks and replenish the list back to five every time only two tasks are left.

The point of no-list methods is that, instead of relying on a list written in the past about what you might do in the future, you are working directly from what is fresh in your mind. You are involved in your own work, and you know better than anyone else what needs doing at the moment.

There are other advantages of the no-list approach:

You can see exactly how much you have done during a day

There is no carry over of undone tasks

It suits inbox zero working

A no-list approach is closely allied with an inbox zero approach. In the inbox zero approach the driver of your work is your inboxes. These may be an actual physical inbox in the case of paper, electronic inboxes in the case of email and suchlike, or metaphorical inboxes in the case of actions falling due for projects. One of the things that needs stressing about the no-list approach is that it is not an exercise in memory. The most common objection to it is “How am I going to remember all those things that I have got to do?”. The simple answer to that question is that there shouldn’t be any things you have to do - because you keep your inboxes empty!

The inbox zero approach is this. Work should never be put off into the future if it belongs in the present. Of course much of our work often does belong in the future. If you are writing a book to a deadline, scheduling construction projects, booking cars into your workshop and so on, then much of the work belongs in the future and that’s when it should be done. Most detailed plans in organizations require the work to be done in stages. But with an inbox zero approach you should always be up-to-date with the current stage.

With future projects the whole point of scheduling is that you avoid taking on more than you are able to do. If you are booking cars for service into your workshop you know how long it takes to service a car and you don’t book in more than you can handle. If you are writing a book, your present work is the number of words you need to write per day to meet your deadline. You are not putting this work off into the future. It belongs in the future.

Everyone adopting a no-list approach needs to be vigilant in not using project plans and schedules as a way of disguising present work as future work. The basic principle to remember is “If it can be done now then it should be done now”. If you can’t do it now because you don’t have time, then you are overcommitted.

Overcommitment and the Catch-All List

In yesterday’s article Overcommitment and what you can do to prevent it I drew attention to the formula given in Do It Tomorrow:

Backlog = (Average work coming in each day) - (average work going out each day)

In spite of all our efforts to ignore this rule there really is no way round it. However we can continue to fool ourselves by acting in much the same way as a chronic debtor continues to get further and further into debt. In other words we put things off into the future. In the same way that the debtor always believes that “something will come up”, so we believe in a magic fairytale day in which we have nothing else to do other than catch up with our work. Of course this day never arrives, and if by some amazing chance it actually did the sudden relaxation of tension probably would mean that we spent the whole day goofing off rather than working.

It’s interesting to see how this truth about workload plays out in various situations. How does it work with a “catch-all” list? Now the great advantage of a catch-all list is its completeness. You get everything on your mind down on paper so you no longer have the worry of trying to remember it all. There is however a problem with this. The work does not stop arriving just because you have written it all down. In fact writing it all down may make it less likely that you will get everything done, rather than more. This is because there is a certain natural selection going on with tasks, which means the stronger ones survive while the weaker ones go to the wall. The problem with writing everything down is that this natural selection is inhibited because the weaker tasks can’t take the natural path of dropping out of your memory and your life.

Anyway, as I said in yesterday’s article overcommitment is a systems failure, and the first step with any systems failure is to look at what is happening in our present system. How does this apply to a catch-all list?

Potential candidates to be tasks on our catch-all list come from a multitude of sources, e.g. our own “brilliant ideas”, our bosses, our clients, our colleagues, our families, our reading, social media, the tv, etc, etc, etc. On top of these existing tasks which need further work get re-entered on the list rather than deleted.

Let’s first of all look at the input procedure:

A potential task arrives on the scene from one of the above sources

A catch-all system is designed to catch everything. So the task is put on the list without further ado.

Another task arrives on the scene and is put on the list

and so on

No problem so far. The input procedure is doing exactly what it is designed to do.

What about the output procedure? That’s even simpler:

We do one task after another (according to the criteria of whatever system we are using to process the list)

But it’s here that we run into a problem: the time it takes to do a task is usually longer than it takes to write a task down. Since that means that tasks come in faster than it’s possible to do them, more and more tasks get pushed into the future.

So our problem with the existing system can be summed up as:

Potential work coming in each day is basically infinite

Work going out each day is finite

Therefore the list is potentially liable to expand infinitely

Fortunately in reality this doesn’t happen to quite that extent, but it’s easy to see what the present system is inevitably going to produce. Overcommitment.

Are there any improvements that we could make to a catch-all list system so that it doesn’t result in overcommitment? Well, here’s a few suggestions:

Authorized Project List

Stringent evaluation of tasks before writing them down

Limit on the number of tasks on the list

Limit on the estimated time it will take to do the tasks on the list

These are all on the right lines. But unfortunately they all suffer from the same thing. They require discipline and willpower, plus a correct judgement of the amount of time available.

Conclusion:

There is no doubt that a catch-all list has some advantages, the chief of which is the feeling of completeness arising from having everything down on paper. But unfortunately having everything down on paper is not the same as getting everything done.

Overcommitment - and what you can do to prevent it

Overcommitment is one of the recurring themes in the Forums on this website and is something which I have been warning about ever since my first book Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play.

It’s very easy to know if you are over-committed. The tell-tale symptom is that you can’t keep to an inbox zero policy.

You should be able to maintain in-box zero in all areas of your work. That means that you can clear your paper, empty your email in-box, be up-to-date with all reading, writing and project work, and take action on all incoming tasks every day.

There are of course going to be days when you have less than the usual amount of discretionary time. You have meetings, visits, courses and all the rest of it. But the point is that these “interruptions” are a normal part of your work and you must allow for them when assessing how much work you can take on. You should be able to catch up without any difficulty.

In my book Do It Tomorrow I draw attention to the basic formula:

Average work coming in each day must equal average work going out each day.

You can express it in a slightly different way:

Backlog = (Average work coming in each day) - (average work going out each day).

This is a simple fact - not something I’ve thought up specially to annoy you. You cannot get round it. If you have six hours of work coming in on average per day and only output an average of five hours per day, by the end of the working week you will have five hours worth of backlog. Where are you going to find the five uncommitted hours to do that work? By the end of a month you will have 21 hours worth of backlog. Where’s the time for that going to come from?

It’s no wonder people have such trouble with backlogs and long lists of undone work. It’s the result of ignoring this basic formula.

How do we stop this happening?

The funny thing is that we don’t have any problem identifying what to do when supply doesn’t equal demand in any other aspect of our lives. If we keep running out of petrol for our car, we know there’s something wrong with the way we are going about deciding when to fill the car up. If we keep running out of food at home we know there’s something wrong with the way we are organizing the food shopping.

In other words there is a systems failure.

In exactly the same way, if we keep running out of time to do our work there is a systems failure. There’s probably not much we can do about the amount of time we have available, so we know there’s something wrong with the way we take on new work.

The way to deal with a systems failure is to examine your present faulty system to see where it is going wrong.

The first step is to look at what happens when you take on a new piece of work. How exactly does something new succeed in getting written on your to-do list?

Where does it come from?

How does it arrive in your life?

Exactly what mental and physical processes do you go through when this piece of work arrives?

How do you make the decision to accept it or refuse it?

What sort of gatekeeper procedures do you have?

Once you’ve analyzed what happens when you take on a new piece of work, you can start to make some changes to the system. You should identify where the system is going wrong and put it right. It’s usually not that difficult to do this once you’ve taken the time and trouble to identify where the problem lies.

It usually comes down to the fact that you have not been prepared to say NO at critical points in the process. You can often solve a lot of the problem just by having a default position of NO instead of YES.

It’s normal for employees to blame their overcommitment on their boss. But consider this - most self-employed people are at least as overcommitted as employees are. And it’s proverbial that when someone retires they quickly become busier than they were when they were working. The truth is that you are the one who is responsible for your own workload - no one else.

Who’s the most difficult person to say NO to? Yourself! 

Theme for the Day

Whatever time management system you are using it’s useful to give each day a theme for your work. This is the aspect of your work to which you are going to give extra attention that day. It might be a project or it might be something wider, such as strategizing, or more procedural such as speed of response or lack of distraction.

There’s a simple way of deciding on the Theme for the Day. This is based on the Questioning methods described in Secrets of Productive People.

Each morning write out five possible candidates for Theme of the Day. (If you prefer you can do this exercise the night before).

Then choose one, and destroy the list. I usually write the list on my computer so it’s just a matter of deleting the list.

Intoduce the project or other action chosen as early as possible into your work for the day, and keep re-introducing it throughout the day.

If suitable to the theme, you can write a dynamic list for it.

Repeat the whole process for the following day. It does not matter whether your Theme for the Day is the same as the previous day or different.

Authorised Projects List

In Secrets of Productive People I recommend that you have a list of authorized projects (rather like a firm has a list of authorized tradesmen).

There are basically two reasons for the list, one a positive one, and one a negative one

The positive is to keep you aware of all the calls on your time so that you can ensure that each project receives adequate attention.

The negative is that a project is as much about what you are not going to do as about what you are going to do. The list therefore keeps you focused on the projects on the list and stops you from deviating onto other “bright ideas”. You should not allow yourself to put any task on your to-do list which doesn’t relate to one of these projects.

The Authorised Projects list also helps you to avoid over-committing yourself. If you want to introduce a new project you need to be able to demonstrate what projects have ceased or have been weeded out in order to make room for the new project.

Trending this week

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		My New Time Management System (Under Development)
		Dynamic Lists
		An Effective “No List” System? Yes!
		The Minor Tasks List

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.