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February 2016

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January 2016

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How to write a blog post a day

Seraphim wrote in the comments on my artlcle The Minor Tasks List:

“Maybe what’s missing for me is the practical application. Can you maybe give a couple of examples of how destroying the lists helps keep your mind engaged and also develop better systems?”

Well, this website is a good example of how it works. Since I started using “no-list” principles, I’ve blogged every day without fail (something I’ve never managed in the past), and also advanced many other areas of my life. I’ve not done less and spent my time forgetting to do things. I’ve both done more and done it more reliably.

Blogging every day is not difficult providing you use the “no-list” methods - which are founded on the “questioning” principle in Secrets of Productive People. The same applies to almost anything else you want to do. I’m giving you an example of how to do blogging - but you can use the methods on any subject. For instance, my book shows how the principles worked in the lives of a scientist, an artist and an industrialist.

Of course it’s difficult to remember boring work that you’re not really interested in. The whole idea of  Questioning is to get your mind interested, involved and creative.

So when starting a new project the first thing you need is to decide that you really want to do it.

How do you do that?

It’s easy if you use Questioning. You could ask yourself a question daily for about five days on the lines of “Which project do I really want to do most?”. You write five answers down and then shred the paper. Each day you do the same, and gradually an answer will emerge that fires your imagination. By the time the five days are up you will have your answer and you will probably already have started to get moving on it.

If the project is one that has been given to you by someone else, then your question might be “What are my five best ideas for advancing this?”

This project should now be alight in your mind. You’ll have no problem remembering to put it in your no-list system, whatever form of “no-list” you are using.

There are several things you now might do to advance the Blog Every Day project:

1. Identify subjects to write on.

2. Sort the mechanics of publishing a blog post.

3. Write the text

Identify Subjects to Write On

For identifying subjects to write on I use a Questioning method called the Accumulating List. Like all Questioning methods there’s nothing difficult or complicated about it. All you do is think of about five to ten possible subjects for blog posts and then spend a minute or two every day adding to the list. If any ideas come into your head at other times you can add them directly to the list. If you do this you will never be short of ideas for blog posts. Make sure you keep the list weeded of ideas which you come to realise are not going to work.

Sort the mechanics of publishing a blog post

There’s quite a lot more to a blog post than just coming up with an idea and writing about it. So this is an ideal subject for a Dynamic List. Write a fresh one every day until the items on the list solidify into a routine. At that stage you should be able to go through the routine without needing a list.

Your Dynamic List for writing a blog post might start something like this:

Confirm subject
Write text
Enter links

And finish off looking like this after some tasks have been done and others added:

Schedule publication
See also’s
Post link on Facebook
Categorize as Article
Check previous day’s article published ok
Chose next day’s subject
Etc.

Write the text

To write the text I use another Questioning technique called Continuous Revision. Basically you first of all jot down a few ideas, then by a constant process of successive drafts you build the article up until it is the way you want it. In fact I wrote my entire book Secrets of Productive People using this technique. First I use an Accumulating List to gather ideas for chapters. Then I wrote a few notes for each chapter, revised these a couple of times and finally edited the entire book twice.

And finally…

Remember it’s the principles that matter, not the precise method used. I have used many variations of no-list systems recently, but this has not affected the effectiveness of my work because these principles are remarkably robust.

Farewell to the Donate Button!

For many years now this blog has been non-profit. Apart from the links to my books everything on it has been free of charge.

I intend to keep all the basic blog articles and forums free, though it’s possible I might in the future introduce some sort of premium membership. But what I do intend to do sooner rather than later is to start selling things like ebooks and suchlike. Since I am aiming to earn money from the website it’s no longer non-profit. So I’ve changed the Donate button to a Buy button as Paypal’s Donate button is intended only for non-profits and charities.

However at the moment the only thing for sale is to be one of my supporters! This website doesn’t come free for me, so the money I’ve had in the past from donations has gone some way towards meeting the expenses of running it.

You can still help me in this way by being a Supporter, a Bronze Supporter, a Silver Supporter or a Gold Supporter. I had to invent silly names like these because Paypal’s Buy button requires definite pricing and a description of what you are buying.

At the moment you get nothing but my thanks if you become a supporter, but I expect to be offering regular incentives for each grade soon. If you want to give now rather than wait, I will make the first of these incentives retrospective to anyone who becomes a supporter from today.

If you want to give an amount other than the ones shown and you have a Paypal account, you can send any amount to me through Paypal for markforster@aol.com.

You’ll find the button in the right margin. It looks like this (and this one is “live” if you want to use it!)

Update on Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 14:43 by Mark Forster

Unfortunately the new button proved not to work properly, so I’ve removed it while I’m in the process of sorting it out.

The Minor Tasks List

An aid to no-list systems is a form of dynamic list called the “Minor Tasks List”. I mentioned these briefly at the end of my article on dynamic lists, but it was only an easily-missed short paragraph. So I want to emphasize the benefits of using them.

Using these Minor Tasks Lists can speed up the processing of small tasks without affecting the working of the rest of the system. They also help in remembering the sort of easily-forgotten stuff which tends to get written on sticky notes round your computer screen.

How exactly do we define a “minor task”?

My definition is a task which is small enough to be actioned in one go and is not part of a series of connected tasks. So for instance reading a newspaper article you’ve clipped would be fine, but reading a chapter from a book (assuming you’re going to read the rest of the book) wouldn’t.

Obviously there are grey areas here, but if you use the Minor Task List you should ensure that it doesn’t develop into a way of subverting the rules of whatever system you are using.

Like any dynamic list the Minor Tasks List is written off the top of your head, is added to as you think of new things, can be done in any order and expires at the end of the day.

Although primarily designed for use with “no-list” systems, it can be used with virtually any system. It is very effective at allowing the master system to focus on what is important, while still allowing trivial but essential tasks to get done in an efficient manner.

Newsletter

Having told all my subscribers a few months ago that I was discontinuing my newsletter, I’m now reconsidering. The existence of the newsletter was pretty pointless while I wasn’t writing blog posts, but now I’m writing them daily, I think there’s a good reason for it again.

What do you think? Would subscribers object to my going back on what I said? And if it is resuscitated, what form would you like it to take?

In the past it has varied from being, in theory at least, weekly, monthly or irregular (usually very). There’s also the question of whether articles in the newsletter should be specially written for it or be repeats of what’s on the blog.

Going back fifteen or more years, some of my most popular articles were originally written for the newsletter. In those days the website was fed from the newsletter rather than the other way round.

Please let me know your reactions in the Comments.

My New Time Management System (Under Development)

I’ve made some major improvements to my new time management system over the past few days.  I find that when I’m actively working on something new ideas come all the time. Indeed this is the foundation of the “no list” idea - to keep yourself actively working on the projects you are involved in.

This new system now gives 100% flexibility + 100% freshness +100% openness to little and often + 100% effectiveness at providing a framework for developing routines and systems.

Impossible? No.

What can I tell you about it at this stage?

Really only that it’s a “no-list” system and that all the principles behind it have been thoroughly tested out and debated on this website in the past. There’s no new magic ingredient - it’s just the way existing ideas have been combined.

It ticks all the boxes that I identified for the perfect “no list” system and goes beyond that.

Working in the Present

One of the principles which I have always emphasized when talking about time management is that we should work with our minds rather than against them.

Unfortunately it’s not always obvious how to do that. But I think over the years I have come to see that one of the most effective ways of working with our minds is to work little and often. It doesn’t matter what method of time management you use, or even if you don’t use any method at all, this is essential to progressing almost any subject.

I’ve written plenty in the past about little and often and I don’t intend to repeat it here. It’s perhaps easiest to understand by looking at its opposite which is “doing it all in one big session at the last moment”. Remember that both “little” and “often” are relative terms. For a concert pianist “little” may be four hours and “often” is probably daily. For someone writing a blog post “little” may be ten minutes and “often” every hour or so.

One of the many advantages of working little and often is that when you return to the task or project you will find each time that your mind has moved on. New things have come. You have more understanding, more light, on the project. You begin to see your way through what seemed to be insoluble problems. Little and often works on the physical as well as the mental plane. Athletes and trainers use the principle all the time. The house you are building grows steadily bit by bit. The plants in your garden respond to your repeated care.

Little and often is therefore a way both of keeping a subject alive and also of expanding your grasp and understanding of that subject.

More and more I’m realising that this is the key to managing time. And therefore at all costs we have to avoid working in such a way that the principle of little and often is impeded.

What sort of things are not conducive to little and often?

• Long lists of things to do
• Building up resistance
• Depending on willpower

Let’s look at the first one. The problem with long lists from a little and often point of view is that they were written in the past about the future. They are neither written in nor about the present.

We should be thinking about what we are doing now, rather than about what we may do in the future.

Even our goals and plans should be directed at guiding what we do in the present rather than being rigid constraints on our actions way into the future.

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

Trending this week

		An Effective “No List” System? Yes!
		Effect on the Brain
		Final Version FAQs
		Autofocus System
		Scheduling tasks (Discussion Forum)

What is a "no list" system?

My most recent article on “No-list” systems seem to have generated a storm of comments, which is all to the good. However one or two people have indicated that they are not too sure what a “no-list” list is. How can you have a list which is “no list”? A very good question!

A “catch-all” list is the opposite of a “no-list” list. Maybe better terms for them would be “very long list” and “very short list”. Very long in this context usually means 50+ items and very short means 5 or less items.

Another way of describing them would be “a long list which you add to whenever you think of something to do” and “a very short list which you make up as you go along.”

A “catch-all” list looks like this:

Tidy bedroom
Change bedding
List PR actions
Read “C——-” magazine
Read “K———” magazine
Obtain specimen legacy leaflet
Draft own legacy leaflet
Thank fundraising team
Blog result of fundraising
Thank newsletter subscribers
Cancel newsletter contract
Thank supporters
Blog latest social event news
Call David K
Read —— Newletter
Update giving page
Read “The 100 Years War”
List possible blog posts
Yabla
Read “B———” magazine
Clean sink
Empty WPB
Cut hedge back
Set up L’s new laptop
Read V’s letters
Print more blank schedule sheets
Shred
Dust
Listen to French news
Sort office
Process social event photos
Walk footpaths for Ramblers Association
Money?
Weed desktop
Weed flagged emails
Contact fast walking organization
To think about…
Prune rose bush
Get prescription signed
Sort L’s mail
List action need on C Blog
New house number
Kingsley Vale walk
Destroy old notebook
Re-read L’s instructions
Expenditure audit
Tax return
Weed pamphlet rack
Withdraw money from ——
Book holiday
Check heating settings
Action needed on Legacy campaign?
Write recommendation for N’s book
Push ups
The plank
Check bank balance
Weed this list
Read Pocket articles
Facebook
Email
Synchronise diaries
Put books away
Paper
Thanks to N for party
Check diary
Rake leaves
Voicemail
Do dishes
Adjust carriage clock
Charge batteries
Check heating settings
Ideas for new projects?
etc etc

A “no list” looks like this (or shorter):

Blog
List ideas for new book
Email
Publicity Project
Walk 3 miles

Which do you think is likely to produce the most focused action?

A typical example of a “no list” system is the one given in my book Secrets of Productive People. You write five tasks and do them in order. Any task you don’t finish you re-enter at the end. When you have only two tasks left on the list you fill up with another three.

See also:

Effect on the Brain

Why No-List Systems Work

My Book Challenge - Update

Following a suggestion by Dafydd in the comments to my last update, I am treating Napoleon the Great as three separate volumes, using the three parts the book is divided into.

I finished Part 1 today and am leaving Napoleon for the time being, having just toppled the Directory and become Consul of the Republic.

My next book to read is In Parenthesis by David Jones, one of Faber & Faber’s “Poets of the Great War” series. This is not a well-known book, though T.S. Eliot called it “a work of genius”. It’s comparatively short, so I won’t be dividiing it up further.

"Secrets of Productive People"

Secrets of Productive People is my latest book - and if you haven’t read it yet then you should!

The book has:

1 Introduction
5 Parts
8 five-star reviews on Amazon.co.uk.
50 secrets
150 strategies
250 quotes from the masters
78,000+ words

You will find just about all my current time management teaching in it. But it’s about a lot more than time management. The emphasis is on productivity - and time management is dealt with as part of that wider context.

Here are the five parts of the book:

The Basics of Productivity

The Productive Attitude

Productive Work

Aids to Productivity

Productivity in Action

——————————————————————-

BOOK DESCRIPTION

What are the 50 secrets of productive people that the rest of us should know?
Some books promise a lot but fall down because they are hard to use in your daily life. This book works by boiling down the essentials of productivity into short, quick lessons that you can apply instantly. Every one of the 50 secrets in this book contains 3 strategies you can put into practice right now. These are the real productivity tips you need to get ahead.

Ready to Learn the Secrets of Productive People?
Who are the most productive figures in the course of human history? Isaac Newton? Vincent van Gogh? Henry Ford? You will almost certainly find that the names you think of have made a real and measurable difference to the world, usually for the better. They will be people of great achievements and who have made the world gasp in amazement.

You probably cannot imagine yourself in your wildest dreams being productive in the way that they were productive. And you are probably right - you are never going to equal their achievements in their own fields.

But how about in your own field?
Can you apply the principles that they used, consciously or unconsciously, to your own work, your own lifetime passion, or even to your leisure time, so that you produce results that are every bit as amazing to you yourself, your colleagues, your customers, clients, friends and family, as their results were to the world at large?

Surprisingly, the answer is almost certainly ‘Yes, you can’
You can change your brain in order to change your abilities. That is precisely what lies at the basis of the sort of productivity that Newton, Van Gogh and Ford exhibited. What they did was to grow their brains to fit their area of productivity.

You can do exactly the same. This book will show you how

Effect on the Brain

In a comment I wrote:

“I’ve experimented with one day dismissal a lot. In fact the system I’m using at the moment, which is proving incredibly effective, is a one day dismissal system.

“My tip would be to forget the bit about being catch-all as well. I feed each day’s sheet through the shredder as soon as the day is over. The effect on one’s brain is quite remarkable.”

Seraphim asked:

“Could you elaborate on this a bit more? I am intrigued.”

What is the effect of feeding each day’s sheet through a shredder?

First of all, it brings about a sense of completion. The next day starts with a clean sheet with nothing left over from the day before. Whatever work you were engaged in has to be re-created.

Your mind is not however re-creating the work from scratch. During each day paths in the brain are either strengthened, amended or abandoned. This means that one’s work is always alive, relevant and creative.

This is a contrast to working off an old list, where creativity consists only in writing down yet more tasks on the list without actually taking action on them.

Let’s compare the thinking and action that goes with “catch all” and “no list” methods, which are the two extremes of continuing and one-day lists.

Catch all

The simplest type of catch-all system is where you just have an open list of tasks and circulate through it, doing the tasks that feel ready to do. At the beginning of each day what you are presented with is usually a long list which has been built up over a period of time, a matter of days, weeks or in some cases even months. At some stage you thought of a task and wrote it on the list. It may get done quickly, but a large number of these tasks will hang around on the list for days.

What your mind therefore has to do is to choose between anything up to 100 or more tasks - all of which you thought were a good idea at some stage in the past. You can only do one of these tasks at a time and very likely while you are doing that task even more are being added.

Your main motivation is to get rid of the tasks on the list. This of course can never actually be done so you always end the day with much the same number of tasks as you began it - frequently more.  Because you have such a large number of tasks to choose from your focus is poor and it’s difficult to build up good routines.

No-list

The simplest form of no-list system is just to write down the next thing you are going to do before you do it. The act of writing down the next action forces you to make a conscious decision about what to do, rather than just drift into something.

Your mind has no list to rely on, so what sort of tasks is it going to choose? It will probably come up with one of the following;

• The next task in an established routine
• Something that is on your mind because you are currently working on it
• A project you have previously decided will be your main focus for the day
• An urgent project or task
• Something which is causing you concern because it is overdue or in danger of becoming so
• Something you make a conscious decision to do because you want to do it

Note that all these things relate to what matters at the moment. Your concern is with what you are actually involved in. At the end of the day you will have filled the day with stuff that is actually relevant and is within your capabilities to do in the time available.

Your brain therefore will be concentrated on the immediate reality of what is in your life, rather than diffused over a vast sea of possibilies, most of which will never happen.

See also:

An Effective No List System? - Yes!

Why No-List Systems Work

Any special recommendations for teachers? (Reader's query)

Sandy writes:

What do you suggest for teachers with only 1½ hours of “focused” work time during the day?  Yes, we work more than that when we go home.  But the rest of our daily schedule is in class which requires an immediate response time.  And, while we are in class, the todo list is quickly turning from active to backlog.

The 1.5 hours are spent doing tasks that must be done at school or during the day, ie calling parents, making copies, setting up for class, lesson planning.

My schedule is tight and creativity occurs sporadically. But it is so important to find ways to be innovative in the classroom.

In my answer I’ll concentrate on the 1½ hours that Sandy has during the school day. How can she ensure that what needs doing gets done?

The things Sandy mentions in her email that she needs to do in this time are:

• Calling parents
• Making copies
• Setting up for class
• Lesson planning
• Creativity

Since I don’t expect she has covered everthing and in any case there will always be unforseeable calls on her time, I’ll add another category - “Miscellaneous Tasks”

That means that she has an average of 15 minutes per category. How can she make the most of this?

This sort of concentrated period of time cries out for a routine to be established. If she does this, it will help her to avoid wasting time or getting distracted. Time is tight and anything wasted will be difficult to catch up with.

The more invariable this routine can be made the better.

So what I would advise is to arrange the tasks in their order of priority, which at a guess I would say is:

• Setting up for class
• Making copies
• Calling parents
• Lesson planning
• Creativity
• Miscellaneous tasks

She gets the preparations for the next class out of the way first so that she doesn’t have them hanging over her.

She probably already knows what needs doing under each heading except “Miscellaneous Tasks”. I suggest she makes a Dynamic List for that. “Creativity” needn’t take long if she uses one of the Questioning techniques I recommend.

Another advantage of a routine is that it gives a good basis for weeding activities if Sandy consistently fails to reach the end of the routine in 90 minutes. It’s all the time she has, so it’s essential that the routine is pared down to the minimum.

Setting up systems (Reader's Query)

Kenny writes:

If you’re up for another article my next question would be the idea of systems and how you go about setting them up and their power. At the moment I’m working on creating systems in my life to make me more effective and efficient in my life.

There’s a good example of how to set up a new system in my earlier post What stops me from finding things quickly?

If you’re having problems with an existing system, then the first step is to examine it to see where it’s going wrong. So for instance to stop yourself from losing things the first step would be to look at what you are doing at the moment when you put things down.

My speciality is losing my glasses. When I look at what’s happening, what am I doing? I put them down anywhere without really thinking about it, And they frequently get covered by clothing, papers or files so that they can’t be seen.

This is a very simple example and more complicated systems will of course take longer. Nevertheless the basic procedure remains the same.

Ideally you should have systems ready before you need them, rather than try to put them right after they are causing problems.

As far as daily routines are concerned a “no list” system will naturally lead you into effective routines because your mind will naturally follow paths that have proved successful. For instance my routine for writing blog posts evolved effortlessly just by making small amendments to the same repealed sequence of actions each day.

An Effective "No List" System? Yes!

You may recall that in my article about what is required in an effective “no list” system I said that I was in the process of developing a new time management system based on the “no list” method. I reported that I had got as far as the following:

Re-entering tasks. I’ve solved the problem of multiple re-entered tasks.

Simple to work. Yes.

Urgent stuff. Not as good as I’d like. This is the main failing, though I don’t want to give the impression that it makes the system unworkable - far from it.

Keeping the list short. The list is always kept short and  relevant throughout the day.

Getting tasks done. All unfinished tasks get worked on multiple times during the day.

Remembering tasks. I’ve solved the problem of multiple task entry.

Not deceiving yourself. Absolutely ideal for monitoring exactly how much you have succeeded in doing during a day.

I was in fact satisfied with everything except how the method dealt with urgent tasks. I’m pleased to say that I’ve now solved that problem too.

Using the system (including even its imperfect state) I have now blogged for 17 continuous days, set up a Facebook page, replied to 52 comments within a few hours at most, initiated reader’s questions, and advanced many things in my private life - all without any resistance or procrastination.

All I’ve got to do now is to work out how to make lots of money out of it!

Suggestions?

See also:

Why No-List Systems Work

What stops me from finding things quickly?

A question from Will:

“What stops me from finding things quickly?

I’m looking forwards to finding out what my answer to this question will be because I spend my life losing things!

So, as I don’t have any ready-made answers, I am going to have to go through the procedure outlined in Secrets of Productive People for finding answers to questions like this. So I start by writing “Finding things?” at the top of a new note in Evernote.

These are my first day’s thoughts:

Don’t lose them in the first place!

A place for everything and everything in its place

Knowing what to do with everything

Put things down mindfully

Keep a record of where you put important things

And my second day’s thoughts:

Electronic tagging

Tidiness

Tidying as a frequently recurring task

Routines, e.g. empty pockets when hanging up garments

Regular emptying of briefcase, handbag, etc.

Inspired by these thoughts, I am going to start taking some action. I think the key to this is tidiness, making sure that everything is in its place. That will definitely require some sorting first, but once I’ve got things sorted, I need to tidy several times a day. This basically consists of putting things back where they came from, with the result I hope that it will be much more difficult to mislay things, plus those articles which are in the wrong place will stand out.

There are some places where stuff tends to accumulate and remain hidden. These are places such as briefcases, pockets, handbags, backpacks and so on. I will institute a habit of emptying them out whenever I’ve used them.

[As well as “things” which get lost, there’s also a problem with paper. I already scan all of the paper I can into Evernote and I make sure it’s tagged so I can find it again. I have a clear filing system for everything that can’t be scanned. I also save webpages I want to be able find again to Evernote.]

If I didn’t have to have this post ready for today, I’d probably have done at least one more day of questioning.

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My Book Challenge - Update

After eleven days how far have I got with my challenge to read only one book at a time? Well, I’ve stuck to the rule with Andrew Roberts Napoleon the Great, but progress has been slow. This is partly due to the fact that the book is much longer than I expected it to be, but also because it is very detailed and dense. It is most emphatically not the sort of book one can read as a novel!

I’m now on page 132, which is a bit over eleven pages a day. I’ve read roughly 46,000 words - about the length of The Great Gatsby, which I read last year and, as far as I can remember, took me only three or four days to read.

I’m beginning to think that it would make more sense to have one fast book and one slow book going at a time, rather than just one book. I don’t think this would necessarily make the slow book go any slower. The trouble is that most of the books I want to read are slow books!

Why "no list" systems work

Why do “no list” systems work, in spite of all our fears that we are going to miss something important?

And come to that why does a “no list” list work better than just not having a list at all?

I’m no psychologist, but my observations of myself, clients and the reported experiences of people writing in the forums on this site lead me to think that our minds like things like this:

• routines.
• tasks which they know how to do
• questions - just so long as they don’t feel under pressure to find a “right” answer

The sort of things our minds don’t like on the other hand are:

• unfinished tasks
• feeling out of their depth
• having to work for too long on one thing

They like freedom

They like to be challenged but not overwhelmed

They like building connections

They avoid things which they are afraid of, and they are afraid of being taken out of their comfort zones.

The very worst thing you can do with your mind is to overwhelm it with a huge list of stuff to do with not enough time to do it. This results in resistance and avoidance, either by giving up altogether or working on trivial stuff.

On the other hand the best thing you can do with your mind is to let it get on with what it wants to do but record it so it can see and learn. Your mind loves building things and it loves progressing things.

A “catch all” system always ends by either building resistance to the list, or by processing endless amounts of trivia.

A “no list” system on the other hand concentrates on what you are actually involved in, and because you are actively involved in the work your mind works with enthusiasm. And because the system actively constructs the list of what you have done, your mind is able to learn and adjust for maximum creativity.