Get Everything Done

+Ad Jesum Per Mariam+

I had mentioned before that I went back to AF4 + filtering/pre-filtering which was exactly the system I was using before DWM2 came out. Filtering/pre-filtering is the tweak poster Mike detailed, which I summarized in http://www.markforster.net/forum/post/1262814#item1265787 , in which one filters items coming into the autofocus list as whether he/she can do the task within a relevant time period (eg. one week), in which it is entered, or not, in which the task is entered THEN dismissed for later review. The logic for this is that when you delete/dismiss an item in a PAPER AF list, you do it with a line crossing the item, and thus you can still read it. In effect, whatever you write in the list stays there until you change your notebook or throw that page away.

I however was still struggling with the system; it is as if pre-filtering/filtering and AF4 was not completely compatible with each other. So I thought, what if I made a task management system based on the pre-filtering/filtering tweak and abandon AF4? Well, here is the result: an AF with day-based dismissal like DWM but much more manageable, in my humble opinion. I call it Weekly Autofocus (WAF) because it operates with the assumption that the only relevant tasks today are those tasks that you plan to do, or start to do, within one week.

You will need a notebook and pen.

1) Decide on a symbol/tag to distinguish deleted items from dismissed items.

Deleted items are items that have either been done or been decided to be not important and will never be done. In Mark's systems these are items crossed out with a line using a pen. Dismissed items are items that are for review later. In Mark's systems, these are crossed out with a highlighter. However, in WAF, I highly discourage the use of a highlighter as they will distract the "standing-out" process common in Mark's task management systems; instead, use the same pen you are using to write a symbol/tag to distinguish deleted items from dismissed items.

As I use my system, deleted items are items that are crossed out with a pen, while dismissed items are crossed out with the pen and an "H" (for "highlighted") written at the left margin. Other tags may be used depending on user's preference.

2) (This is only when you are going to start the system) Dump all tasks you can think of for the week, then close it with a line across the page with the date one week from now written on the side. Write subsequent tasks that come to mind below this line.

3) As you write each task, ask yourself, "Do I plan to start this within this week?" If yes, leave it as is. If no, dismiss it.

4) Pick a task (that is not deleted or dismissed) that "stands out" as you would with any of Mark's systems. If the items "stands out" because it seems ready to be done, then do it. Delete the item when it is done, and re-write the task at the end of the list if needed. Alternatively, if an item "stands out" not because it needs to be done, but because it seems it cannot be done within this week, then dismiss it.

5) At the end or the beginning of each day, close the end of the list with a line across the page with the date one week from now written beside it. Tasks thought of subsequently are added below this line.

6) REVIEW your dismissed items AT LEAST right after the closing of the list each day, at the time you draw your line across the page at the end. If a dismissed item seems to be ready to be done or ready to be started this week, re-enter it at the end of the list and blot out the symbol/tag for the dismissed item. You can also review your dismissed items at any part of the day, but the review right after the closing of the list each day is very important and should never be skipped, or the system will collapse.

7) All items not dismissed or deleted above a closing line dated for today are dismissed.

How is the system right now? I LOVE IT! It is simple, it is easy, it is flexible, it is fast, with little headroom needed and no HUMONGOUS backlog. And reviewing Alan Baljeu and paco_pepe's criteria for a good task management system, it seems to satisfy all of them.

1. Simple - do the system, not think about the system.

Yep!

2. Complete - capture everything

Definitely! The system has, in effect, its own built-in "Someday/Maybe" list. It will capture everything you can think of yet will present to the user only what is relevant for this week.

3. Limited - scope, forcing the content to stay manageable

This is the heart of the system: seven days worth of tasks at a time, making the list manageable. And I think it has done very well in this aspect.

4. Focus - get important stuff done now / Access - Certain control on the tasks by the user

Seven days worth of tasks to consider that are automatically presented by the system instead of a hodgepodge of tasks that you either have to go through a page-worth (AF1), a whole lot (AF4) or a month (DWM) of tasks to remove some of them from the system? I think WAF covers "control" ^____^

5. Enticement - Probably the most important AF feature

a. free access to tasks of different nature
b. little and often principle
c. "standing out" principle

I would add

d. closed list effect
e. boredom/overwhelm avoidance

The closed-lists effect is in full force here because of the closing of the list per day, and the "standing-out" and the "little and often" can be used to their full potentials here because the same observation I had for DWM2 also applies here: because the dismissal process is day-and-intuition-based instead of process-based, it is VERY flexible. One can use AF1, AF2, AF3, AF4, DWM, Ping Pong, etc. style of processing the list and NOT affect the system! 2mc's tagging system can be used here; tagging of recurrent and unfinished items, which I use now, can also be used. In fact, I have LOTS of tweaks in mind that one can use here. Therefore, no "boredom." Finally, overwhelm can be had by how much one wants to tweak this system, but overwhelm due to sheer number of tasks? I don't think so.

6. Appearance - visual simplicity

This could be the only problem with this system, IMHO. You will have dismissed, deleted, and active tasks in one page alone, and depending on how much one would want to tweak this, there could be MUCH more in a page (like recurrent and unfinished tasks, deadlines, what have you...). However, by keeping the system simple, this is actually a non issue.

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I have thought of some more tweaks to use in this AF version. These include a way of incorporating projects, incorporating deadlines and scheduled events, and others. However, I will test them before adding them.

God bless!

+Ad Jesum Per Mariam+

@Mark,

I think you got it...let's just add that all active items older than 7days are automatically dismissed. Therefore

1. All the tasks entered during one day make up a closed list.
2. You have a maximum of seven closed lists (i.e. a week's worth).
3. As you go through the lists you can either a) pass over a task for the time being b) do it in whole or in part c) delete it because you've decided not to do it at all OR d) dismiss it if you've decided you are not going to get it done within the 7 days allowed.
4. All tasks older than 7 days that are not yet dismissed or deleted are automatically dismissed.

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@Matt,

<<Seems like a lot of rewriting. Am I missing something?>>

That is the headroom, I guess. But it my experience, it has not that much more re-writing as the vanilla-flavored AFs, in which you rewrite everytime you do a recurrent task, or rewrite after leaving a task unfinished, or rewriting tasks after reviewing dismissed tasks.

<<Also, what keeps you from continually dismissing something, because you keep telling yourself you can't do it 7 days?>>

Or keep it in dismissed limbo for an indefinite amount of time...hmm, didn't thought of that. However, isn't that an old problem with the AF's too? You dismiss a section, then rewrite what you have not done in that dismissed section into the end of the list without considering it carefully. That could go on indefinitely.

I guess one way around it is to delete all the dismissed items more than one month old...kinda like another version of DWM. I had thought of this tweak, but I of course could not test it until three weeks from now.

Another would be to remember what Mark said about dismissed items waaaaaay back in AF1: "Please take the rule not to re-enter these items seriously. It doesn’t mean you can never re-enter them, but you should let some time pass before you do and consider carefully why they were rejected, whether they really need to be done at all, whether the time is ripe for them to be done, whether they distract from your main goals, and any other factors. When you do re-enter a dismissed item, it is often best to break it down or re-phrase it in some way."

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God bless!

+Ad Jesum Per Mariam+

I just realized that this could be a source for confusions on the instructions of WAF: WAF treats dismissed items differently from how other AF versions treat them.

In other AF versions, dismissed items are treated as a "necessary evil": they need to be in the AF system because you have to decide what to do with the items not acted upon by the time of dismissal, but you have to decide right away whether to reword them, divide them, or simply delete them. This is exemplified by the instructions for AF4:

"The next time you come to the beginning of the list, you should finally cross off the highlighted tasks by deciding what to do with each one in turn. You may elect to abandon it, re-enter it on the Active List (with or without re-phrasing), or put it into a reminder system for review at a later date. In making the decision what to do with each task, you should look at the reasons why you haven’t done it yet."

Mike's pre-filtering/filtering tweak for AF4, however, treats dismissed items differently, and this attitude towards dismissed items is carried over to WAF. In pre-filtering/filtering and in WAF, dismissal of items is actually encouraged, because a dismissed item is one less task for AF (and ultimately YOU) to worry about! Dismissal in this view is a great way to remove load from the task list and reduce overwhelm WITHOUT the finality of deletion. Thus, in pre-filtering/filtering and in WAF, it is not unusual to have items remain dismissed for a long time in spite of repeated reviews of such items.

There are however downsides to this handling of dismissed items. First is that regular reviews of dismissed items are critical for the system to work. The user has to be on top of all the items dismissed; if not, it is likely for dismissed tasks to not be brought to his attention by the time it is needed to be acted on. Second is the possibility of the AF becoming visually complicated. One can imagine the hodgepodge of active, dismissed, and deleted items in an active AF page.

However, in my experience, the downsides are manageable, considering the benefits I have experienced with pre-filtering/filtering and WAF.

God bless!

+Ad Jesum Per Mariam+

@Mark,

<<I sort of assumed that was included in Rule 3d. You dismiss something if you have decided you are not going to get it done within the 7 days. >>

Ooops, yes you are right, Mark. Sorry about that. However, it is not just when I "decide" not to have it done within the period, it is also when I "cannot" do it, i.e. it is left in the list unactioned for more than 7 days because you were too busy to do it.

And, as I originally envisioned the system, I think Alan is closer that the criterion is "I know I can start within 7 days."

Or maybe I'm just confused.

<<Thoughts on how to handle dismissal:

Dismissal in this system is a negative answer to the question "Am I still going to do this within the seven days?"

Reinstating the task, is a positive answer to the question: "Am I going to do this within the NEXT seven days?">>

That is right, Mark, that is how I envisioned the dismissal and re-writing logic.

<<So the obvious time to reconsider dismissed tasks is when the page goes over the waterfall.>>

Not always. What if I dismissed something within the seven day period because I think I cannot do it by then...but later on I learn that I must? If I have to wait for it to get beyond the seventh day mark before I review it I might miss that.

The obvious solution to that is to NOT dismiss any item within the seven day period...which I think would cripple the system. WAF operates on the proposition that it is good to be able to dismiss items intuitively as well as systematically because one dismissed item is one less task to burden the system. Dismissal allows the system to present to the user only the most relevant tasks without the finality of deletion.

<<When a page passes the 7 day point, all dismissed tasks can be reviewed and either deleted altogether, re-instated by being re-written on the current page, or passed to long-term storage. The long-term storage consists of a separate list (perhaps at the back of the book) which is reviewed regularly. >>

The paradigm here is that dismissal IS the long term storage. You can leave the dismissed items in your list and not affect the "standing out" of unactioned items in the main list, as long as the dismissed items do not bring too much attention to themselves (i.e. no highlighters) yet able to be distinguished from deleted items for later review (i.e. tagging by symbol).

<<How do you deal with the problem that the tasks I know I can get done within 7 days are the easy ones, while the ones I don't know that I can get done within 7 days are the more difficult ones which I really should be getting on with? >>

To be honest, this one REALLY troubled me. I reviewed my WAF and I noticed that most of my dismissed items are the really difficult ones.

This most likely is a big weakness for the system Mark, I thank you for pointing that out to me.

The only solution I could think of for now is the suggestion from this article, which I had noted before:

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/10/18/the-art-of-the-finish-how-to-go-from-busy-to-accomplished/

One would tag with a symbol (probably a star?) six to twelve important items that CANNOT BE DISMISSED UNTIL THEY ARE LEFT UNACTIONED FOR MORE THAN SEVEN DAYS. I guess I have to try it for now.

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@Rainer,

Yes, I think I will use that, thank you.

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God bless!