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I'm strict about dismissing items about to drop off, so the list stays small and it works for me.
I intend and expect to stick with a form of SF for a long time.
The overall philosophy of 7 habits, particualry the first three and last one (Sharpen the Saw), permeates everything I (try) to do.
The beauty of DWM.xls is that it took me 1 second to find out that my first entry was March 1, 2010. So, I have been doing DWM.xls for a full year. I hadn't realized that till I tried to answer your question. Thanks for asking.
So far, I have no intention of trying SF.
Matt
I think the longest I've stuck to a system is with DIT, which was around 18 months. However I should say that this did involve plenty of attempted tweaks. Before then I used GTD for approx 12 months
I believe I've come up with a good simple system of my own to meet my needs (which is very much based on the Rule of Three & and writing in one place - in which a large part I've learned from you).
I've read that book as well!
Covey 5 years
GTD 9 years
AF1/4 combination 1 year
+ Planner Pad, 5+ years
+ AF1, ~1 year
+ DWM, ~1 year
+ SFv3, ~1 month
Long answer:
I used a system called Planner Pad for at least five years, probably 3-4 years at the longest uninterrupted stretch. Sometimes I left it, but would always go back. It's more of a notebook format with a few loose rules, but it was very useful. It had some ideas similar to Mark's "dismissal" rules; it was page-based; some concepts similar to DIT; overall, very simple but quite effective. I started using it in college, and then used it at work for several years. It includes a paper-based calendar. You can see it at plannerpads.com. One nice thing, it's relatively inexpensive as far as planners go. It's also simple, and doesn't lend itself to endless reorganizing and tweaking.
When I started my current job in 2003, it was the first time I used Outlook. Everyone here uses Outlook for shared calendaring, so it didn't make sense to use my Planner Pad for calendaring any more. And that took away from its overall usefulness. So I started trying to find other ways to manage my work -- most of them involving Outlook. I tried applying Covey-esque techniques and GTD techniques. I always picked up useful ideas from these systems but could never really stick with them for too long. Covey had great concepts for doing larger, deeper thinking about one's work and one's purpose, but seemed weak on day-to-day implementation. GTD had great ideas for getting organized, for capturing everything in one place, for identifying concrete next steps; but I always felt like I was just running on a treadmill of my own creation when I was using it. And my weekly review always turned into a "what do I really want to do with my life" session, so it wasn't very useful for weekly maintenance of my workload. LOL
I started reading about DIT sometime in 2008 - I still can't remember exactly how I ran across it. The book had some great ideas and concepts that I could immediately put into use. But I never was really able to distill what the nuts and bolts of the "system" were.
While I was trying to figure that out, mainly by spending time on Mark's website, Mark announced his retirement, followed up immediately by his tantalizing accounts of a system that let you work on whatever you wanted, for as long as you wanted, and yet get lots of things done -- the RIGHT things. And then Autofocus was launched. I started on it immediately, and stayed with it for about a year (taking short excursions into AF2 and AF4 along the way).
When Mark released DWM in Feburary 2010, I started on that very quickly, because it promised to address the main issues I was having with AF. And it worked great. It was particularly well suited to an Outlook-based implementation. I kept going with that till the first SF and related AF4 variants were introduced. I tried those "on the side", in a notebook, while continuing to use DWM in Outlook for project- and context-based tasks. SF was especially interesting.
I then started using SFv3 the day it was released and have been using it ever since.
Well I had a nice detailed answer; but the square-space post form ate it. I have to remember to not compose in the web browser on this site; that happens too often.
The short version is
0) The world accelerate again dissolving the boundaries between contexts.
1) I work from home now further dissolving the physical boundaries.
2) I still do GTD, I've carried forward the best parts of it.
3) I do most of GTD it in my head as second nature these days.
4) My contexts are mostly virtual and have no hard transoms to the point of having only the need for 1 list.
5) The xxxxFocus family of methods is the what I'm using to for the DO part of GTD
The last part of GTD says that once you have all your actions on your various lists you just need to then be a mature adult and do something about them and get them done. I use to coach GTD to the staff at a big company, I found that the mature adult part really is the part where most people fail :)
If you replace the statement "mature people do there lists" and say "do SFv3 to process your context lists" I think more people would have a ton more success with GTD.
That said I don't think you need GTD to do SFv3; but GTD has needed SFv3 for a long time....
<<< I found that the mature adult part really is the part where most people fail :) >>>
That's certainly where it failed for me!!
<<< If you replace the statement "mature people do there lists" and say "do SFv3 to process your context lists" I think more people would have a ton more success with GTD. >>>
Yes!!
<<< That said I don't think you need GTD to do SFv3; but GTD has needed SFv3 for a long time.... >>>
Yes!!!! Great comments! Thanks Bob!
hahaheh I know this experience :-)
Bob: squarespace took your first post because it believed it too wordy and needing a full redraft. I-) It does seem to be uppity that way lately.
That is disturbingly insightful..
"If you replace the statement "mature people do there lists" and say "do SFv3 to process your context lists" I think more people would have a ton more success with GTD. "
Since I use Omnifocus on iPod I would really like to implement this but I don't know really how.
If someone has a solution (right now I am just using omnifocus to do SF3, so I don't really follow the GTD process, and since SF pages are defined as projects I can't attribute a real project to each action I put in SF)
I'm using a paper list (Large Moleskine Cahier) for my SF list but I'm dismissing things to a Single Action List in OmniFocus. I've been doing this for a couple weeks and haven't ventured into OmniFocus any more than that for that period of time. I'm thinking this weekend I'll do a proper review and decide if there are things from my OmniFocus system that needs to get put onto my SF list.
My issue with OF was always that I liked it's organizational aspect, but I never really got much done using it. I always thought that if I just made one more custom perspective, maybe that would do the trick. I basically spent all my time making perspectives, flagging and unflagging tasks, and changing start dates.
I'm thinking that, as Bob said, my paper SF list will be my 'do' list and I'll use OF to do my reviews and project planning and reference. I'll keep you posted.
I'll also keep thinking on your actual question. But I won't spend time trying to develop it. ;)
GTD: 6 years
GTD/ZTD + AF (currently AF2): 2 years
That said I don't think you need GTD to do SFv3; but GTD has needed SFv3 for a long time....*****
This is gold!
After I read the DIT book, I started using DIT. I used it from August 2006 to end 2008. From DIT onwards, I've always worked on paper: no more Palm or software tweaks for me!
Then AF1 came along. I started using it from day 1 (5 January 2009) and have used it until end February this year. AF1 was only interupted briefly to try out AF4, but I quickly went back.
Since 25 February, I'm officially testing SF3. It's too soon to say if it will stick, or if I'll go back to AF1...
Walter, thank you for sharing you application with us.