Get Everything Done

Hi Marcelo -- Interesting idea, I also like exploring things like that!

I also know how long it takes to come up with ideas like that, test them a bit, and then post about them. So practically, I've been doing AF/DWM/SF for more than two years now and I've probably spent about the same amount of time rewriting tasks during those two years, as the time it took you to develop and describe this system.

Let's say 3,000 tasks re-entered for one reason or another, and 2-3 seconds per task. I'll be pessimistic and say 3 seconds. That's 9,000 seconds, or 2.5 hours (over two years).

(With DWM I probably processed more tasks than that, but with DWM I was using Outlook so it took a single click to re-enter a task, so about 1/5th of a second. So I guess the two balance out.)

<<< It may justly be argued thar SF is not a "General System for Everyting", its scope is limited to motivate you to do the tasks you enter, and this it does. But I appreciate a system that can give me a feedback not only of how I am performing but also of how I am leading my life. >>>

I actually disagree with this. SF handles these kinds of things really well. Just enter "Need more balance? How to achieve it?" or something like that in your list. It can prompt repeated deep reflection on the topic, and spawn many practical and useful actions that will help you achieve it.

In fact, in my own experience, SF has handled these kinds of things much better, with more satisfying and concrete results, than other systems that apply an artificial set of categories that need to be "balanced". (I've tried many, over the years!! some of them goal-centric, others more "balance" centered, organized around "life area" or "focus area")

If you do already have a set of categories that works for you, like Marcelo and Erik seem to have, then you can still use SF to help achieve the balance -- enter tasks like:

"Need more balance?"
"Which area of my life isn't getting enough attention?"
"How can I synchronize my areas of focus to get more balance?" (Covey's "fire within")

If those tasks stand out, then give them some thought and attention, maybe repeatedly in C2 till you feel more satisfied.

If they DON'T stand out, then maybe balance isn't your issue.

I'd recommend adding all kinds of questions like this to your SF list, whenever they come to mind, and let SF sort them out for you.

SF *does* have some of this "built in" -- for example, the balance between the urgent and the non-urgent; the balance between the "important" and the "routine trivia". SF allows you to strike a very effective balance.

On the other hand, sometimes I don't want balance. Sometimes I want focus. For example, I'm glad those nuclear-plant workers in Japan were FOCUSED on their heroic efforts on containment -- the balancing comes later.

And SF does a GREAT job of allowing you to focus, sacrificing balance for the time being, if that's what you want and need.

Most of the time I want balance, because it's the balance that sustains the focus -- and SF delivers on that as well.

In other words, SF allows you to have a great balance between balance and focus. That almost sounds like a pun or something. :-)

It's up to the USER to decide what kind of balance is desired. SF is very simple and can accommodate any number of cosmological approaches to balance. :-)

If you want to base it on the Chinese Five Elements theory, then that fits perfectly well into SF. But it's up to YOU, the user, to enter the appropriate items to trigger reflection and action to achieve the kind of balance you desire. E.g., "Reflect on the five elements - do you have the balance you want?" "Fire is weak; how to make it strong?" Those kinds of repeated C1 reflections can trigger multiple concrete tasks that can help you achieve that balance in a practical, tangible way. All while managing your workload and paying your taxes and walking the dog. :-)

Covey's "7 habits" are also a tightly integrated, interdependent set of principles that can help achieve balance. If that system appeals to you, you can enter things into SF like "How can I integrate my different roles more effectively?" to help trigger deeper reflection along those lines.

I've been re-reading "Monastic Wisdom", a collection of letters written by a Elder Joseph the Hesychast, an Orthodox Christian monk from Mount Athos in Greece in the 1940s and 1950s. This has been prompting deep reflections on my own life, and has triggered several entries into SF. It's been helping me to unravel the causes of many conflicts in my life (especially helping me see that I'm the root cause of them). SF has been helping me with all this -- the reading itself, as well as the pondering, the reflection, and the changes in behavior and habit that I need to implement.

SF has also helped me sort out other issues of life-balance and life-priorities, such as dealing with health issues. I've always known I needed to get more exercise and lose some weight -- putting these into SF has triggered repeated reflection on the issues, and helped me to reorganize my schedule and other commitments, so I am now taking action on it.

And SF is doing all that while also helping me get my work done, clear my email, coordinate my project teams, help my daughter with her college work, deal with the noisy phone line, help my six-year-old daughter remember to feed the cats, pay the bills, set up a town hall meeting with our state senator, follow up on insurance claims, and read a couple articles in Astronomy magazine now and then...