Discussion Forum > Making choices
Excellent points, DavidC.
I see all of this as very tied in to the dismissal rules. My experience has been similar to yours in that I used to think I had to do everything on my list, but I am now quite happy to skip a large percentage of items.
However, I came to this by a different road, by trying to take to heart the dismissal rules. There was an ongoing reciprocal relationship between my "stand out" intuitive process and the way I handled dismissal. As I took dismissal more seriously, fewer things stood out. I no longer worry about "keeping the page alive," etc., and I don't let myself be influenced by the feeling that "this item would be perfect first thing tomorrow, but not right now, so it's a shame to dismiss it." This also works to limit C2 and reduces the need for those variations on the C2 rules. Picking up fewer C1 tasks, I have little trouble moving them into C2 per the canonical SFv3 rules. I do sometimes have quite a list in C2, but it is only happening now with smallish items that won't be there for long. So, the effects have been quite holistic and positive.
Related to this, I am more realistic when reviewing tasks. I used to reinstate most of my dismissed items. Yes, I diligently gave them some time and restated them, but I was listing things just because I liked the idea of getting them done, even though I couldn't honestly foresee doing them any time soon. This has turned out to be a huge reason that I was moving so slowly through my list. But by retraining this instinct, I went from creating pages faster than I dismissed them, to creating them at about the same rate, to now dismissing faster than I create. My page count had been near 20 at its worst but has now dropped to 6, and I did not start over at any point.
I think this is what Mark meant when he talked about SuperFocus as a teaching tool (though I don't remember his exact words), and if I remember right, that bit about "brain power" was related. Really, thinking back to other methods I've used (GTD, etc.), I have to say that a mis-calibrated intuition about how much work to take on at once may have been the major factor making various methods not work for me. SuperFocus has been unique in actually retraining my intuition and expectations.
I see all of this as very tied in to the dismissal rules. My experience has been similar to yours in that I used to think I had to do everything on my list, but I am now quite happy to skip a large percentage of items.
However, I came to this by a different road, by trying to take to heart the dismissal rules. There was an ongoing reciprocal relationship between my "stand out" intuitive process and the way I handled dismissal. As I took dismissal more seriously, fewer things stood out. I no longer worry about "keeping the page alive," etc., and I don't let myself be influenced by the feeling that "this item would be perfect first thing tomorrow, but not right now, so it's a shame to dismiss it." This also works to limit C2 and reduces the need for those variations on the C2 rules. Picking up fewer C1 tasks, I have little trouble moving them into C2 per the canonical SFv3 rules. I do sometimes have quite a list in C2, but it is only happening now with smallish items that won't be there for long. So, the effects have been quite holistic and positive.
Related to this, I am more realistic when reviewing tasks. I used to reinstate most of my dismissed items. Yes, I diligently gave them some time and restated them, but I was listing things just because I liked the idea of getting them done, even though I couldn't honestly foresee doing them any time soon. This has turned out to be a huge reason that I was moving so slowly through my list. But by retraining this instinct, I went from creating pages faster than I dismissed them, to creating them at about the same rate, to now dismissing faster than I create. My page count had been near 20 at its worst but has now dropped to 6, and I did not start over at any point.
I think this is what Mark meant when he talked about SuperFocus as a teaching tool (though I don't remember his exact words), and if I remember right, that bit about "brain power" was related. Really, thinking back to other methods I've used (GTD, etc.), I have to say that a mis-calibrated intuition about how much work to take on at once may have been the major factor making various methods not work for me. SuperFocus has been unique in actually retraining my intuition and expectations.
May 30, 2011 at 8:00 |
Bernie
Bernie
Further thoughts on AF and choice:
We often don’t always allow ourself to really choose our way of life, for often we want a means to wander through with only the most obvious choices in our path. The way we wander in our world too often chooses us rather than allows us to consider all of our choices.
We often don’t always allow ourself to really choose our way of life, for often we want a means to wander through with only the most obvious choices in our path. The way we wander in our world too often chooses us rather than allows us to consider all of our choices.
January 16, 2014 at 14:09 |
michael
michael
The system toook a while to catch on, so that the number of articles written each day was quite small. It was entirely feasible to read all of them, as indeed I did, because they were often interesting. As the service became more popular, the number of articles rose, until it became quite a struggle to keep up with them. With effort, though, one could still read through all the recent updates once in a while, and get up to date with what was going on.
Quite suddenly, the number of people contributing to the database reached a critical mass, such that nearly everyone started using it. At that point, it became impossible to keep up with the high volume of traffic, and nobody tried. One's relationship with the data changed. Initially it had been like a newspaper, or a magazine. You don't have to read every line of the publication, but you've bought and paid for it, so you feel an obligation to read the bulk of it, or fear being overtaken by a feeling that you have spent your hard earned cash unwisely. Later, the systems felt more like a reference book. If you have in mind to try selling work to a prospective client, you will use the machine to look up what colleagues have done along the same lines, so as not to repeat their work, or bombard the prospect with annoying duplicate approaches. But you won't attempt to read everything in the database, any more than you would read the whole of an encyclopedia.
I sense that there is a lesson hidden in this experience so far as concerns SuperFocus lists. Over a long run, I have been getting about 30-40% of the items on my list completed. The other 60-70% gets discarded, either explicitly by me or through inattention and the passage of time. It makes me feel bad. If only I could work that bit harder, stay awake that bit long, I could increase the proportion that gets completed.
Recently, however, new responsibilities have arrived which have roughly doubled my workload. Not unnaturally, the proportion of my list that is getting done has fallen to about 15-20%.
To my surprise, this has made feel better. I no longer delude myself that a bit more effectiveness could get it all done. It's clearly impossible, not the consequence of personal shortcomings. Mark F talks about viewing the opportunities before one as like options offered on a restaurant menu. You are only expected to eat one of each course. In a typical restaurant, one might have 10-20 choices presented in each course, such that we only experience 5-10% of the possibilities offered to us; but we don't feel bad about it.
Moving from a world in which I could do a fair proportion of my tasks to one where it is impossible has the benefit of exercising me in the making of choices. Which tasks actually matter? Which ones will make a difference? Which ones can only I do, rather than delegating?
I'd like to see discussion of these questions. The AF/SF rules talk about using one's subconscious mind, picking out tasks that seem ready for doing. I can't help feeling that there is more to the selection than this, though I struggle to articulate quite what. My intuition is that this linkage between long run priorities and near term task selection is relevant to the discussion of experiences with Dreams Come True, and to the thread on how people are getting on with Superfocus.