Get Everything Done

I always wanted to use superfocus electronically, but splitting pages makes electronic translation really difficult. And then last night while I was trying to get to sleep, in occurred to me that I could use superfocus with AF4 and it would work beautifully with any app that allows you to add tasks to the end of the list and that allows you to create a second list.

If I remember correctly, AF4 involves listing a few tasks to start and then "closing" the list by drawing a line at the end. Any new tasks go after the line. Then you cycle through the closed list until nothing needs to be done, then and only then you move to the open list for one pass. Once you complete one pass, move back to the closed list, you cycle through as many times as you need to. If you make a fresh pass on the closed list without doing anything, everything remaining is marked for dismissal, and a line is drawn after the open list thereby closing it and starting new. The old closed list is dismissed or renegotiated as usual. Have I got AF4 right? This is a great system electronically because as long as you can keep adding tasks to the end, the number of tasks on a page doesn't matter.

So if your using an electronic version of AF4, (I use the focuspad app on my iphone) just add a second, separate, "superfocus list" and make sure to write "superfocus" as a task on the closed part of the AF4 list. As I cycle through the closed list, there pops "superfocus" and I can go to my superfocus list and work on it for a while. If there is something urgent in there it will really stand out. This is similar to the way one might flag a project to work on with multiple tasks by having a task "work on project X." Anyway, anything and everything can go into the superfocus list, and I don't work on the open list until everything is worked on in the superfocus list. If a task is not completed in the superfocus list, it's just added to the open list like any other task that is incomplete. In fact, if it's not completed after your next pass of the open list, you can always put it back into the superfocus list. It'll get done! Superfocus stays in the closed list until dismissal (because I can still add stuff to it willy nilly), and then once the closed list is dismissed I just move it forward to the newly closed list. So the superfocus task is never dismissed, just carried forward. This should give me tons of flexibility and balance regarding superfocus and my other tasks, and I can use it electronically probably on any system that adds tasks to the end of the list and can have more than one list.

Well, I'm going to try it for a while, anyway. Let me know what you think. Kudo's to Mark for trying to explain this stuff, I am a long time lurker (since AF1) and aside from a few random comments here and there, I had no idea how difficult it is to write this stuff.

That's it exactly. I've also added a task in the closed list called "superfocus" and I use that task as a kind of trigger to move into the superfocus list. When I'm in the open list circulating around I don't go to the superfocus list until I get back into the closed list and the "superfocus" task pops up and feels ready to be actioned. The one drawback is that you don't actually see the tasks in the superfocus list until you open it, however if you've been in the open list, when you go back to the closed list, the superfocus list should be empty. I'm thinking I can't really move into the open list until everything is actioned on in the superfocus list. If something occurs for you to do while you're in the open list, just add it to the end, you'll get to it. Once you're in the closed list, anything that occurs to you to add to the superfocus list will be urgent, hence fairly fresh in your mind.