Discussion Forum > AF1: Items Per Page, Pages Per Notebook
Thanks for starting this post, Seraphim!
I'm about to start a new AF1 notebook, with 23 double-facing "pages" in the book and 56 tasks/page. I think this will mean that I will have only about two to three active pages to maintain, on average. If it works out that way, it should be eminently manageable.
I'm going to do the "cave-deposits" Work/Home separation on each page, so my Work list will start from the top the left side and go down, while my Home list will start from the bottom of the right side and go up.
100 tasks/page seems like a useful upper limit, since much more than that would take minutes for the initial scan.
I'm about to start a new AF1 notebook, with 23 double-facing "pages" in the book and 56 tasks/page. I think this will mean that I will have only about two to three active pages to maintain, on average. If it works out that way, it should be eminently manageable.
I'm going to do the "cave-deposits" Work/Home separation on each page, so my Work list will start from the top the left side and go down, while my Home list will start from the bottom of the right side and go up.
100 tasks/page seems like a useful upper limit, since much more than that would take minutes for the initial scan.
August 17, 2011 at 19:03 |
ubi
ubi
If you have 29 pages, you must do 29 things before you get back to the list end. In otherwords, many pages make the list unresponsive to important stuff. On the other hand, large pages have a low finishing threshold, and low dismissal pressure. I max out at 30 undeleted items which I thunk is 60 total per page, and 10 pages.
August 17, 2011 at 19:03 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
Seraphim:
I think everyone has to find the best number for themselves. It depends on all sorts of variables, including what proportion of urgent work one has, how many tasks one tends to do when visiting a page, how many tasks gets dismissed, etc. etc.
I think everyone has to find the best number for themselves. It depends on all sorts of variables, including what proportion of urgent work one has, how many tasks one tends to do when visiting a page, how many tasks gets dismissed, etc. etc.
August 17, 2011 at 19:27 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Adaptive page size, anyone?
Take each quintile of your notebook as one "page."
To move faster or slower, adjust the size of this "page."
To help in weeding out pages, dismiss any individual page if you have a clear feeling that you won't get to any of its items in a week.
Take each quintile of your notebook as one "page."
To move faster or slower, adjust the size of this "page."
To help in weeding out pages, dismiss any individual page if you have a clear feeling that you won't get to any of its items in a week.
August 19, 2011 at 21:06 |
Bernie
Bernie
Bernie - Adjustment of page-size "in flight" on existing pages, by combining pages or splitting pages, can really mess with the implementation of the dismissal rules.
August 19, 2011 at 23:51 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
I did experiment with a virtual page length which always had the same number of active tasks on it. So for example if you had 200 tasks it would always cover 10 "pages". My theory was that all the most difficult tasks would gravitate to page 1 and you could then have a really good go at clearing them. It didn't work!
My new experiment doesn't depend on page length.
My new experiment doesn't depend on page length.
August 20, 2011 at 0:15 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Me: Mark - What are your key observations regarding an increased number of items per page?
Mark: I suspect it has a lot to do with the total number of tasks which one has on one's list. If you only had ten things to do, then a page size of 5 lines might work very well. If on the other hand your list was 5,000 tasks long then a page size of 1,000 might work well too (or perhaps I mean less badly).
This led me to think that we really want to focus on optimizing the total number of active pages, rather than optimizing the number of tasks per page.
Mark - Is this a valid insight? What do you think is the optimum number of active pages for AF1, when one's notebook "reaches maturity"?