Get Everything Done

+JMJ+

Mark's "1-2-6" name for his system really intrigued me, as it made me analyze more carefully the dynamics of recurring, unfinished, new, and backlog tasks as how I have treated and used them in practice over the years using the different AF's. I am wondering if some of you will agree with the following discussion

Now Mark, this is NOT a speculation on how your system works, but more of a brainstorm inspired by the name of your system on ideas about tasks that I have used to make a system that I am trialling right now, which I will discuss on the next post.

Anyways, here are my analyses:

1) If you mark a task in your list as your currently worked on task or your "next" tasks, then it can be assumed that you have to work on them until the end of the day. If not, then you can mark them as "unfinished" for work the next day. This is "1".

2) It is most beneficial to act on or finish unfinished tasks right away, but not too urgently all of the time. This is one reason why SF is an excellent time/task management system. However, one of SF's problems (in my opinion) with respect to this is that the re-presentation of unfinished tasks is too urgent: in my experience, most unfinished tasks can still be done up to the next day, thus reducing stress and urgency. This ties with "2" and is in the spirit of DIT.

3) Tasks older than one week are already seldom considered on. In fact, it may be beneficial to dismiss these tasks altogether for review later on. This ties with "6".

Now, let me clarify what I mean when I say dismissed. "Dismissed" items are items that have been labeled as "maybe I will do them sometime in the future." They are /not/ deleted, i.e. dismissed items are not erased from the AF list. Rather, these items are considered not part of the AF system when processing the tasks, but can still be reintegrated into the AF list in the future after careful consideration and possible editing.

4) Recurrent tasks up to every week may be added into AF lists; however, tasks with longer than one-week recurrence simply do not work in an AF system; it may be better for such tasks to be listed in calendars or schedule book. This again ties with "6", or, more appropriately, "7".

Now a time management system that integrates these concepts only need these requirements:

a) automatically dismiss over time like DWM's "over the waterfall" dismissal, yet instead of a one month limit of DWM the system should have a one week limit to account for weekly-recurrent items, and those dismissed items are not deleted but are left to be reviewed later,

b) unfinished items older than two days are dismissed.

And indeed a very simple system can be made by borrowing heavily from principles of DWM2.

The system itself follows this post.

+JMJ+

As I said, this system heavily borrows from DWM2, and thus I plagiarize from Mark's own DWM2 instructions:

___1. Have one continuous list of tasks as in Autofocus

___2. When you enter a new or recurrent task, put a mark next to it to show it as such (I use a greater-than sign, >, but you can also leave out the symbol altogether).

___3. When you act on a task but couldn't finish it right now, rewrite it on the end of the list as an "unfinished" task by placing a mark before it (I use a heavy dot, •)

___4. At the beginning of a new day or the end of a day, make a mark to denote that the next tasks are for this coming day and the previous tasks are backlogs. Mark's original instructions are to "leave a blank line and enter the day's date on the next line." My own way is to leave different thicknesses of highlighter lines across the page: thin line for separating today from yesterday, think line for separating yesterday from the rest, and writing "DISMISSED" across the thick line separating one week and older from the rest.

___5. Then cross out any days older than one week previous, and dismiss any tasks which have black dots against them on pages older than yesterday.


Now some observations on my admittedly short use of it:

a) It is more simple yet more flexible than CAF or SF or even some AF's to process. Overhead is very low. Also, since the dismissal is time based, one does not have to process the list in just one way: you can process the list AF1 style, AF2 style, Ping Pong style, or plain ol DWM style. This has always been my observation for systems with time-based dismissals, which is why I have sticked with them for a long time.

b) Load is much more light but important things are still recorded for future action.

c) Contexts are much easier to do. Since dismissal is no longer affected by how one processes the list, one can just easily label each task with a three- or four-letter tag in the beginning of most tasks and process the tagged items however you please.

d) The system is low stress and low urgency, yet facilitates acting on unfinished, hard, and important tasks.

e) Finally and most important in my opinion, it all makes sense. It DOES make sense to retain your tasks for only one week, yet not entirely delete them if unactioned by then. It DOES make sense to have a leeway of two days to act on most unfinished business, because you cannot finish many hard and important things in two days.

Godspeed.

+JMJ+

Alan: <<This seems right to me, except immediate dismissal is far too aggressive.>>

Are you talking about the two-day dismissal of unfinished items, or, as I understand it, the one-week dismissal of the rest of the items?

<<I suggest if an item is weekly recurring, you don't have to get to it immediately next week, but possibly later in the week. >>

Hmm, right....I had though of that, but the system should either extend to two weeks dismissal (which I have misgivings of doing, as my system just a few days ago was like this and was bogging down) or make the system more complex to accommodate this and yet retain the seven day dismissal period.

I will think about this more, thank you.

Godspeed.

+JMJ+

I just realized there is an elegant solution for my dilemma about weekly recurrent items for my system.

___1. On the day OR a few days before you ideally would do a weekly recurrent item (it depends on you and on the task itself), write the said task on the end of the list with the tag "7" preceding it.
___2. Treat this as you would any item in the list, and cross it out with a horizontal line once finished. If you had to re-write it anytime because you had to treat it as an unfinished item, BLOT out the "7" on the SUBSEQUENT RE-WRITINGS before crossing them out.
___3. When you are about to dismiss a 7-day old section, look for crossed out items in the section that are tagged with "7" then re-write them at the newly made section at the end of the list.

I am now wondering if this can be used also for monthly recurrent items (eg. paying bills), because I am thinking of adding another section to the system, in which all month-old dismissed items are deleted. Or maybe, instead of 30 days, 28 days, since most receive their salaries (like me) bimonthly, and most monthly recurrent items would probably be bill-based. Hmmmm....

God speed.

+JMJ+

Mark: <<I've now changed the provisional name to 1-2-7>>

Interesting! So how's it going?

And quite amusing discussion on the old Firestone ads :D

Godspeed!