Get Everything Done

I usually have about 80 or 90 tasks of which a good proportion are recurring. I don't make any distinction between home or work.

For me the main finding from this poll is that the number of tasks in someone's system is a pretty meaningless figure. Different people have different ways of entering tasks, ranging from Leon's three tasks to Seraphim's 400 or so. Yet is Seraphim any busier or more productive than Leon or vice versa? It's impossible to tell from these figures.

Is there a better measure?

I suggested a while back that the number of days' work remaining in the system was a useful measure. http://www.markforster.net/blog/2011/9/25/speed-update-day-2.html

Another measure is is how long it takes for all the tasks entered on a given day to be actioned.

Neither of these is perfect by any means.

Maybe the most important measure would be a subjective one - how far you feel that everything is getting done when it should be done.

If you were to mark yourself out of 10 for this, what would you score? (10 = everything getting done when it should be done; 0 = nothing getting done when it should be done).

leon:

<< Subjectively, I tend to feel more satisfied completing my 3 tasks for the day - and then taking it easy! >>

Are you saying that is different from everything getting done when it should be done?

Alan:

If you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer.

We've had all this out before. Tasks don't need to be finished. It's a measure of how much work it will take to clear all the entries currently in the system. It's particularly useful for tracking the trend of how well you are keeping up with the tasks you are adding to the list. If your Work Remaining in the System keeps increasing, then you are falling behind.

Daneb:

<< My idea was, that as each of us needs different stress level, or different level of tidiness or different level of spontaneity/rules to feel optimally, maybe we tend to have the same level of various tasks defined in front of us... >>

Maybe. But I don't think the answers given to your question support this one way or the other.

They certainly show that people tend to have much the same level of tasks. But there's nothing in your question or the answers to establish a causal relationship with "needing different stress level, or different level of tidiness or different level of spontaneity/rules to feel optimally".

Daneb:

<< as for the "objective" measures of productivity, I doubt that we can define it by task characteristics. Number of days needed to start the tasks defined today or to close the list started on certain day will be again influenced by factors like how general/detailed tasks you define, how many tasks you have or personality style (longer time with one task/shorter with many tasks...). >>

Yes, that's what I said. These measures are not perfect by any means. They are not good at comparing one person with another. What they are useful for though is tracing one's own progress over a period of time.

<< Even your suggested "subjective" scale "10 - everything getting done when it should be done; 0 = nothing getting done when it should be done" would not be valid for me, because I as a typical perfectionist tend to underestimate time needed for doing tasks for whole my life and even if I finish many tasks I somehow feel "they could have been done earlier/quicker". >>

I don't understand why that invalidates the scale.

<< But if I should simply evaluate (on 1-10) how I perceive myself to be productive using AF comparing with other systems which I tried, I would vote near to ten. >>

Good.

Alan:

<< Even though the topic has been discussed before, I'm finding it difficult to master the notion. It's not as self-evident as you think. >>

I've never claimed it was self-evident, which is why I explained clearly what I meant.

<< Thinking this through now, I think I can make sense of this in the fashion you laid out before >>

Well, you're trying to make sense of it, but not in the fashion I laid out before. You're making it many times more complicated than the way I described it.

<< I have 100 tasks. Today I act on 20 of those 100, and add 30 on the end.
Tomorrow I act on 25 of those 110 (but 10 of the original 90), and add 15 on the end. I'm back at 100, but 80 of the original set. So the workload seems to be stable, and I seem to have 10 days work at hand - meaning stuff can get behind up to 10 days given this pace. >>

Here's the correct answer worked out exactly as I described it in the referenced post:

You did 20 tasks yesterday and 25 today, which means you are doing an average of 22.5 tasks per day. You have 100 unactioned tasks on your list, which represents 4.44 days' worth of work if you keep going at your present average rate.

It's a pretty simple calculation.

Please note that The Number of Days' Work Remaining in the System is a measure of how much work is required to action all the items currently on your list. It is NOT intended to indicate how long it will actually be before all the items have in fact been actioned.

In other words, the fact that you have 4.44 days of work remaining in your system does not mean that in 4.44 days time you will have crossed out every item on your current list.

Cricket:

<<For Days Remaining, when counting work on long tasks, where you might work 5 minutes to 8 hours in a session, how would they count? >>

The Number of Days' Work Remaining in the System is the total number of tasks on your list divided by the average number of tasks you do in a day. So there is no need to worry about the varying amount of time you spend on individual tasks. It's already averaged out.

<< Also, if my long-term tasks will take 30 days, do I add another 30 hours for the daily hour of recurring tasks (which after a few iterations adds another 10 days)? >>

The Number of Days' Work Remaining in the System deals with single entries on the list regardless of whether they are part of a larger task or not. So the answer to your question is no.

<< I like both "satisfied" and "finished stuff on time" scales. If I fight a surprise fire and know I did the right thing, I'll be satisfied, even though I didn't finish stuff on time. Likewise, if I finished all my less-important stuff I'd get a lot finished, but not be satisfied. Taken together, the answers become meaningful. >>

Doing something ("the surprise fire") when it should have been done (i.e. immediately) is a good example of everything getting done when it should be done.

Doing a lot of things ("my less important stuff") when they shouldn't have been done (i.e. instead of more important things) is a good example of everything not getting done when it should be done.

So the "How far do you feel that everything is getting done when it should be done?" scale should suit you very well.

Leon:

<how far you feel that everything is getting done when it should be done.>

<How satisifed do I feel with what I have done today'? >

<< I would say these are 2 different statements with different meanings.>>

So, if I understand you correctly, whether you feel satisfied with what you have done today is a quite different thing from getting things done when they should be done?

Or to put it another way, if you were to fail to get things done when they should have been done that wouldn't make you feel any less satisfied with your work?

leon:

<< Most of the shoulds in my life though are usually self - imposed expectations. >>

I didn't say anything in my definition about "should" in the sense of self-imposed expectations. Read the definition again:

"How far you feel that everything is getting done when it should be done."

The "should" referred to when things get done, not to the nature of the tasks.

You are making an unnecessary difficulty here.

Bernie

Will is correct in his answer.

Alan:

<< Because it doesn't reflect actual working habits, (new tasks, recurring tasks, tasks worked in multiple chunks) the number of days computed will not in any way match actual days spent. >>

But it does represent how much time you will spend on the items currently on your list. So it is useful in the same way that knowing that your car is going at 30 mph is useful. You know that the actual number of miles you cover in the next hour may bear no relation to it, but the information is still useful.

And my measure becomes very useful if you follow it as a trend. Because then it tells you how well you are keeping up with the work that you are putting into the system.

Jupiter:

<< From yesterday, 37 are dismissed and of course 54 are crossed >>

Of course?

Are you sure you understand what "dismissed" means? A task isn't dismissed just because it hasn't been crossed out.

Jupiter:

<< Thé 37 tasks are tasks which did not stand at me reading thé all page. They Are then subject to review. I know they are à lot, but i am sûre they Will be crosses soon for most Of them.
Did i writly understood ? >>

No, you didn't.

The 37 tasks are simply tasks which haven't been actioned yet. They are not dismissed tasks.

I suggest you watch the video about AF1 again. It's at http://www.markforster.net/autofocus-system/

I go into quite a lot of detail about how to work pages, and when pages are and aren't dismissed.