Discussion Forum > Do what I did yesterday
That's kind of what I'm doing with my current DIT setup.
Basic observation: 80% or more is the same from day to day. I work on a project as much as I want today, then cross it off my today list, and re-enter it on tomorrow's list. Same with recurring tasks like "clear email". Having a sense of what carries over from day to day helps create a vision in my mind of a sustainable equilibrium, and helps me gauge whether I can take on more, or need to cut back.
Deleting the done: Yes, this is straightforward. :-)
Postponing: If I work on something but then realize I won't have time for it tomorrow, I can re-enter it later on. Likewise, if I start the day and realize there is something on my today list I will not have time for, I can cross it off and re-enter it for some future day when I expect to have more discretionary time.
At the end of the day, if I still have something undone on my today list, I just highlight it and leave it there. (The purpose of the highlighting is simply to make the active tasks easier to spot among all the crossed-off items).
To take action, I build an FV preselection. To build it, I start with the oldest highlighted task in my notebook (usually there aren't more than 5ish), and go down the list to the end of my today list, following the FV rules to select what to work on. Total number of items on the list is usually 20 to 30. Thus I can do several FV chains per day, usually 7 or 8 or more, and I very quickly clear off all the highlighted tasks, deciding either to delete them, postpone them to a future date, or work on them.
Anyway, all those details about my current DIT system are extraneous. The main thing I wanted to say is that I do think this approach has a lot of value and is currently providing me with a much better sense of balance and equilibrium than I've had in a long time.
Basic observation: 80% or more is the same from day to day. I work on a project as much as I want today, then cross it off my today list, and re-enter it on tomorrow's list. Same with recurring tasks like "clear email". Having a sense of what carries over from day to day helps create a vision in my mind of a sustainable equilibrium, and helps me gauge whether I can take on more, or need to cut back.
Deleting the done: Yes, this is straightforward. :-)
Postponing: If I work on something but then realize I won't have time for it tomorrow, I can re-enter it later on. Likewise, if I start the day and realize there is something on my today list I will not have time for, I can cross it off and re-enter it for some future day when I expect to have more discretionary time.
At the end of the day, if I still have something undone on my today list, I just highlight it and leave it there. (The purpose of the highlighting is simply to make the active tasks easier to spot among all the crossed-off items).
To take action, I build an FV preselection. To build it, I start with the oldest highlighted task in my notebook (usually there aren't more than 5ish), and go down the list to the end of my today list, following the FV rules to select what to work on. Total number of items on the list is usually 20 to 30. Thus I can do several FV chains per day, usually 7 or 8 or more, and I very quickly clear off all the highlighted tasks, deciding either to delete them, postpone them to a future date, or work on them.
Anyway, all those details about my current DIT system are extraneous. The main thing I wanted to say is that I do think this approach has a lot of value and is currently providing me with a much better sense of balance and equilibrium than I've had in a long time.
July 12, 2012 at 0:44 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
Seraphim, what happened to your 700+ list? Did you postpone everything, declare a backlog, dump it? Just curious how you managed to cut it down to 20-30.
I now try to work a somewhat similar approach: whenever I enter or re-enter something on the list I put it on tomorrow's page (just the page after the last one, dated with tomorrow's date), unless I really need to do it today. Every day I try to finish all tasks on today's list, and work everything before that FV-style, so I use FV to deal with everything left over from previous days. My main gripe with DIT was that it did signal a too high work load, but didn't have a good mechanism to deal with that (yeah, okay, periodic review, like in GTD :-).
I agree with you that this gives a better sense of balance, and a much better idea of my actual work load.
I now try to work a somewhat similar approach: whenever I enter or re-enter something on the list I put it on tomorrow's page (just the page after the last one, dated with tomorrow's date), unless I really need to do it today. Every day I try to finish all tasks on today's list, and work everything before that FV-style, so I use FV to deal with everything left over from previous days. My main gripe with DIT was that it did signal a too high work load, but didn't have a good mechanism to deal with that (yeah, okay, periodic review, like in GTD :-).
I agree with you that this gives a better sense of balance, and a much better idea of my actual work load.
July 12, 2012 at 10:32 |
Nicole
Nicole
@Nicole - I declared a backlog. I still generate lots of new stuff but I don't know what to do with most of it. If I feel it can be deleted and I'd never notice, then I leave it off my main list. Otherwise I do put it on. Sometimes my page gets too full.
I'm trying to offload articles and other things to read onto "Pocket" (used to be called "Read It Later") but I haven't really figured out how to work that into my routine. This does reduce a lot of the extra tasks on my list -- I used to clip them into OneNote and they'd automatically go onto my FV list. I liked this because they'd percolate with everything else, but it also seemed to add a lot of clutter. I'm trying to configure "Pocket" so it will have the same percolating effect but I haven't figured out how yet.
Same with other things. I don't like having a "maybe someday" list because I never look at them. I need some kind of catch-all that percolates, but clears out the dross faster before it builds up to 1500 items. Still haven't figured it out.
I like the DIT approach I'm doing now, overall: enter things on my dated journal DIT-style, and process them FV-style. Overall it works well. It just doesn't work well as a catch-all because the pages fill up too fast.
It sounds like your approach is almost identical to mine, except I apply FV to today's page also.
I'm trying to offload articles and other things to read onto "Pocket" (used to be called "Read It Later") but I haven't really figured out how to work that into my routine. This does reduce a lot of the extra tasks on my list -- I used to clip them into OneNote and they'd automatically go onto my FV list. I liked this because they'd percolate with everything else, but it also seemed to add a lot of clutter. I'm trying to configure "Pocket" so it will have the same percolating effect but I haven't figured out how yet.
Same with other things. I don't like having a "maybe someday" list because I never look at them. I need some kind of catch-all that percolates, but clears out the dross faster before it builds up to 1500 items. Still haven't figured it out.
I like the DIT approach I'm doing now, overall: enter things on my dated journal DIT-style, and process them FV-style. Overall it works well. It just doesn't work well as a catch-all because the pages fill up too fast.
It sounds like your approach is almost identical to mine, except I apply FV to today's page also.
July 13, 2012 at 22:38 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
Seraphim, I find choosing the right size page for ticklers / DIT is impossible -- and I worry way too much about it.
I like the someday/maybe list. Every so often I run FV on it and allow one item back on my main list. In theory. I'm trying to hold off on that until I get a few other projects done.
"Reading things I should read" is a single task on my main list. When reviewing email (where most of my reading arrives), anything that I don't feel like reading immediately goes to EverNote. My mobile device then syncs the entire inbox automatically. (Well worth the premium service for that.) I can then read it offline -- waiting for kids' sports, breakfast, whatever. Some of my feeds go to Google Reader so I can check them on any device. That's a step faster, but then I can't read unless there's an internet connection.
Does Pocket / Read It Later allow for offline reading? Last I looked, it didn't.
I like the someday/maybe list. Every so often I run FV on it and allow one item back on my main list. In theory. I'm trying to hold off on that until I get a few other projects done.
"Reading things I should read" is a single task on my main list. When reviewing email (where most of my reading arrives), anything that I don't feel like reading immediately goes to EverNote. My mobile device then syncs the entire inbox automatically. (Well worth the premium service for that.) I can then read it offline -- waiting for kids' sports, breakfast, whatever. Some of my feeds go to Google Reader so I can check them on any device. That's a step faster, but then I can't read unless there's an internet connection.
Does Pocket / Read It Later allow for offline reading? Last I looked, it didn't.
July 13, 2012 at 23:30 |
Cricket
Cricket
@ Chricket : Offline reading is a no brainer with Pocket.
July 14, 2012 at 15:45 |
Stefano F. Rausch
Stefano F. Rausch
@Seraphim - good remark about the catch-all function. I still capture everything in FV, but it builds up way too fast, so your approach sounds more workable. In my GTD-days I used to have a Someday-list; I occassionally did things from that list but at some point it became painful to look at all the stuff I would like to do or should do but never got around to.
I think the point with a Someday-list is that the items on it need more time to be filtered out. If you don't do day-to-day stuff it becomes obvious fairly quickly that you can delete it or should do it right now. With Someday/Maybe, you keep thinking "well, maybe next year" and it takes much more time to realize that you'll never going to do it. The time-scale is different, so the filtering should be different.
One approach that might work, although I haven't tried it yet: only put things on the FV-list that you intend to do within a week, otherwise put it in a tickler to reconsider again in a week. If it comes up again and you still don't want to do it within a week, put it back in the tickler for reconsideration in a month, then in 3 months, etc. At some point you'll either do it or delete it. The disadvantage is of course that you loose FV's forcing power for the item that percolates to the top of the list. FV's strength is that at some point postponing is not an option anymore, you either do the top item or delete it. With a someday-list, you can keep postponing forever.
About reading: I keep stuff I want to read in a separate mailbox or in a Dropbox-folder and try to make reading for 15-20 minutes a daily habit. That's enough time to work my way through a backlog of blogposts that I follow, or to read a significant part of a paper and decide if I want to read all of it in depth.
I think the point with a Someday-list is that the items on it need more time to be filtered out. If you don't do day-to-day stuff it becomes obvious fairly quickly that you can delete it or should do it right now. With Someday/Maybe, you keep thinking "well, maybe next year" and it takes much more time to realize that you'll never going to do it. The time-scale is different, so the filtering should be different.
One approach that might work, although I haven't tried it yet: only put things on the FV-list that you intend to do within a week, otherwise put it in a tickler to reconsider again in a week. If it comes up again and you still don't want to do it within a week, put it back in the tickler for reconsideration in a month, then in 3 months, etc. At some point you'll either do it or delete it. The disadvantage is of course that you loose FV's forcing power for the item that percolates to the top of the list. FV's strength is that at some point postponing is not an option anymore, you either do the top item or delete it. With a someday-list, you can keep postponing forever.
About reading: I keep stuff I want to read in a separate mailbox or in a Dropbox-folder and try to make reading for 15-20 minutes a daily habit. That's enough time to work my way through a backlog of blogposts that I follow, or to read a significant part of a paper and decide if I want to read all of it in depth.
July 15, 2012 at 10:32 |
Nicole
Nicole
@Cricket - The Moleskine daily journal is working pretty well for me.
http://www.amazon.com/Moleskine-Planner-Legendary-Notebooks-Calendars/dp/886293730X
It has 30 lines per page, plus you can squeeze four or five more in the top margin if you need. :-)
Even with re-entry of items that I may want to see again on the same day, this is working pretty well. I am trying to follow the rule that, if I fill any page, I can only add (or re-enter) things on subsequent pages. And I also follow the rule that I can only look forward to future pages if today's page and all past pages are totally cleared.
This serves two purposes. It forces me to be careful how much I commit to for any one day. And it helps me balance out my recurring maintenance items, spreading them across several future days or weeks.
http://www.amazon.com/Moleskine-Planner-Legendary-Notebooks-Calendars/dp/886293730X
It has 30 lines per page, plus you can squeeze four or five more in the top margin if you need. :-)
Even with re-entry of items that I may want to see again on the same day, this is working pretty well. I am trying to follow the rule that, if I fill any page, I can only add (or re-enter) things on subsequent pages. And I also follow the rule that I can only look forward to future pages if today's page and all past pages are totally cleared.
This serves two purposes. It forces me to be careful how much I commit to for any one day. And it helps me balance out my recurring maintenance items, spreading them across several future days or weeks.
July 17, 2012 at 5:09 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
@Nicole - This weekend, I put a lot of thought into how to manage the miscellaneous items.
I have always used OneNote to manage project-related material, and I'm already in the habit of (1) entering the project into my DIT/FV list, and (2) moving any tasks related to the project into OneNote.
So, I decided to re-define a "project" as a "container with a short name".
Here is how it works.
In the past, if I got a one-off email that needed action, I would move the email itself into OneNote, and it would show up on the bottom of my FV list, and get processed eventually.
But now, my FV list is in a DIT notebook, and I don't want to write the whole subject of the email, or the whole URL of the Gmail, or whatever, into my FV list. I also don't want to put "Email from John" because there might be 5 different emails from 2 different people named John, each on a different topic.
So, I create a quick new OneNote section, give it a name like "Send part list to John", and throw the email in there. I then write in my DIT/FV notebook: "Send part list to John" or perhaps "Send part list to John *P", where the *P is my little notation that means "project in OneNote" if I think I might forget where the details are.
Sometimes this gets tedious, because I can easily create 20 new "projects" just from a day's incoming email. Trying to avoid the tedium has actually made me realize that many of these "one-off" tasks really do have themes or natural groupings or even belong to existing projects.
It also works to handle the "maybe someday" tasks, because those are usually grouped around themes, such as "10x income" or "stop the copper mine" or "to do in the yard".
I am not sure if this approach will be successful in the long-run but it's been really helpful the last couple of days.
I have always used OneNote to manage project-related material, and I'm already in the habit of (1) entering the project into my DIT/FV list, and (2) moving any tasks related to the project into OneNote.
So, I decided to re-define a "project" as a "container with a short name".
Here is how it works.
In the past, if I got a one-off email that needed action, I would move the email itself into OneNote, and it would show up on the bottom of my FV list, and get processed eventually.
But now, my FV list is in a DIT notebook, and I don't want to write the whole subject of the email, or the whole URL of the Gmail, or whatever, into my FV list. I also don't want to put "Email from John" because there might be 5 different emails from 2 different people named John, each on a different topic.
So, I create a quick new OneNote section, give it a name like "Send part list to John", and throw the email in there. I then write in my DIT/FV notebook: "Send part list to John" or perhaps "Send part list to John *P", where the *P is my little notation that means "project in OneNote" if I think I might forget where the details are.
Sometimes this gets tedious, because I can easily create 20 new "projects" just from a day's incoming email. Trying to avoid the tedium has actually made me realize that many of these "one-off" tasks really do have themes or natural groupings or even belong to existing projects.
It also works to handle the "maybe someday" tasks, because those are usually grouped around themes, such as "10x income" or "stop the copper mine" or "to do in the yard".
I am not sure if this approach will be successful in the long-run but it's been really helpful the last couple of days.
July 17, 2012 at 5:20 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
Seraphim, I'm glad you've found a system that's working for you. With lists of 700+ items in the past, I expected it would be challenging to find a solution. Personally, I'm finding that the DIT and FV approaches just don't sit right with me. AF1 is more my style. Of course, the problem (as always with AF1) is dealing with urgent/important items. I'm experimenting with a tweak to try to solve this, of course. So far it's working quite well, but I'll give it more time before posting the details...
July 26, 2012 at 21:57 |
Deven
Deven
No system can be perfect. Take the subject of this thread. As a partial system it could work fine if used in a certain fashion, but it could also break down like this:
Each day you have fewer and fewer yesterday's stuff, but you end up spending more and more time on just those items, neglecting other duties. To succeed you ought to insist on the little/often approach where little is very little and often is daily so you can insert other urgencies, after which you may be freer , having covered all the bases.
Each day you have fewer and fewer yesterday's stuff, but you end up spending more and more time on just those items, neglecting other duties. To succeed you ought to insist on the little/often approach where little is very little and often is daily so you can insert other urgencies, after which you may be freer , having covered all the bases.
July 27, 2012 at 12:25 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
@ Deven, of course it's challenging, but it's also a lot of fun, which is why I've been hanging around this forum for so many years. :-)
July 30, 2012 at 18:25 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
Yes, it's always more fun experimenting with systems than doing real work! :)
July 31, 2012 at 14:48 |
Deven
Deven
Actually, I get irritated very quickly with how difficult it is to devise a good system. The tinkering and experimenting drives me nuts, and I don't really find any fun in that. In general, whenever Mark introduced a new system, I would adopt it wholesale, and not do any tinkering with the rules.
For me, the fun is in understanding how the system engages the psychology in order to achieve the desired effect. Mark Forster's systems have plenty of psychological insight to chew on, and many people posting on these forums have backgrounds in psychology or at least share my interest in the psychological aspects of time-management and personal-management.
Also, it's really fun to find something that works, even if the effect is temporary. I really like staying on top of my work, and the ideas in Mark's books and on this site have helped me tremendously with that.
For me, the fun is in understanding how the system engages the psychology in order to achieve the desired effect. Mark Forster's systems have plenty of psychological insight to chew on, and many people posting on these forums have backgrounds in psychology or at least share my interest in the psychological aspects of time-management and personal-management.
Also, it's really fun to find something that works, even if the effect is temporary. I really like staying on top of my work, and the ideas in Mark's books and on this site have helped me tremendously with that.
August 1, 2012 at 16:53 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
When deciding what to do today, look at the list of things you did yesterday. Some are done/gone, some are to be postponed, some need more work.
Delete the done. Postpone the postponable. Work on the rest.
Naturally "the rest" will be fewer things than you did today, so that's great; you will finish early. Finally do some other things.