Get Everything Done

How do you like to focus on your projects and make sure they're done in a timely matter? I try to keep my number of projects low, but picking at them every day makes me feel like none of them are getting resolved as quickly as they could be. I was thinking of having each day focus on two-three projects at a time only, working through them with Autofocus 4, just so I'm not spread out as much and I make more progress on them that day.

What do you think?

A couple of relevant threads:

http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/1484918#post1486548

http://markforster.squarespace.com/fv-forum/post/2021718#post2023068

Hi Hail2U!
I don't use the autofocus system. My overall system is closer to a weekly version GTD/DIT mix from which I pull out a daily list of what I WILL do. It doesn't really matter.

Each day, I determine the progress I want for the day. If I get into a great flow pattern, I just go with it. This is why I like to get the other more mundane responsibilities out of the way first so that I can have that freedom. If it doesn't take hold, I'll be happy with what I originally set out to do.

This way you're sure you're making sure of the necessary incremental progress on it you planned to meet the deadline.

In reality, it's usually not so cut and dried. Sometimes I hit a brick wall. That's why I set the plan as a minimum to keep it moving forward on time. Sometimes I'll be struggling with one project and bingo! I get swept away on another project. The planning keeps all the plates spinning in the air but the inspiration is what produces excellent results. Even without inspiration, you need to meet the deadlines. I give myself what I WILL do and hope inspiration will give me more but at least it's moving forward as planned overall.

For projects, I'll either set a time box goal or a definite marker of progress. When I'm done, I'll switch my focus or work ahead toward the next stage of progress. When it's a project that's at the early stages of research, discovery and planning, I'll usually time box with a flexible goal in mind. When I'm staring at a blank page or a blank canvas, I don't know yet what I'm going to do so I simply freely engage myself and see what happens. If I KNOW what I'm going to do and it has a deadline, I'll set FLEXIBLE markers of progress.

I think there are only two ways, how to finish any project earlier:

(1) greater effectivity (= working more effectively, Pareto principle - doing what is most important and what can wait, to remember that "good enough" is sometimes the best principle...)

(2) limiting number of projects to focus on at any time (of course, I am also working on many projects concurrently, but I set only ONE project/task to focus on as a main daily goal every day and only ONE project/task as a week goal. The rest....yes, I can work on them but they are not the main focus.)

correction, I meant "Pareto principle - doing what is most important and knowing what can wait"

Hi Daneb
That's fine if your position allows it but many jobs require that you maintain many projects simultaneously with hard deadlines. When other people are involved, there will be revisions so you need to be flexible and work on them simultaneously each day as it allows. I'm not going to work on only one project for a day if there are other people waiting on me for revisions so they can go back to their part of the project. That would bottleneck everybody involved.

Whether it's one project or 35 with the same deadline, it's the same thing. You have to plan progress and be flexible to move it all forward as the opportunities present themselves, especially if you're working for others. After all, my deadline is also their deadline. People would be peeved if I told them, "No, you'll just have to wait and sit on your hands because I decided to dedicate the day to this one project. Multiply that by many people.....you'd lose your job!

Make the plan to meet the deadline, set progress markers but be flexible to grab the opportunities as they present themselves....especially if you're not working solo.

learning as I go:

Yes, you made good point. I think we have to discriminate between two types of projects - (1) first type is what I call "routine" projects. These are majority of work projects - they are the types of work we usually do, we are able to estimate needed time, we are able to define all major steps - because we did similar projects before (or we do them often). E.g. building a house for construction company, recruitment project for HR department, design a client web for web programmer etc. With these projects, I think we should be able to estimate/guess needed work/hours/deadline given our current workload etc. So we "should not" have problems with finishing them on time. If we have, problem is in my opinion not in our time management/productivity system, but in our overscheduling/overcommiting/promising unrealistic deadlines etc. Neither FV, neither AF, neither GTD will help when we overcommit/set unrealistic deadlines.

(2) I call different type of projects "development projects". These are projects, by which we cannot define all the phases in the beginning, because we do not know how and where the project will go. We are typically open and change our direction as we go. We are unable to define precise deadline. These are typically non-routine projects, where we are working in the area we are not specialized in. Although, the same project can be routine for other person and developmental for somebody else. E.g. development project is first-time designing personal web page, recruitment for small family company with no employee turnover, building a cabin in the mountain as a weekend hobby project etc. From definition, also many self-development projects belong here (to start doing a sport, to understand some area deeply, to learn a language, finding a girlfriend, working with one`s impulsivity, to become more intensive in networking activities etc.)

I was thinking about these developmental projects in my post above. Of course, I am also participating in many "routine" working projects every day - but I know how much time to spend on them every day to be completed before deadline. I am also working on more "developmental" projects every day. But still, I think that having one major goal/project (especially in the area of developmental project) as a focus for a day is invaluable and can help to finish these projects quickly being at the same focused, seeing quick advance, all without feeling overloaded/overwhelmed...

One additional idea: one way how to differentiate between "routine" and "developmental" projects could be by the type of goal we can usually set.

For routine projects, we can define standard S.M.A.R.T. goal (as each management/goal management literature tell us). But for "developmental" goals, SMART goals would often be funny and unrealistic - instead, we should define only somehow more general descriptive goals/vision/or only an broad idea of where we want to go. We cannot impose SMART goal on ourselves when starting to learn a foreign language ("I will know 3000 new words by next September" is nonsensical if I have no experience with how quickly I can learn). Similar nonsense is "I will find new beautiful girlfriend (brunette, educated, sophisticated, Gemini, to be "specific" from SMART) and will marry her in 24 months".

Yes, we can define some measures ("networking activity twice a week", "subscribe to a dating site"), but it is not our goal, only a method how to reach it.

Now with Mark's new post up, I think I see what he means about using it as a focus to complete projects more effectively. Before it went up, I was mainly using my list of Weekly Goals to focus on 2-3 projects at a time, building my list as I went with SMEMA. Basically it seems like building a list for a project at a time is a good way to approach it. But I do like having my Weekly Goals list as a way to focus what I want to accomplish for the week, so I think I'll keep experimenting with what I've got now.