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Can you give 1 or 2 examples of how you used Dr. Glouberman's ideas? And, if you're willing, to describe if/how you're using them today?
Based on your kudos, as well as a mention (on her website) of Robert Bly appearing in her book, I ordered a copy. I may even splurge for the audio.
Hey - if you'd like to discuss this further, feel free to email me at avrum AT nadigel DOT com
"My vision for Autofocus is that through its unique sifting process we will have our goals and vision clarified for us. Perhaps it would be better to express that as “we will be able to clarify our goals and vision”, because Autofocus is after all no more than a framework to allow our intellect and our intuition to work in balance."
http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2009/6/12/back-to-autofocus.html#comments
Funnily enough I was thinking about this this evening and even read the article you link to before I came across your post.
Yes, Autofocus (specifically the original one) is supposed to provide a framework for clarifying one's goals and vision.
It will only do this however if it is worked correctly. Specifically:
1) Projects can be entered at any level, but should be broken down into small tasks as quickly as possible. So it's best to start a project as "Plan Project X" rather than as just "Project X". The planning consists of breaking down the actions needed for Project X and entering them into the list. Some, or even perhaps most, of these actions will need breaking down further, so they can be entered as planning too, e.g. "Plan Publicity for Project X". This process goes on until you reach a specific concrete action, e.g. "Discuss Publicity for Project X with James".
2) The aim is to end up with a *lot* of small tasks. I used to think that Seraphim's (and some other people's) giant lists were quite wrong. But they work fine as long as the dismissal process is correctly used.
3) When you have a long list of say 500 or more tasks, it is essential to be prepared to dismiss a *lot* of tasks - sometimes even a whole page without having done any of the tasks on it. Any attempts to avoid dismissing tasks are fatal to the system.
4) AF is really a form of survival of the fittest. The tasks which fit your vision (even if you don't know what it is yet) will get done often and well, while other tasks will either languish and eventually get dismissed, or will get dismissed without having been done at all.
5) Also essential to the process is the review of dismissed tasks. This may lead to reinstatement of a task, but what is often forgotten is that it may also lead to final deletion of a task.
It's not quite relevant to the present discussion but another thing I would want to stress about AF is that "If it needs doing now, do it now" is part of the system, not a failure of the system.
It's maddening how good AF (and most of your ideas) sound. The practice is another matter entirely. I'm assuming it's the discipline that I lack - the wherewithal to stick to the list, to not abandon the rules when things become mundane, boring, etc.
Again, in theory (and moving pictures http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF1ngJAyD_s ) it speaks to me on a practical, even spiritual level.
But the practice man, the practice...
Clicked on your link. Saw this:
<<June 12, 2009 at 13:48 | Unregistered CommenterAvrum >>
2009. Wow.
<< The tasks which fit your vision (even if you don't know what it is yet) will get done often and well, while other tasks will either languish and eventually get dismissed, or will get dismissed without having been done at all. >>
I used to handle "review dismissed" simply as a quick read-through, asking myself if I wanted to re-enter any of the dismissed tasks - and not giving it much more thought than that.
In trying different approaches to using AF1 recently, it's occurred to me that reviewing dismissed items can be a great opportunity for deeper reflection, like a project retrospective, or a Scrum sprint retrospective, or a Kanban rule violation review. (A common Kanban practice is to set rules such as "WIP limits" or "forward motion only", but instead of enforcing all these rules strictly, one does what makes sense at the time, and if a rule violation occurs, it should trigger a review to think about why the violation was necessary, and how to improve the organization of the process and flow so as to make similar violations unnecessary in the future).
A deeper review of dismissed items could be something more like this:
- Why do I keep dismissing tasks that my rational mind says are "important"? What's the disconnect there?
- Am I dismissing too many of the small tasks connected with various projects, causing multiple projects to stall and none to be completed? Is this a sign I have taken on too many commitments?
Stuff like that. I'm pretty sure this kind of deeper reflection is what Mark had in mind all along, but I never got in the habit of taking review of dismissed items seriously enough to make it work like this.
It almost makes me want to try AF1 again as my main system. :-) But actually, this is essentially what I'm doing with DIT right now. If I fall behind, I don't just do an audit of commitments, but have been asking myself these same kinds of questions, in conjunction with reviewing my "DONE" lists for the day, and it's been really helpful.
<<Why do I keep dismissing tasks that my rational mind says are "important"? What's the disconnect there?>>
An excellent question. If I were a programmer, and creating a piece of software to implement AF, I would code a feature whereby the user would need to answer 1 (of 3) questions before re-entering a dismissed task.
<<A deeper review of dismissed items could be something more like this: >>
With a system like Autofocus which is designed to achieve a balance between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind, you have to be very wary about second-guessing it with your conscious mind.
<< - Why do I keep dismissing tasks that my rational mind says are "important"? What's the disconnect there? >>
Well just maybe it's because your "rational" mind is wrong!
I don't by the way like calling the conscious mind the rational mind because I think both the conscious and unconscious parts of your mind are rational - in fact in my experience my unconscious mind is often more rational than my conscious mind!
<< - Am I dismissing too many of the small tasks connected with various projects, causing multiple projects to stall and none to be completed? Is this a sign I have taken on too many commitments? >>
Something I've mentioned recently in another context is that we shouldn't be looking at what we haven't done but at what we have done. Assuming that we've actually been working and not goofing off, what we've done represents the amount of work that we can do in the time period in question. We couldn't have done anything else without leaving undone some of the stuff we did do.
It is in other words not a question of the quantity of what we've done but of its quality. The quantity is always the same.
If you approached it from this angle your question might become "Am I dismissing enough of the tasks connected with various projects which I wouldn't have had time to deal with in any case?"
<< It's maddening how good AF (and most of your ideas) sound. The practice is another matter entirely. I'm assuming it's the discipline that I lack - the wherewithal to stick to the list, to not abandon the rules when things become mundane, boring, etc. >>
My own experience with AF1 is that everything works fine as long as I just follow the system. The problems come when for one reason or another I feel I want to change things. So for instance I come to a page which contains a lot of tasks I really don't want to do. The result is that I can't face even starting on the page. Result: I go off and try another system - or stop working altogether.
What I should have done of course was simply calmly scan down the page item by item according to the rules and if something stood out I should have worked on it and if nothing stood out I should have dismissed the entire page, again according to the rules.
Nothing difficult about that - the system would still be intact and my resistance to the page would have been irrelevant.
<<What I should have done...>>
So in your experience, is it the fault of the system i.e. AF produces pages with drudgery, the person i.e. lack of willpower? Or is it simply just how our minds work - it wanders, seeks novelty and is unsettled by anxiety.
In meditation class, my teacher would suggest: No biggie, just come back to breath, to the practice.
I'm assuming that's what you're alluding to - as difficult as this might be.
<< So in your experience, is it the fault of the system i.e. AF produces pages with drudgery, the person i.e. lack of willpower? Or is it simply just how our minds work - it wanders, seeks novelty and is unsettled by anxiety. >>
Your meditation example is very apt. In one case, a person who is meditating gets frustrated because their mind keeps wandering. In another case, a person who is meditating doesn't get frustrated when their mind wanders: they just come back to the breath.
Is that the fault of the meditation, the person meditating, or is it just our way our minds work?
I think there are people that - for whatever reason - are able to "stay on the horse" longer than others. In the GTD world, there's Tim Stringer & Kourosh Dini, both use Omnifocus and practice GTD - and have done so for years. At the other end of the spectrum, there is Dave Seah who is constantly reinventing his workflow, productivity sheets and thinking, yet still produces very impressive work.
Whatever works - I guess.
<< I think there are people that - for whatever reason - are able to "stay on the horse" longer than others. >>
Isn't that true of any human activity? There are people who start [meditation] and do it for a lifetime and others who start it and give it up after a few weeks. Substitute any activity you like for meditation, the same will be true.
<< Something I've mentioned recently in another context is that we shouldn't be looking at what we haven't done but at what we have done. >>
Yes, I have found this to be very helpful and important, too, which is why I keep writing my "DONE" lists. I agree, this is more important than reviewing backlogs of stuff that get dismissed.
You don't seem to like my ideas for how to approach review of dismissed items... I am wondering what you think would be the best way to go about doing this? I'd really appreciate your insights here.
<< Assuming that we've actually been working and not goofing off, what we've done represents the amount of work that we can do in the time period in question. We couldn't have done anything else without leaving undone some of the stuff we did do. It is in other words not a question of the quantity of what we've done but of its quality. The quantity is always the same. >>
Actually I haven't found this to be true. Sometimes by taking on MORE work, it forces me to get more focused and efficient, and I end up getting more done with MORE quality, not less. And sometimes having just a few things to do on a given day, makes it harder to get into a good stride with the work, and I end the day feeling very unproductive. It's not a matter of goofing off. Maybe finding the right balance of challenging work increases "flow" or something. (I think AF1 is great at inducing "flow"). Maybe Parkinson's Law has some impact here, too.
DIT is also good at helping me get more out of the same amount of time. It helps me push forward to finish the list by the end of my workday.
I guess the observation I am trying to describe is this: spending more time on a task does not necessarily increase the quality of the result. Stopping when additional work adds little or no value is a very useful skill that both AF1 and DIT have helped me learn.
<< You don't seem to like my ideas for how to approach review of dismissed items... I am wondering what you think would be the best way to go about doing this? >>
I envisage the review being carried out in much the same way that one selects tasks for action off the active list. I would do two passes through the dismissed pages: the first to see what stands out for reinstatement; the second to see what stands out for deletion.
<< I guess the observation I am trying to describe is this: spending more time on a task does not necessarily increase the quality of the result. >>
I would certainly agree with that. In fact I wrote a whole book on it called "Get Everything Done".
What I was trying to get at was to contrast two ways of looking at our work:
1) Look at the list of what we haven't done and bemoan how long it is.
2) Look at the list of what we have done and check whether we spent the time wisely.
In either case if there is something we think we should have done, then it would not have been just a matter of cramming it in somehow. Something else would have needed to be removed. Maybe the "something else" would have been time spent goofing off, maybe it would have been a lesser priority task, or maybe it would have been to shorten the time spent in order to concentrate one's work.
Perhaps the question when evaluating a system or way of working should be "If I had the best time management system that could possibly be invented, how would my day have been different from what I actually did?"
"Perhaps the question when evaluating a system or way of working should be "If I had the best time management system that could possibly be invented, how would my day have been different from what I actually did?""
... That is an exceptional question.
<<1) Projects can be entered at any level, but should be broken down into small tasks as quickly as possible. So it's best to start a project as "Plan Project X" rather than as just "Project X". The planning consists of breaking down the actions needed for Project X and entering them into the list. Some, or even perhaps most, of these actions will need breaking down further, so they can be entered as planning too, e.g. "Plan Publicity for Project X". This process goes on until you reach a specific concrete action, e.g. "Discuss Publicity for Project X with James".
2) The aim is to end up with a *lot* of small tasks. I used to think that Seraphim's (and some other people's) giant lists were quite wrong. But they work fine as long as the dismissal process is correctly used.>>
How would your advice be the same or different for the Final Version?
<< How would your advice be the same or different for the Final Version? >>
I think it is less important for FV because it's not affected by the number of tasks on a page. With FV I've usually recommended a separate project task list. But both ways should work.