Get Everything Done

I've been "all in" on the "long list" for few months now and find the paper and pen approach keeps me in tune with everything better than my digital attempts. I use the Simple Scanning method to process the list. (with a hint of Fast FVP)

Recently, I have experimented a bit with re-writing older pages in the list to consolidate those older partially complete pages into one full incomplete page. That process takes a while but I have found that it forces me to finally deal with some of the items; to either discard it or just do it already rather than re-write it.

Which brings me to a point about "Desirable Difficulty" that I read about on and article describing "The Medium Method" here: https://blog.todoist.com/2016/02/09/pen-and-paper-productivity/

In the article, the author references a Doctor Robert Bjork who refers to the concept of desirable difficulty; (quote from article) "he’s found that the difficulties of certain activities, such as copying notes, actually enhances not only memory but enables us to more easily make connections between different bits of information."

I have found this to be true for me as I have re-organized paper and pen lists and the notebook pages . Resorting incompleted items from completed items (and general meeting notes) is easier digitally, but more difficult with pen and paper. Yet doing it has produced some surprising results for me. I have noticed patterns in tasks and notes and sometimes opt to create seperate project pages for what I have found to be long running projects with dependant tasks instead of the independant tasks normally found on my long lists. (I treat project pages like a spinning plate)


Another thing I have been experimenting with is adding to the dotting method while scanning the long list. On my first pass of the list I tend to just dot items that "stand out" until I get to the end of the list. I often get carried away and dot a lot of them. Once I have a set of dotted items, I re-read the dotted items and pick one dotted item to do except when I'm particularly indecisive. When that is the case, I simply add a second dot to the left of the first dot if it "Stands out even more" This serves a bit as a prioritization of the dotted items. Although I try to just do the twice dotted items right away, I sometimes end up with new subset of twice dotted items and have needed to scan that subset again. That can result in items dotted three times but that's my self imposed limit. If I have an item that is dotted 3 times I need to just do it!

In short, I work from the dotted items, but I tend to read the entire list (dotted or not) at least weekly to pick up old items and keep them fresh.

Similar to consolidating pages, I'm experimenting with re-writing the dotted items over and clumping them together with a fresh non-dotted page to remove any previous bias.

It sounds like a lot of work but it seems to force me to analysis the list in different ways and as the article said make new connections between different bits of information.

Anyone else do this?

I have always thought a bit of prioritising would be a good idea in simple scanning, but I see Mark always says not to do that as it works against the system.
I'm not sure why, so if Mark or someone could comment that would be interesting.

I've played around with dotting schemes like this. I agree it can be helpful. Narrowing down the list once or twice can improve focus.

But when it goes to so many levels, I begin to wonder if it's a wasted effort. Is it really a value-adding activity to prioritize with such granularity? The power of Randomizer and the No-List methods (which spend almost no time on prioritization) suggests that we often spend a lot more time than necessary on prioritization. Mark has often made the point that the thing that really matters isn't priority but whether you are going to do something at all.

In my randomization experiments (see this thread), here is one of the things I tried:
1. Scan through the whole list, and dot anything that stands out.
2. Use Randomizer to traverse those dotted items (only) -- sliding through anything without a dot.

Another alternate:
1. Scan through the current page, and dot anything that stands out.
2. If only one or two items are dotted, just get them done (work on each one as long as you want).
3. If three or more items are dotted, work on them in random order.

Actually I may give these another spin. The first variant might address the problems I've been encountering with my randomization experiments.

<< In short, I work from the dotted items, but I tend to read the entire list (dotted or not) at least weekly to pick up old items and keep them fresh. >>

I am not sure it is possible to get any Long List system working, if you pass the list only once per week. I do pass my entire list several times per day!

Currently my list is 24 pages long, 15 tasks per page.

@MrBacklog I seem to recall that Mark has also said that the only true priority is urgency. I suspect that for me the "standing out" principle has urgency subconsciously embedded it. Especially since I often write due dates on the task itself.

@Alan I think the two tier system pretty much sums up what is happening for me. The dotted stuff acts as a sub-list of sorts.

@Seraphim I've never been able to get into the randomization thing. If my intuition isn't sure what I should work on next by scanning the whole list and dotting which things are rising to the top, I know that I just need to take a true break. For me a true break is turning off all inputs and sitting quietly for a few minutes or going for a walk This often clarifies what it is I should be focused on.

@Christopher Good point. I have about that many total pages as well and a weekly full review is probably worst case. For me, a full scan is, best case, done daily though. I don't feel like I have the need to do a full scan multiple times a day because of my liberal dotting, I only scan the dotted and new items multiple times a day because that "sublist" ends up being 20 + items. I guess it depends on our definition of "getting a long list working" Maybe I'm missing something.

Has anyone else found when they circle through the long list that it creates indecisiveness?
Sometimes I just go round and round not actually dong anything which is not too good. I think it is because I'm trying to pick out quick things to do in an attempt to be productive - quick wins etc.
Also long tasks seem to be put off more than I would like.

So I have recently been trying to pull out just 10 tasks that stand out - 8 quick and 2 long ones (pareto principle) and just focus doing those in one session. The repeat etc.
Seems to help stop overwhem.

Just wondering if anyone else doing something similar and how it is going.

MrBacklog,

I'll admit that I have tried and often still do try a separate small list of broken out tasks to help me focus. That is sort of what I do with the dots but I haven't tried the 80/20 concept of 8 quick and 2 long. Are you also trying to force yourself to do the whole list of 10 before returning to the longer list? That would be hard for me because I'd always be wondering about the new incoming tasks.

However, what you describe feels a bit like how sprint planning works in Scrum/Agile . I suspect that if you set a time limit for the carved out 10 items then it might be an effective approach. In scrum/agile terms the long list is the backlog list and then you groom the backlog into a smaller sprint list.

I have found that scrum/agile doesn't work very well for daily operational support though. If your list is mostly project based then it might work but if your list is just "stuff that comes up" then it think it is hard to balance the two types of work with a singular system.

It seems we keep trying though :) I would bet your 2 longer tasks are project based and your 8 shorter tasks are operational (stuff that comes up)

Brent