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Discussion Forum > Book: Time Surfing

On a whim, I took out a book from the library entitled "Time Surfing". Some of the foundational ideas are similar to Mark's i.e. intuition. But the practice is radically different i.e. no lists.

So far, I'm enjoying this different (and zen) take on task/time management.

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Surfing-Approach-Keeping-Your/dp/1786780917
February 10, 2019 at 0:03 | Registered Commenteravrum
Thanks for this, avrum.

I bought the Kindle version and am up to the start of Part Two. I had expected the usual pop-Zen fluff, but as the author is an actual Zen monk and speaks authentically about his struggles with time pressure and overwhelming lists, this book is turning out to be a pleasant surprise. I like that he not only presents his seven principles but also provides applications to practical issues such as deadlines and email. Plus, his foundational assumptions are very compatible with Mark's: letting intuition be the driver and doing tasks when one is ready to do them. He seems to have developed his own No-List technique which includes some deep psychology to treat the resistive or scattered tasks that we tend to worry will get overlooked if we don't keep a Long List.

I hope Part Two lives up to its potential!
February 10, 2019 at 10:59 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
Bernie - I think Part Two (The Application) has quite a few gems.

When I started reading, I was tempted to dismiss his suggestions as being to airy-fairy. But I think his ideas are easy to implement - though challenging to execute - and measure for efficacy.

Yesterday, I started using the first 3 steps. Curious to see what I'll learn by the time I implement all 7 stages.
February 10, 2019 at 12:17 | Registered Commenteravrum
"If you look at the day’s activities as a string of beads, you will see it’s made up of all different kinds: large, weighty beads and small, carefully painted ones; eye-catching multicoloured beads and unassuming, softly coloured ones. Which kind of bead is most important to you? Your morning shower? Or the meeting with a client? The moment of relaxing during which you have a bright idea? Or the time you spend playing with your children? When viewed from the broad perspective of time, all beads are equally important. They’re all pieces of our lives."

-- Loomans, Paul. Time Surfing (p. 47). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.


This excerpt reminds me of Mark's writing about producing a car and how the side mirror is just as "important" as the engine. Once the car has been designed, all of its parts are equally important toward building a finished car. Once your commitments have been settled, all parts of those commitments, and the tasks required by them, are equally "important." This was part of a discussion on reframing urgency vs. importance and rethinking the traditional A/B/C priority scheme.
February 10, 2019 at 22:56 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
Bernie:

Exactly.

I've said many times that the time to consider how "important" something is is when you are deciding whether to commit yourself to it. Once you've done that then the only way to prioritize is by urgency.

A/B/C/ is an excellent way to prioritize when the time available has been unexpectedly reduced for some reason.

A - What must be done before [time]?
B - What should be done before [time]?
C - What could be done before [time]?

Generally speaking it's useless as a general principle because the Cs never get done.

But see: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2006/10/27/must-do-should-do-could-do.html
February 11, 2019 at 0:03 | Registered CommenterMark Forster
Mark:
Must, should, could etc, that is an interesting link to your earlier blog.

How about quickly sorting a long list into A,B,C (or sort when first ever seeing the task), then do them in batches of say a 4:2:1 ratio or something similar. They would then all get a fair share of attention and naturally the more urgent would get done quicker to meet deadlines etc?
I know traditionally A,B,C priority is to do the A's first, but I'm sure that is flawed for the reason you state that C's just don't seem to get done.
I have always struggled with balancing the urgent and the not so urgent and then the not so urgent become urgent etc. Seems to always be a challenge when the list is quite long!
Also, it is quite difficult when faced with quite a lot of urgent things to break away and do something on the B & C list....
February 11, 2019 at 17:04 | Unregistered CommenterMrBacklog
Mr Backlog:

<< How about quickly sorting a long list into A,B,C (or sort when first ever seeing the task), then do them in batches of say a 4:2:1 ratio or something similar. >>

I'm not sure that would be any better than the method I actually propose, but if you want to find out have a go at it!
February 11, 2019 at 17:41 | Registered CommenterMark Forster
Agreed, I don’t think it is any better - the small advantage I can see is only having to ever scan a task once, so maybe a little time saving there. More of an automated system? After the sorting stage the only thing is to crack on with doing the tasks.
I will give it a go....
February 11, 2019 at 20:08 | Unregistered CommenterMrBacklog
This "Time Surfing" book is the surprise winner of the century!

The author presents a unified field theory of everything else I've ever encountered on time management, from GTD to Mark's "Dreams" book, but without apparently trying to. It's quite possible that he's never heard of most of these other techniques and he's probably not a time management junky at all, yet he leads the reader through an incredible synthesis of every TM element I can think of, resulting in a 100% intuitive no-list system. His background as a Zen monk adds tremendous value, and it is no-nonsense, non-fluff, courageous Zen, not the too-typical waterfall & pipes Zen or the "clear your desk and minimize" Zen.

I am not sure I can call it "easy," because you have to do some serious mental work to create certain visualizations or relationships with the more troublesome tasks (which is where it gets into the "Dreams" book territory), and of course it is never really about the tasks themselves; it's about YOUR stubborn reasons for avoiding this stuff, which can create very difficult work. There is not much writing involved, just thinking, although I can see how journaling it might help those of us with wandering minds. Most of his method consists of noticing thoughts, pressures, and feelings about what we need to get done, as they pop up, and then learning to face each one fully with the right kind of attention and thinking exercise. For example, some tasks need to be thought through and visualized to satisfy the fear of not knowing what to do about them (= GTD's next action but way more flexible and only applied to tasks that need it, in real time, without scanning lists). More than just intellectually composing a next action, fully engaging emotionally with the feelings these tasks bring up is supposed to open our subconscious mind to present these tasks intuitively at the right time to do them.

I cannot do it justice in a summary like this. The above is a just a taste, a quick sketch of something that has much more depth and detail waiting for you. As I read the book, I see piece after piece of various other methods tucked away together but recast so as to take the pain and futility out of them and finally unified so that they can all reinforce each other. Though he is a monk, this is not simply a case of a guy who doesn't do much all day and therefore has no need for lists. On the contrary, he describes his desperation at having way too many projects going and trying to write it all down and keep scanning over it, until he stepped back and tried to use his Zen practices to help.

I can't recommend this book enough!

Time Surfing, by Paul Loomans
https://www.amazon.com/Time-Surfing-Approach-Keeping-Your/dp/1786780917

Thanks for the lead, avrum.
February 13, 2019 at 8:43 | Registered CommenterBernie
Bernie - great review!

I'm enjoying the book, and will experiment with the steps.

However I have three young kids (one with a metabolic issue), and a full private practice with various tasks for each client/family. I do require some scaffolding for all of this.
February 13, 2019 at 12:07 | Registered Commenteravrum
Great review, Bernie. You've convinced me to get the Kindle version.
February 13, 2019 at 16:20 | Registered CommenterSeraphim
avrum,

Yes, the scaffolding! This is one of those books that you get the end of, and you say, "That was GREAT!! Now... what exactly do I do?" He had plenty of concrete steps outlined along the way, and he even highlighted them in little boxes, but I am going to have go back through and pick them out and write them up on one easy-to-review page. Or maybe a little set of cards... The challenge is that it requires such a high degree of mindfulness to meet these thoughts/feelings/impulses as they pop up. Reviewing the steps later on won't do much good. You have to have them locked and loaded!

I haven't quite finished the book, so with any luck there'll be a nice list at the end.

I'll share whatever I come up with.
February 13, 2019 at 18:31 | Registered CommenterBernie
I've not read the book yet, but from the description, I'm wondering if the author is simply sharing his own path and encouraging readers towards a more thoughtful disposition rather than giving them methodical guidance. He's pointing in a direction, in other words, but we have to cut our own path.

Anyway -- the book is on my Kindle so I look forward to reading it.
February 14, 2019 at 15:18 | Registered CommenterMike Brown
<<He's pointing in a direction, in other words, but we have to cut our own path.>>

Mike - he's quite prescriptive about following each step, one at a time, for a few weeks each. This is similar to the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction workshops - where participants are encouraged to follow one guided meditation (daily) for a week, for appx 6-8 weeks. Each lesson builds upon the other.

However, I'm adopting the spirit of your message, and will use parts of this book for my own system.
February 14, 2019 at 16:07 | Registered Commenteravrum
Rereading from the beginning, I am realizing it's not very complicated. There are just a few things to get used to being mindful of.

Instructions 1-3 form a basic loop of focusing on a series of things, one at a time, with breaks in between. Instructions 4-6 describe how to handle interruptions, including your own thoughts about other things you should be doing. His thesis is that Instructions 4-6 program these "should" tasks into your subconscious so that they will arise intuitively later at an advantageous time. Then, Instruction 7 becomes effective, which is following your intuitive sense of what to do next, and no longer trying to strategize your way through it by brute force of intellect. We are each probably accustomed to doing some of these things already, such as working on one thing at a time and finishing it, so I am guessing we'll each have 4 or 5 things to learn to be mindful of.

While building trust in this whole process, he encourages listing the things you are worried about forgetting, but keeping the list out of sight and only consulting periodically to check that you haven't forgotten anything important. He describes throwing the list away after a short time, or possibly keeping the old lists for a while until they fade in importance, whatever makes you feel secure enough to practice the new habits.

For scaffolding, I am now thinking of a simple diagram showing the basic loop of Instructions 1-3 and the flow of Instructions 4-6. Then I think one index card on each Instruction, with the highlighted points from the text. Keep one card on top of the stack for a week at a time for focused practice, and flip to the others for brief reminders of how things work.
February 14, 2019 at 17:54 | Registered CommenterBernie
<< For scaffolding, I am now thinking of a simple diagram...>>

Bernie - our brains think alike.
February 14, 2019 at 18:41 | Registered Commenteravrum
I find it interesting that the author - a Zen Monk - uses the same philosophy more/less as David Allen (Mind Like Water), but comes to vastly different methods to managing tasks, projects... life.

My experience with GTD - combined with the plethora of lapsed GTD'er observations - suggests that many of Allen's prescriptions sound good in theory, but do not work in practice. When I used GTD, I wrote everything down, and two things happened:

1. I never did reach peace of mind (As a therapist, this did not surprise me at all)
2. Capturing all of my "stuff" into lists led me to forgetting/ignoring what I wrote down. Ask an Omnifocus user about task bloat...

The Time Surfing approach of visualization, intuition, etc works better for me because - to a degree - this is how I already think/work. I do not have to take too many leaps of faith to "time surf".

Anyway, just a few thoughts about GTD vs Time Surfing.
February 17, 2019 at 19:00 | Registered Commenteravrum
avrum,
I've been thinking exactly the same thing about GTD vs. Time Surfing.

"Bernie - our brains think alike."
Of course they do!
February 17, 2019 at 22:45 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
Unfortunately, claims like this:

“... the right thing to do when we worry is to feel your uncertainty, feel your fear. You’ll become calm and start to think clearly [...] the imaginary doomsday scenarios are gone.”

are silly. This happens in all self-help lit... a suggestion for behaviour/thought modification is followed by a wild claim of a cure. For me, I read something like this, and I start to doubt the entire premise. Alas, I will push on...
February 18, 2019 at 18:48 | Registered Commenteravrum
Feel your fear and then you will become calm? It's not that simple.

Feeling your fear is a useful exercise. Being afraid to feel fear can block us in many ways. But simply feeling the fear is not guaranteed to make us calmer.

I find noticing when resistance is due to fear helps me decide what to do about it. Better information leads to better decisions. (If the resistance is mostly fear, then push through, break down the steps into less scary bits, identify the bit that really scares me, plan a safer method to get what I need, ask for help (knowing I need help with the fear helps more in the long run than thinking I need help with a different part), create a safety net, set it aside for a day I have more reserves, etc.)

Feeling it also lets the wave crest and ebb, so we reach a moment of calm when we think more clearly. If we resist, we don't get that calm moment.

Feeling the fear also lets us get a better look at it. Often I find it's not as strong as I expected.

This brings up a danger, where you don't feel as much as think you should so you try to create more. One of my favourite meditation phrases is "What I am, is enough," with different verbs. "What I do, is enough. What I have is enough. What I feel is enough." If a phrase is difficult for me (or too easy), then I know it's an area that needs attention.
February 18, 2019 at 20:13 | Registered CommenterCricket
avrum,

Regarding “... the right thing to do when we worry is to feel your uncertainty, feel your fear. You’ll become calm and start to think clearly [...] the imaginary doomsday scenarios are gone."

I actually find this to be true in direct experience, but I would not have understood him properly until the last few years or so. I took a 12-week course called Radical Self Acceptance, by Joey Lott, that was about accepting your internal experience at every moment (or at least trying to!). Having had some experience with meditative practices, I had considered myself good at that sort of thing, but in Joey's course I found that I had only superficially grasped it and had been actually using these practices to *avoid* my experience. Joey was especially good at articulating the whole thing and clarifying the necessary distinctions. This radical acceptance of what is actually happening right now is at the core of Zen as well.

I don't read Loomans' claim as some magical promise that everything will be okay. He really only claims that you will be able to calm down and think more clearly, which I do find to be true. You still have to handle whatever scary spot you may find yourself in—no magical rescues from the Zen sky—but you can do it much more effectively after you stop fighting what it feels like to be there, and as Joey points out, this alone makes a much bigger difference than one would expect and is the source of many magical-sounding claims. Not that Loomans has probably ever heard of Joey, but it's one of those things you can't unsee: I feel certain that he is coming from the same place, and the authentic character of the rest of his writing confirms it for me.

I had a similar experience studying esoteric Chinese kung fu. From the outside, it appears that they are making wild magical claims, and (just to complicate things), SOME of them really are making such claims due to either naivete or fraud, but after learning and practicing for a few years with some highly skilled people, I discovered that it was actually a case of outsiders projecting a magical mentality onto what were perfectly understandable physical practices. It's just that the physical skills were so subtle that they are easily misunderstood, kind of like watching a skilled magician. And again, just to complicate things, many of these skills depend on having the right mental imagery as you do them, making it very easy to misunderstand, even when you are given clear instruction directly by the teacher. But when your sports coaches tell you to "be the ball" or "sink your energy into the ground" or "have a winning attitude," etc., we don't accuse them of fakery! Choir directors tell you to "breathe through your feet" or "imagine your feet as roots into the floor," etc., and it has a real effect on your singing. No one complains about charlatan choir directors. We accept their imagery as practical advice for engaging the nervous system in a certain advantageous way that is otherwise hard to describe and execute.

I find that Loomans' instructions have this same character. Though it's possible he is from a magical school of thought, I don't find magical thinking necessary to make his techniques work.
February 18, 2019 at 20:26 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
Cricket,

"Feeling it also lets the wave crest and ebb, so we reach a moment of calm when we think more clearly. If we resist, we don't get that calm moment."

This captures the spirit of what I think Loomans is pointing to.
February 18, 2019 at 20:28 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
Bernie,

It sounds like spiritual bypassing: using a spiritual practice to avoid discomfort rather than process and accept it. It isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes we need a break from the tough work, or need to learn other skills first (such as knowing that thoughts are not facts), or need to do something else (get the damaged car out of traffic) before taking the time to feel it. It's also a very common step in learning. From what I've read, many meditation teachers get caught in it, sometimes for decades. I suspect even the most aware still get caught in it (and don't beat themselves up when it happens).

Have you read Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance? Wonderful book. (Note for others: Radical acceptance does not mean saying, "Oh, too bad, so sad, can't change it." It means accepting the world as it is, and changing what we can. An alcoholic who radically accepts they have a problem will order soft drinks at the company party. Sometimes it means doing whatever you need to do to survive the moment.)

Kirsten Kneff talks about fierce compassion. Instead of just sitting on the cushion feeling compassion, we use that feeling to power concrete action.

I've heard the difference when my singing teacher tells me to sing through my cheek bones or connect with the floor. We're constantly experimenting, since it's all indirect control of complicated systems. Too much connection with the floor makes the sound worse.
February 18, 2019 at 23:27 | Registered CommenterCricket
I must say I'm very positively surprised by this "Time Surfing" book and the conversation about it above. I tried some of the no-list variations before and became immediately frustrated by the constant fear, and sometimes reality, of missing an important task. However, since reading Loomans book I've completely tossed my list and everything is fine. More than fine, I'm really enjoying what I'm doing. I do agree that this is the goal and the attraction of GTD, but time surfing actually fulfils it for me. So far, anyway. But I find that using the breathers, and the one pointed concentration and just generally increasing the awareness of what I'm doing, to be essential to this approach.
February 20, 2019 at 16:12 | Unregistered CommenterPaul MacNeil
My sense is that the bare advice "don't write lists" completely would not work for me, but that Time Surfing is not that advice. If you can train a new mindset that helps you master your work mentally, I will be amazed but it seems possible.
February 21, 2019 at 21:55 | Registered CommenterAlan Baljeu
Alan, it's really a no-list system. You just get used to writing down less and less. You still write lists for things that are really complicated or too detailed to remember; his example is packing for a trip. It's more about dropping the struggle.
February 22, 2019 at 3:51 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
Perhaps the way I expressed it was confusing. I get that it's no-list. But I feel the key element of his system, it seems to me, is not the no-list, but the mental training. (Caveat: have not read the book.)
February 22, 2019 at 4:06 | Registered CommenterAlan Baljeu
Yes, "the key element of his system, it seems to me, is not the no-list, but the mental training," sums it up nicely.
February 23, 2019 at 4:53 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
I read Time Surfing, in print with great illustrations, and enjoyed it. I find it more of a philosophy book than time management book. He talks about stress, emotions and intuition. Some tools are similar to Mark’s systems are appointment calendar, checklists, overview outline (authorized commitments) and use of questions. Deadlines and delivery agreements start early.

“See what your rational mind wasn’t aware of but your intuition has known for some time, Now that you are aware of it, you can return to trusting”.

Fun section on “turning Gnawing rats into gentle sheep” about developing relationships with our fears. Four questions to ask are:
What do I already know?
Don’t know?
Need help with?
Apprehensive about?

Worth a read.
February 23, 2019 at 16:18 | Unregistered CommenterErin
Erin:

<< more of a philosophy book than time management book>>

Agreed.

A few days ago, I was too loosely following "Time Surfing" and forgot to prepare for a financial meeting with my wife, and our planner. Some of the ideas of "Time Surfing" inform my own system (Weekly/Monthly Narrative), but writing things down, lists are still something I will continue to use.
February 24, 2019 at 12:42 | Registered Commenteravrum
I noticed Amazon does not keep it under Time Management, but under Philosophy or something.
February 25, 2019 at 0:58 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
I'm half way through the book and I am enjoying practicing some of the concepts.

Particularly, setting intentions by silently announcing to myself what I'm about to do has really helped my focus. One example: saying "I'm going to write this rough draft for 20 minutes" kept me from slipping into "but first, let me check my email"

The next concept I really like is visualizing. Visualizing how I might address an issue has been very effective for me. I still write things down but spending a couple of minutes visualizing how I might approach a more difficult task, what he calls a "gnawing rat", has really helped me avoid the resistance I might have against that task when I'm scanning the list later.

Thanks for the book tip Avrum

Brent
February 26, 2019 at 4:01 | Unregistered CommenterBrent
Brent, intention reminds me of meditation. "I'm going to focus on my breath for 20 minutes." One of my mantras is "Now is the time to focus on my breath. I can focus on that idea another time."

They've found that people who visualize tasks and, very important, the obstacles and how to overcome them, do more than those who visualize doing or completing the task and not anticipating the obstacles.

This book is definitely on my short list.
February 26, 2019 at 18:13 | Registered CommenterCricket
So far I'm still using the techniques in the book with great peace of mind. The small difference from Brent and Cricket is that I don' t put a time stamp on my intention. I just say "now I'm responding to a post" and I'll just stop when I'm ready to move on to the next thing. I think the breather's are really important as well. And so far, after a couple weeks (unlike my attempts at a no list) I haven't missed anything. But I think there might have been some close calls, except really listening to my intuition they came up to my awareness well ahead of time! It's hard to explain what that feels like. It's not thinking or consciously remembering something, it's more like a very calm awareness of something.
February 26, 2019 at 20:25 | Unregistered CommenterPaul MacNeil
Interesting that this book struck a chord with some of you.

Curious - for those of you adhering to “Time Surfing”, how many have young children under 6?
February 26, 2019 at 20:44 | Registered Commenteravrum
My 3 teenagers sometimes act worse than a 6 year old. Does that count? One of the reasons I have been so interested in mindfulness as of late is because of my children and the struggles that family life tends to bring.

I have been introducing some of this to my teenagers to help them deal with their struggles with school work. It seems they live in an even more distracted mindset then my own. While I do agree with Paul that focusing without a timebox is often appropriate, I find that setting a timer for difficult tasks makes it a bit more bearable. I often suggest the kids set a homework timer and found that two of them likes the timebox and one doesn't.
February 26, 2019 at 22:17 | Unregistered CommenterBrent
When I had three young children under six, I imagined things would get easier as they grew up. While things did get vastly easier in certain ways (hooray for no more toting of diaper supplies!), the schedules and distractions--the obstacles to focus--did not get any easier. I now have only one teenager left at home, but as I am now divorced and have a biweekly alternating schedule of visitation, with a new job and a 40 minute commute, and my drive home from visitation at bedtime is another 35 minutes... I will just stop there (even before I was divorced, the triple-young-teen household was anything but simple).

Avrum, I feel your pain! I just can't promise the relief that you might imagine is around the corner. I'm realizing though, as I write this, mindfulness practices were particularly tough with all of them under six and did get somewhat easier as they grew up.

Everyone, keep in mind that Time Surfing does not demand that you swear off lists. You are encouraged to get into it slowly, supported by ad-hoc lists which are about *thiiis* close to Seraphim's Serial No-List method. The main initial priority is to get away from forcing yourself to do things when you're not ready to do them, which for any of us Forsterites is something we are well accustomed to. And the next priority is to practice engaging with your tasks in a more emotionally constructive manner, to see how that affects their ability to make it onto your no-lists.
February 27, 2019 at 3:09 | Unregistered CommenterBernie
Bernie:

<< Avrum, I feel your pain! I just can't promise the relief that you might imagine is around the corner.>>

I had my kids quite late. The only relief I will have is senility :)
February 27, 2019 at 20:55 | Registered Commenteravrum
Paul, the time is rarely a firm thing. When meditating, it's a reminder that the world will do just fine without me for that long, and a way to ensure I don't stop when it gets difficult. For many other tasks, it's that (the rest of the list can wait) and a way stick with it past the initial resistance. It's also a promise I will stop the difficult task when the time is up (it won't go on forever). It also keeps the pressure on. I've got 30 minutes to get this done. Lastly, it's a way to make sure my estimates are accurate. I used to over-estimate short tasks (and not empty the dishwasher while waiting for something to load) and under-estimate long ones (email before picking up the kids).
March 2, 2019 at 19:24 | Registered CommenterCricket