I have been beta-testing Autofocus during two days in non-standard conditions (two extra days of vacation, while the rest of the family was already going back to work/school), and my experience thus far is very good.
There is one culprit for me (but I have encountered that in every time management system till now): being diverted to other 'non-list' activities. You probably know that: you are checking your mail, and afterwards you want to give your blog-stats a look, which is just an excuse to procrastinate. So my solution is 'stick to the list', and add the 'task' on the last page. I know, Mark already suggested that in DIT, but there, the new task stood below the line on the closed list, and because that felt as 'can only be done if everything else is done', I often choose not to write it down, but instead give those stats a useless look. Now I know that by writing it down, it will show up within a relatively short period of time, and then it is legitimate to do the 'task'... But yes, when I eventually arrive at that page, the urge to see those stats is long gone.
An a small remark: I am Dutch-speaking, and I had a hard time to figure out what 'the task that stands out' really meant. But than, Mark wrote somewhere (http://www.markforster.net/forum/post/622052) "(...) you have to work on at least one task per page (or dismiss it).", and then I suddenly grasped it (I hope). OK, it's absolutely not a correct translation of 'the task that stands out', but what I now do is: to 'choose at least one task from the page before moving on to the next'. And this felt really good: At first I was trying to move to the next page only after I thought I had done the maximum amount of tasks that could be done of that particular page, which made it a rather 'normal' type of closed context-based list (e.g. when I came on a page when I was at my computer, I tried to do every single computer-based task on the page, than moved to the next page, and again did all the computer-tasks). But now when I turn over a page, I give myself the instruction to choose (that feels liberating) at least one task of that page. After only one task I am allowed to move on to the next page, but I can also do some other task...
This post has also been an eye-opener for me. From the quick guide it wasn't clear to me that "you have to work on at least one task per page". The quick guide says "until one item stands out for you" which sounds much more subjective. I think it would be beneficial to rephrase the quick guide to make this point clear. I look forward to trying it out at my job.
There is one culprit for me (but I have encountered that in every time management system till now): being diverted to other 'non-list' activities. You probably know that: you are checking your mail, and afterwards you want to give your blog-stats a look, which is just an excuse to procrastinate. So my solution is 'stick to the list', and add the 'task' on the last page. I know, Mark already suggested that in DIT, but there, the new task stood below the line on the closed list, and because that felt as 'can only be done if everything else is done', I often choose not to write it down, but instead give those stats a useless look.
Now I know that by writing it down, it will show up within a relatively short period of time, and then it is legitimate to do the 'task'... But yes, when I eventually arrive at that page, the urge to see those stats is long gone.
An a small remark: I am Dutch-speaking, and I had a hard time to figure out what 'the task that stands out' really meant.
But than, Mark wrote somewhere (http://www.markforster.net/forum/post/622052) "(...) you have to work on at least one task per page (or dismiss it).", and then I suddenly grasped it (I hope).
OK, it's absolutely not a correct translation of 'the task that stands out', but what I now do is: to 'choose at least one task from the page before moving on to the next'.
And this felt really good: At first I was trying to move to the next page only after I thought I had done the maximum amount of tasks that could be done of that particular page, which made it a rather 'normal' type of closed context-based list (e.g. when I came on a page when I was at my computer, I tried to do every single computer-based task on the page, than moved to the next page, and again did all the computer-tasks).
But now when I turn over a page, I give myself the instruction to choose (that feels liberating) at least one task of that page. After only one task I am allowed to move on to the next page, but I can also do some other task...