Discussion Forum > First reactions, and two questions
Martin:
Great to hear how well you are getting on with the system - in answer to your queries, I suggest the following:
1. I think you should give the page or the whole list a quick read whenever you feel your mind has lost touch with it - which would cover all the cases you mention. Although I talk a lot about "intuition" I don't see it as a magical thing with supernatural powers - but simply the result of holistic brain processing. Therefore it's important to give it the right input, which is the whole point of the read-through.
2. Your 47 potential current initiatives sound very like the list of 53 books which I fed into the system as an experiment. And I expect much the same will happen. The system will latch on to 3 or 4 of them and dismiss the rest. But the 3 or 4 it chooses will be the best ones for your present circumstances.
Great to hear how well you are getting on with the system - in answer to your queries, I suggest the following:
1. I think you should give the page or the whole list a quick read whenever you feel your mind has lost touch with it - which would cover all the cases you mention. Although I talk a lot about "intuition" I don't see it as a magical thing with supernatural powers - but simply the result of holistic brain processing. Therefore it's important to give it the right input, which is the whole point of the read-through.
2. Your 47 potential current initiatives sound very like the list of 53 books which I fed into the system as an experiment. And I expect much the same will happen. The system will latch on to 3 or 4 of them and dismiss the rest. But the 3 or 4 it chooses will be the best ones for your present circumstances.
January 7, 2009 at 0:27 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Hi Mark,
Thanks very much for the responses – I like both answers!
Thanks very much for the responses – I like both answers!
January 7, 2009 at 2:22 |
Martin
Martin
Just a quick first reaction for now: I really like Autofocus. The most dramatic effect I've noticed is a great feeling of lightness and fluidity as I move through my day. It's also true that I've taken on, and completed, a couple of tasks I'd been procrastinating about (in one case for a number of weeks), and that I felt essentially no resistance to doing them in the context of the Autofocus approach. And I've found myself completing some tasks much more quickly, to my amazement – I'm fussing less over emails, for example. So I'm quite excited about the prospects at the moment, especially now that I've found a way to integrate Autofocus with my pretty software... :) (See separate post just before this one.) It's too early to say whether I'll end up getting more done, and more of the right stuff, with Autofocus, but I have my fingers crossed.
First question: Any further recommendations about how often one should repeat the processes of (a) giving the whole of a page a quick read, and (b) giving one's whole list a quick read? As the instructions stand, the answer to (a) seems to be "Each time you return to it as you cycle through the pages", and the answer to (b) seem to be "After an extended break". But I've been feeling a temptation to go for quick reads more often than that. Yesterday, for example, I spent three hours on one task (fighting with British Airways!), and by the time I returned to the page I was on, I found myself wanted to give it a quick read over again before continuing. (I should stress, though, that when I then turned to selecting a next task, however, I *did* pick up where I'd left off – i.e., immediately after the task I'd just crossed off.) Similarly, this morning I found myself wanting to look over my whole list at the beginning of the day – even though, again, I picked up where I'd left off at the end of the day yesterday after that. Perhaps your subconscious just has a better memory than mine....
Second question: I've been using DIT for some time, and have a list of 47 potential current initiatives in my software, many of which are fairly substantive tasks/projects (reading lengthy articles and books carefully, etc.). Would you recommend moving them all into my Autofocus list? If I stick with Autofocus, I'll want them all there eventually (even if some of them then end up being dismissed), but perhaps dumping them all in at once on day 2 or 3 isn't very organic....
Thanks,
Martin
P.S. I'm a philosophy professor, and I took a seminar with John Perry (of "structured procrastination" fame) when I was a grad student at Stanford, so it's entertaining to see that his ideas have influenced the approach to time management I'm now experimenting with, many years later....