Get Everything Done

Mark please clarify some things for me.

In the AF instructions, items appear to be dismissed in bulk by page. The instructions do not discuss dismissing items individually. Was this by design to keep the focus on selecting items and completing them and not on looking specifically for items to dismiss as one is going through the pages slowly like in instruction #2?

Also in #5 when you say continue going round the same page in the same way does this mean going back to # 1 and quickly looking at all of the items after the completion of each item, or does it ask you to just move further down the list until the next item jumps out?

Also, I am assuming that a dismissed item is an item that could still be done, so if I have call Bob on the list and Bob happens to call me first, I do not dismiss this with the highlighter, I cross it off.

So to be clear, as you work down the page you do not dismiss items you only do them or move on. What I meant by bulk was you were not dismissing item individually as you scan down the page. I was wondering if this is true if it was a deliberate feature of the system and why.

Thanks

Gerry

I believe the idea is that you keep them there until you don't do ANY items on the page in one of your passes. IOW, if you don't want to do ANY item on the page, you dismiss them. Why, because that is telling you that you are not going to do them. You have "tried" to do them each time through your page, maybe a dozen times or so, and if you still don't want to do them, it is time to move on. So the purpose is to keep you thinking about those items and deciding if you really want to do them or not. It is a way of building tension so that you will think through your reasons for putting those items on the list and decide to do them or move on with your life ... at least for the moment. They can go back on later if you really think they shouuld.

That's a really good reply Mike - I think it sums it up perfectly. I'm in 'trouble' because I did put a lot of 'intractable items' at the start of the list. Guess I'm just going to have to do some of them!

Chris Y & Gerry

I also had the problem after 1 week of being very successful with the system that I was not progressing some items at all on page one, they were also a number of "intractables" which I added in as the task itself e.g. Tax return. Clearly I can't dismiss it but I am getting stuck on it. So I have tried a suggestion from another post which is to write down something as simple "as get out tax file". That way I have (a) crossed the problem item off my list and re-entered it as something manageable. Once I got the file out I did of course open it and see I needed XX, and so I could cross our "get out file" - sense of achievement attained - and write in a new task of " call YY for copy of XX".

I am still doing the very job I couldn't even contemplate and so I am also taking this approach with the other problem items before dismissing them completely. It is this ability that the AF system gives me to work much more intuitively that is really doing it for me. I genuinely feel that I am calmer, less stressed and more in control of everything since implementing it.

My experiences echo thosse of titch. I have found that I am naturally phrasing tasks differently after a week and a half of AF which in itself makes the system easier as I now seem to know what phrasing will reduce resistance to the task.

Mark mentioned that resistance reduces on each pass - to be honest I didn't really think that was happening for me but have seen that that indeed true. I have a lot of backlog tasks in my pages (I had a lot of backlog!) and now I am finding that, even if they are not jumping out as "do me now" items, I am having a sense of how to progress them - think they're limbering up to start jumping!