Get Everything Done

I haven't 'dismissed' anything on my AF list, but at some point soon (it's on my list) I'm going to review my backlog and incorporate it, and I'm sure there will be many items on there that I will be unsure about including.

The problem is, I don't WANT to 'dismiss' many of the things on my backlog, but for various reasons they are not possible or practical to undertake for a while.

I can see having to 'dismiss' them is going to make me feel sad, as there is an element of having to accept that some things ('install new kitchen') might just never happen because obstacles ('get pay rise') which have to be jumped first may be out of my hands for a long while. ("In this economy, this year's bonus will be keeping your job," as we're saying in the office).

This got me thinking about how changing what you call things fundamentally affects how you feel about them.

'Dismiss' is so final a term. I don't want to 'dismiss' the possibility of ever having a lovely new kitchen. I want it 'someday', but it doesn't really matter if that day is a long way off. I am not a fan of GTD (no good for procrastinators at all, just encourages our worst tendencies) but I liked that term for the possibility it represented.

Also, 'dismiss' is not an accurate term to describe the process of highlighting undone tasks on the AF list.

You actually 'dismiss' the things you finally cross out, but really you either 'delay' the highlighted tasks for a more appropriate time, or you scratch them altogether (so no different to crossing out completed tasks).

I don't like 'delay' or 'park', but is there a better word for 'dismiss' in AF? It's carrying a lot of baggage for me just now, and I'm wondering how other people feel?

Though I don't need a new kitchen I sympathize with your post, little b.

List of 'future possibilities' is a better name for the someday list, at least that's what I use.

And things I have to 'dismiss' right now because of lacking resources but don't want to give up forever I 'put on hold' (doesn't sound so final like 'dismiss').

Hope this helps.

"To ponder" ?

Years ago, I had a tab in my notebook which I named "Sujets en délibéré" which meant "Things to ponder". I used to put there things that were not ready for action I wanted to keep in sight. At (idle) times I would browse those pages to maybe trigger new thoughts or decisions.

little b

I was a little surprised to encounter the word "dismiss" in AF to begin with. But I have grown to like it very much. One of the fatal traps of standard "to do" lists is that it can easily become a graveyard for lifeless items that really drag you down once they multiply and make you feel guilty for not getting around to them.

A great strength of AF is that it gives me an objective and automatic criterion for rejecting items that simply should not be on my list. It occurs to me that dismiss is often used in cricket to describe a batsman or a team that is "out". According to this analogy, I am in the fielding team and I show that I am in charge by sending the offending item packing.

If you suspect that an item truly has promise of life for the future why not put a slip of paper in you tickler file for 6 months or 12 months ahead when it can go back on the list and you can see whether you feel any different about it then. Someday lists (as in GTD) have just been another graveyard for me in the past and I have very rarely visited them (And I feel reprimanded when I stumble over them and find that I have given them no attention.)

I had a really high resistance to dismissing items at first, partly because I thought they would then get 'lost'. But then I realized that I could review them as often as I liked and reinstate them (re-phrasing of course). Since then I've happily dismissed quite a few tasks. More often than I thought, they have stayed dismissed, although sometimes if I'm feeling more energetic than when I dismissed them they might come back. The key thing for me was realizing that, almost by definition, they couldn't be all that important or urgent, so could quite happily sit out for a while.

I like the suggestion 'park' by the way. Sometimes when reviewing my dismissed tasks I've found myself crossing out the ones I know I definitely won't do.

Thanks so much for replies everyone, especially Mark for the clarification about the reasoning behind the choice of word.

I'm going to put in a little amendment just for myself I think. Things 'on hold' will be entered into the diary for review 12 weeks from now.

Jim, I love your cricket analogy!

Also there is another way to think of the word 'dismiss'. Remember what some teachers sometimes say/said "class dismissed". It didn't mean the whole class was going to be expelled. All it meant was they're going now but they may/will be back later.

If I think of dismissing tasks like that then there is no problem with the term...

little b

One thing you can do for items such as "install new kitchen" that you don't want to dismiss is to action the task by a new task to "transfer new kitchen task to Dreams List". If you create a separate "Dreams" List somewhere (or whatever you want to call it) for all those nice things that are not practical at the moment, you can always have a task to review it periodically, and there is nothing to stop you planning it in advance, maybe pricing it, looking at options etc., ...... Sometimes just planning those dream items seems to progress them faster than we think. I have a picture of the new car I would like in my office - not a possibility at the moment but who knows ..........