Get Everything Done

Mark, first a huge thank you for sharing AutoFocus with us!

Also, a big thanks to all of you who have been sharing via this forum about your experiences. I have been learning from you as well!

I am a Human Resources Manager, and as such, much of each day is spent fire-fighting. I have made progress on minimizing (or I should say filtering) the interruptions. However, in the end, a big part of my job is fighting the fires that must be extinguished the day that they are set. This constant fire-fighting and internal resistance to my lists have led me to fail so many times with GTD and DIT.

About my tweak:

I am a note-taker by nature. It helps in my line of work to have documentation about conversations and decisions (just in case down the road we are dealing with a complaint or a lawsuit). More often than not, whatever I am taking notes about becomes some kind of task for me. (For example, Call Peter to follow-up on theft incident that Paul reported). I would highlight these actions in my diary and, if important, I would handle them during the day. If I needed to carry them over to the next day, the actions were written into my AF List.

My tweak is now I take my notes directly into my AF List. (Meaning I no longer have a diary and my AF List, I just have the one AF List). So, now I might have an entry like this:

Paul - reported he was robbed, suspects proceeds sent to Peter >> Call Peter

(Let me just clarify that my notes are usually just a line or two in nature. I would not recommend this tweak if you are taking copious meeting notes, for example. I would keep those notes separate and then bring back specific tasks to your AF List.)

However, with this little tweak, I have a feeling that I am in control. My AF List effectively captures everything that I need to be making progress on. Plus, I am not flipping back and forth between notebooks.

Additionally, I find that AF has really helped me routinely process emails. I am motivated to quickly delete, delegate, or do the little items. I then add bigger tasks to AF. With AF, I am motivated to apply "little & often" to these bigger tasks and actually get them done.

I wanted to also note that I use the tweak suggested by Matt C. about starting each line with a box and filling in the box when a task is completed (as opposed to striking through all of the content of the line). I find it is much easier to identify on the page the two empty boxes for undone tasks instead of trying to find them amongst the lines that I struck through. Also, since I am taking some notes into my AF List, I undoubtedly will need to be able to read what I wrote at some future date. (Matt C., thanks for the very selective "dotting" tweak as well!)

Onwards and Upwards!
hat3