Get Everything Done

The last days, I feel a strong resistance to dismiss pages. I realize I am no longer looking for tasks that "stand out", I go through the remaining tasks thinking "on which task can I work for fifteen minutes or so in order to 'rescue' the page once again?", that is, I am trying to "trick" the page against dismissal. And this way, AF (or what I do) feels not as easy and playful any more, compared to how it was in the beginning.

I think it's because of the experience one makes in other time management systems: Once you move a task into a "someday"- or "later"-list, you practically say good-bye to it; you bury it there.

So, what I see more clearly is that "lloking for tasks that stand out" is maybe THE key concept of AF, and what I want is to find the right balance between... well, I don't know between which poles, only that it seems to me as a question of the right balance.

I would be grateful for some hints by more experienced AFers...

I'm not a more experienced user than you, but this is already one of the things that I have in mind that I'll be facing soon too!

In my opinion, you should consider that dismissing an item does not mean forgetting it for ever. I think Mark makes it clear in the instructions when he writes:

"... take the rule not to re-enter [the dismissed] items seriously. It doesn’t mean you can never re-enter them, but you should let some time pass before you do and consider carefully why they were rejected, whether they really need to be done at all, whether the time is ripe for them to be done, whether they distract from your main goals, and any other factors. When you do re-enter a dismissed item, it is often best to break it down or re-phrase it in some way."

I would try and follow closely Mark's instructions. If a dismissed item finally ought to be back on the AF list, you can be sure that you will put it there again. In most cases there should be no need to play it safe and procrastinate dismissing it.

Hi Andreas

Dismissing items is one of those areas where AF forces you to think about what is really going on with regard to resistance and in fact your concerns over dismissal are quite normal and proof that the system IS working. What I have found so far is that there seem to be three distinct reasons for reluctance to dismiss.

The first is the situation you describe above - a sort of preconditioning to assume that dismissal mans total "dismissal for ever". This is the easiest to rectify - just dismiss and make sure you keep a recurring task to "review dismissed items"

The second is perhaps linked to a fear of failure - the feeling that dismissing those items is identifying you as a failure because you have "failed" to do those tasks. It is important to remember in this case that AF is a system that captures everything - good ideas, bad ideas, tasks to do, tasks not to do. By dismissing the item you are merely making a decision to defer that particular item and acknowledge that it is not sufficiently important to you at the present time to warrant constant attention. That dismissal is in itself an action taken on the task - far from failure.

The third is where you have a strong sense of "ought" about the item. This is the most difficult category and where you need to examine whther the task really needs to be done or whether it is a false obligation, probably with a strong guilt factor attached also. These are the tasks where you may need to spend a little more time examing your feelings about the task itself. There may well be tasks that we eventually just have to grit our teeth and get on with but my experience so far is that even those tasks do get done as part of the normal process of AF. If it gets to the point of dismissal there is normally something more going on. For example I have a storage unit full of my parent's stuff and old business stuff which needs to be cleared. Apart from the fact that the task itself is incredibly daunting and I just cannot do it on my own, there is an enormous amount of emotional stuff attached to that task. It cannot be dismissed because it has to be done at some point ......... but........... Unfortunately recognising the emotional attachments is only part of the process - a big part mind you - and decisions still need to be made.

Hope that helps ......

Christine,

Re: Emotional attachment ... I think the only answer to that kind of thing is to get help. Get someone who is not attached to any of that and have them do it for you ... go on vacation and let them clear it making rational decisions. I had the same problem several times in my life and really, the time spent dredging through old memories is not fun.

One writer on clutter blames it on the good wishes of parents and such who think that passing on their junk is a good thing. It is really not. I would suggest that you imagine how much longer you might hold on to that storage unit, then pay a good friend that amount of money to clear it for you.

I can tell you that age helps a bit in this. Every year I'm better able to say: "What am I holding on to this for? Will I EVER do anything with it?" Another great idea is to get your digital camera out and take pictures of things and then get rid of the things themselves.

I realize that I'm in the same situation.
I don't dismiss because I *need* to do these tasks.

I have two questions regarding this:

- Can I not dismiss a task, and instead move it to the end (either rephrased or not) so the rest of the items can "survive"?

- How often do you review dismissed tasks? If it's every 3 or 4 days, my panic would be more bearable. But it's advised to "take some time", and that sounds like a few weeks or so, that's make me hesitant.

Thanks

I just noticed that my first question is irrelevant. If I want to keep the other tasks on the page, I could just work on one of them, and the others (including the difficult one) would stay there for a bit longer.

Hi Mike

Good suggestions - thank you!

I think for me it's mostly the "I ought to"-thing in combination with the "dismissal = gone forever"-feeling.

Yes, I have to make more experiences with AF and think about what was keeping me. Interesting.

Thanks for the comments!

I think the motivation to do something on tasks that you NEED to do is also a valuable part of autofocus. AF is the first system to get those hated tasks moving for me. So I think, to some degree, the last few that I work on on a page have a lot of resistance attached to them. But that is ok, because it means I do something on those tasks to keep them on the list, because I *know* I can't dismiss them.

Generally, I am trying to dismiss brutally, when necessary. But those tasks that can't be dismissed get moved forward, and they are sometimes easier to do the next time.

Chris,

That's it in a nutshell. In the end, AF forces you to confront the hard items and make a decision. I think other systems let us avoid deciding things more than AF does. If you follow the rules, there is no getting around deciding if those last holdouts represent real goals or just wishes and dreams.

BTW, one thing I do give that nut job Tony Robbins credit for is emphasizing the crucial importance of decision making.

Mike, you've reminded me that I've been holding on to "that nut job" Tony Robbins' books and a few tapes - time to declutter them!! :-)

Andreas, I went through my book and beside every open task wrote an estimate of the time I thought it would take to complete the task. I then wrote on the top of the page in the left hand corner the total # of tasks and the time estimate to finish the page.

If I estimate that for my home life, I have approximately 60 hours per month of discretionary time that I can devote to AF - without adding anything new in - therefore I can't have over 60 hours worth of discretionary tasks listed without it taking longer than a month to accomplish them all.

I went through my list with a highlighter, quite happily dismissing anything that I didn't feel was necessary for me to get done this month and leaving the ones that I really wanted to see finished in the next 30 days. It felt really great to do.

I did this in an effort to learn how to grow my list organically as I have strong dumping tendencies. I've learned I have to focus very hard on ONE project at a time and just know I can't fix everything all at once. Fortunately, I have this 'compulsion for closure' at work so I know how to do it, but never thought of adopting it at home until 2 months into AF.

If I were behind at work, I would do the same thing, but possibly have two levels of dismissal - what I want to see done in the next week and what I'd want to have done in a month. Map that out against a reasonable estimate of my discretionary time at work, and see what I have to tell people I'll be late on up front.

Jacqueline,

The problem with all nut jobs is that the good ideas they have can be lost in the nuttiness. ;-)

There really are a ton of good ideas in his material, but one has to get past they hyperbole (screaming in the case of his audio material). One almost has to distill his material into notes before it can be used. I am amazed that he does not get how really annoying he is.

One other big problem he has is that he seems to be a hypocrite. I loved that he came out with this wonderful relationship course while he was cheating on his wife. He kind of dismissed that with "oh well". ROTF ;-) Still, he lives on my bookshelf with the other books which are part sanity and insanity ;-)

Mike,

I used to be something of a self-help junkie (yes, I've even done a firewalk -:) but got real after a bad experience at a Landmark Forum - and what bothers me is that some of these gurus seem to try to convince you that something is wrong with you the way you are and that you need to change to become ok - MASSIVE CHANGE! as Tony would say. And you need to change to fit their definition of success - ie. compulsive work / efficiency / effectiveness, focusing on money etc. etc. while holding out a carrot that you can be in some constant state of bliss if you just follow their program.

At the risk of offending anyone, I'll take the politically correct route now and keep my mouth shut - there's some interesting reading here on LGAT's and the like: http://rickross.com/

I do want to say though that getting my enthusiasm and confidence in myself back by using Autofocus has been more motivating and more real and I believe more lasting than any seminar I've attended that tried to change the way I thought rather than working on the core of what I do every day.

“Men are what they are because of their characters, but it is in action that they find happiness or the reverse.” --Aristotle

Hi Jacqueline

Totally agree with your comments regarding AF from a "self help" perspective and the Rick Ross site is very interesting. I've looked at a lot of the self-help resources - and done the fire-walk too :-) - I think the key is to stay sufficiently objective to extract the good and reject the bad (as Mike says above a lot of good ideas can be lost in the hype). Tony Robbins seminars may be very motivational but rely on very heavy use of NLP and more than a little use of mass hysteria. There is the potential for real damage and it can lead to real problems for some people. The staff are not trained to deal with people who suffer emotionally as a result of the program and I saw that firsthand in the girl I was buddied with. Not good!

There is a term "contact high" which well describes the effect of these kinds of events. People go there and leave feeling as if they have changed in a major way ... and a few days (or even hours) later, when the high wears off, they need another "fix". That is really the business model for this kind of thing. Give away a bit of info (perhaps a free ebook), sell a real book for $X, sell an audio/video course for $x*10, sell a "seminar" for $x*100, sell a personal coaching service for $x*1000. It seems to work.

On the subject of damage, I do disagree, however. In my experience, people are self-limiting in so many ways and that serves to protect as well as cripple. IOW, someone may become hysterical at one of these events, but will not be really the worse for wear once the "contact high" wears off. The will go back into their usual protective shell.

One of the really important ideas, burred deep wit in the "real" NLP, is that change is trivially easy ... and damn near impossible ... at the same time. Our nature requires that change be hard. I mean, if it were simple to stop smoking because change were easy, then we could not feel confident that we could STAY non smokers ... it would be just as easy to change back. A ship's rudder can't flop all around. It has to stay put until forced to a new position or the boat would wander all over! That is why Franklin wrote at length about his fiddly system for managing his growth in personal virtues. It takes a good long time of dedicated focus on habit building to really change... and stay changed.

The flip side of this is that there is really nothing that, in principle limits us. All of us have ALL options open ALL the time (exceptions being made for some physical limitations, of course). So change CAN be instantaneous. You see this in the so called "near death experiences". In those cases, many people are instantly changed in their whole world view and never change back. But some do. The trick is finding a way hold on to change, and that most often involves building new habits and replacement activities.

It is all a fascinating study, to be sure. My "bottom line" is that when someone asks me if X will help them change Y, I say "Absolutely" ... if you believe it will and are willing to work at it with everything you have. Or put another way, any specific tool will work for you if you are sufficiently determined to make it work, no matter what. But if you are that determined, you probably do not need that, nor any other tool ... you can just change spontaneously.

BTW, some of the above ideas explain why so many people have tried so many systems and are still searching for the best one. And why, in time, so many will abandon AF for the next new system to come along. And why, at the core, none of these systems are fundamentally different but we treat them as if they are the answer to our prayers.

We are funny creatures ;-)

Hi Mike

"We are funny creatures ;-) " - Definitely agree with you there! :-)

I take what you say about people going back to their protective shells after a hyped up event but do feel that there is a potential for damage, maybe only in a small minority but I feel it is a very real possibility. Tony Robbins works on a pretty structured break down then build up process - great if the build up process is what sticks but what if it is the break down process (which will inevitably reinforce past thinking and habit) that lingers after the event?

But you are absolutely right - we all make our own choices which influence our lives and I suspect that all of us are better at making the right choices in some areas of our lives than in others!

Hi Christine,

If it were as easy to break a person out of their protective shell as a few hours of seminar and fire walking, then psychologists would be out of business ;-) People can be jerked out of it for a short time and that can be pretty dramatic. But if nothing else changes, they simply snap back to where they are most comfortable. And they will mostly have amnesia for what transpired when they were exposed.

The trick to change work is for the person to DO something once the shields are down. That is where many of the quick change systems fail. They don't provide that follow-on path that will take advantage of the crack in the armor.

The other problem is the context. It is easy to break down protective barriers in a 1000 person event ... but it takes intense one-on-one interaction to lead a person out of their particular maze. The best therapists are intensely connected with their clients and alter their interaction to match what the client is giving. That can't happen from a stage.

People are remarkable in their ability to protect themselves ... unfortunately, that protection is not all that smart and they often protect themselves from the best within them. To quote the guy who ran The Matrix "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." And thus it is with those who are coping. Coping is an acceptable level of survival ... and the safest, as they see it.

BTW, none of this is meant to convey that someone could not "possibly" go bonkers in one of those events ... but then they would probably just as easily have wound up talking to a telephone pole after having a stern exchange with someone on a street corner. So "possible", yes. Likely, not very. People pretty much are as they are. IOW, the damage is already there.

Is anyone proposing to do firewalking in order to overcome the fear to dismiss :-) ?

Good one Andreas - but maybe someone would experience less resistance to something if faced with the choice between firewalking and an O/S AF task!

Andreas, have you thought of breaking down your dismissal process a bit? I don't think I've ever dismissed just because I was resisting doing the task, more because I knew it wasn't something I wanted to do right now, or even in the next month.

I'm going to go through my dismissed list once I'm finished up with a major project at home and will have some free time. Nature abhors a vacuum... Otherwise, I know what you mean, I've written lots of "things I want to do, places I want to go type of lists" and I enjoy running across them every few years and think it's cool that I've done some of them without planning to, but there were others on there I wish I hadn't lost sight of. I think even capturing them in the AF book is a good thing vs. back in old calendars that I never look at again. Besides, those "dream" lists are more major goals anyway, not something that would generally show up on your AF list would they? But the tasks like 'books to read, movies to watch' - types of lists I've kept in the past - I don't regret just following my impulses with those.

Mike

You've absolutely hit the nail on the head with the follow-up aspect - that is exactly where the long term relationship is essential to long term change. And I do agree that it would probably only be the minority who are long term affected and that that may have happened anyway. "wound up talking to a telephone pole " - ROFL

Andreas

I quite like that idea - but then I quite liked doing the firewalk too! :-)

Interesting though the intense desire not to dismiss. I have to date only dismissed 3 items (although now have more lined up ready when I get back to the pages .....) I think for me it was that link to a feeling of failure. It is hard to get out of the idea that if we dismiss we have failed to do ....

In fact the process is merely a standard rule and doesn't need the intense amount of soul searching we do when a task gets to that stage - "if it doesn't stand out on the first pass dismiss it" - there you are - simple! What do we do? Change the rule to "if it doesn't stand out on the first pass agonise over why you really must do it or be forever branded the most useless specimen who ever walked the earth. Then, make a cup of coffee, agonise some more, work out how little you can do just so you are not that useless specimen, decide it is time for another coffee, grit your teeth and do something." Then you can rewrite it on your last page and go through the whole process again! What fun:-)

This morning, I dismissed a page without feeling bad about it. There were some items left I think I will abandon, and one item I will pick up again during the review. But we'll see.

I feel, however, a kind of urge to start a "someday/maybe"-list. Just to put some things there I don't want to forget.

Up to now, I resist this urge, because it might be an act of mistrust. :-)

Mark,

That is why I put it on the someday/maybe list ... to get it OFF myr mind. IOW, if I thought I'd like to jump off of bridges hanging from rubber bands but I have no intention of doing it any time soon, it can keep entering into my mind because I'm afraid I'll forget about it. It is useful to write it down so I can "forget about it" while not being concerned that I'll forget about it.

Actually, I found that concept to be very helpful when I first heard it. I had my todo list cluttered with junk and this concept cleared that stuff right out.

I've had all sorts of lists in the past and they were great at allowing me to forget things - trouble was I always forgot where they were!

If there is one thing AF has taught me, it's the value of having your lists in one place, whether they are your AF pages or "other" lists. Everything is now gradually moving to one of a very few places - my AF lists, my schedule, or my project management system.

One of my projects is also to keep a better log of physical locations so that soon I will know where everything is :-)

Mark:

I've considered what you wrote about what's the point of having a "someday/maybe"-list.

I have one already - for books. It's a file where I enter any book description I come across that sounds interesting in that moment. Every entry consists of author, title, publisher/other info regarding how to get the book PLUS a short note what it is that I find interesting. I maintain this file for years now, and every time I need to order a specific book, I browse this file to look whether something in it grabs my attention. I have noticed over the years that most of the entries "die" - would this list be a notebook, I guess only one or two of about a dozen or so entries per page ever arrive on my shelf. Simply because you can't read all the books that are interesting at a certain moment. So, I think this method filters out all books I am not interested in long/strong enough. (Thinking about it, it's very AF-like as process...)

But I decided anyway NOT to implement a someday/maybe-list. At least not now. Instead, I will simply keep all AF lists. Together, and with all dismissed items highlightes, they automatically form a someday/maybe-list - without any additional effort! (Actually, a "dismissed" item is in fact a "someday/maybe"-item... or let's say a "once I thought that maybe someday I would do"-item...)

AndreasE

I feel the same way as you about your dismissed items being your someday/maybe list. It has the advantage of being part of a single list as Christine feels is helpful.

But beyond just keeping your lists in one place, it allows AF to both serve as an inbox for ideas and to determine that for a particular item that gets dismissed that someday hasn't come yet! A task to Review Dismissed Items lets AF determine if "someday" might be coming up and you can then add an item back onto your list.

Hi Andreas,

There are two reasons I keep a separate someday/maybe list. Firstly, I keep all of my project planning, notes, reference materials, etc. in a computer file, so it is sensible to put those items there as well. Secondly, I use a wire bound pocket note pad for my AF list and the pages get tattered pretty quickly from being pulled out of my pocket and being jammed back in so I don't save the closed pages ... they get ripped out and trashed.

Mike,

in another post I recommended the X47 timer system, which is not only incredible beautiful (it has won some international design awards, too) and cosy, but also built in a way as if made especially for AF. Just in case you get tired of crumbled pages.

Andreas,

Two things: is it small enough to fit in a pocket easily? Secondly, I tried searching for it and found only a foreign website which was pretty lame. I could not even see a good picture of the thing. Any thoughts?

Lefty on here has done a post on it and has a blog with pictures - very very nice!

I think it is useful vaing lists of books to read, goals to achieve, wines to try, restaurants to try, places to go, master dream list, and so on. Having these items organised for regular (or even irregular) review can be very handy. The act of writing something down gives clarity as well as getting a vague thought out of your hand and caught on paper.

However I like the idea of the AF diary (what do we call our notebook used for AF? An Autofocus Task Diary?) with dismissed items becoming the someday list. I havent used the system long enough to see the deferrment process in action, but the sequential structure of the book gives context these dismissed someday items.