Get Everything Done

I imagined continuing with AF for years. Supposed one keeps ones notebooks to be able to review dismissed items - but how long? The number of dismissed items will grow constantly: Will you go through dozens of notebooks one day? Surely not.

Has anybody thought about a procedure to close a notebook finally? There is the instruction to bring forward unfinished task in a way that keeps the page delimitations, which makes sense. But how about dismissed tasks? How often should one go through a finished notebook before putting it away?

This is maybe a little bit theoretical, but I am using time management methods for more than thirty years now, so it's not farfetched to ask myself how AF will be performing on the long run.

Good question Andreas! How about, when you start a new notebook, the first page or pages are your "dismissed items" and they could be highlighted to be in keeping with the rest of the book. Mark has already detailed how to carry forward active pages - this would seem to complement that. Just a thought .......

I have notebooks going back 30 or more years. They really don't take up that much space. It just seemed easier to throw them in a box in case I ever needed to reference something than fuss about and spend time trying to cull what I thought MIGHT be useful some day. I think most of them are in one box in the garage now, and someday my estate will trash them ;-)

Mike:

Of course, it's not a question of space, but of time. I, too, have all my timers on 1 shelf in the cellar, and indeed, from time to time I ponder questions like "what did I do in april 1985?" and I'm happy to be able to look it up (but this is because I'm a writer and writers are constantly exploiting their own lifes and memories :-D). I would not, however, like to be obliged to look through the last twenty years whether I have finished all tasks or not...

But I think I've come up with a solution.

Actually, it's easy

The AF-like answer to my question, what could it be?

Only this one: "Start on your last dismissed page, go backwards... AS LONG AS YOU FEEL LIKE DOING SO."

And, some nice twist:
- Once you dismiss a page, you enter the task "Review dismissed tasks" at the end.
- It might happen that you dismiss the task "Review dismissed tasks", because it does not stand out.
- But then again, you enter the task "Review dismissed tasks" at the end.
- So, this is the only task that gets put forward automatically by dismissing!

:-)

I say forget about dismissed items. If they are important they will come up spontaneously again.

Jim:

Unfortunately, that's not my experience. I am capable of postponing important, but unpleasant tasks indefinitely. (Ask my wife! :-D ) Sure they will come up again - but sometimes too late!

This is what time management systems are for: To avoid "OMG I should have..."-experiences with bad consequenes. That's the first duty of any TMS.

I've thought about this when answering a post on the AF Yahoo group.

For me, Dismissed = Dismissed for Review, but I am currently pondering how often I should be reviewing such items: weekly, fortnightly, monthly, unscheduled?

But I don't want to be keeping notebooks forever on the basis that they contain Dismissed for Review items never processed again. BTW, my completed/tackled items are crossed out and highlighted in GREEN, Defer to Do Later (items which cannot be done at my current location - I travel abroad a lot) are highlighted in YELLOW, Dismissed for Review are in PINK.

I'm looking at two options:

(1) Have a separate PINK items book into which pink items from my normal AF notebook are transferred; this will mean I can forget all the pink items in the normal AF notebook. A perceived advantage of this is I can cross out "revived" items in the pink book when I rewrite them in the normal AF notebook, put a "wavy" line through items I never want to review again, and leave the rest for the next review.

(2) Have a Pink Page in a section in OneNote 2007 in which I record the Dismissed for Review items from the normal AF notebook (which is paper, having been from paper to electronic and back to paper again in the last two months). This would be reviewed when I am thinking about objectives and future opportunities, perhaps developing these in the same section as the Pink Page. Pink items that I no longer to have lying around can be deleted into oblivion.

It'll be interesting for me to see how I go.

Hi,

I'd have thought weekly and monthly and perhaps even yearly.

Not too hard if there is a weekday/date 'divider is used, eg

(last task on Sat)
----------------------------------- Su15/3
(first task on Sun)

Then review, rephrase or refine (to the end of the list) or remove!

cheers,
Pete.

I probably have more dismissed items than most -- 128 at last count - all as a result of not growing my list organically. I also didn't focus on trying to complete certain projects, but thought I could do little and often on a wide assortment of projects. I have one review scheduled now to re-input dismissed items, and I think every 3 months is a reasonable time frame for that. It's a little strange however, in looking at the dismissed items to get a count just now, to find that I had done a number of them unconsciously or someone else had done them for me since the time I had dismissed them.

Right now I review dismissed items weekly - I'm thinking about pushing that to biweekly.

When I review an item, I can take one of three actions.
1) I can re-enter it in my list, perhaps rephrased. This happened this week with, for example, "mop kitchen floor" which never spoke to me last week but probably should happen soon so we're not living in a pile of filth.
2) I can decide to reconsider it at a later date, in which case I put a timed reminder in my calendar.
3) I can decide it really isn't something I need to worry about right now and trust that it will come to mind again, and end up on the list again, when the time to do it is more opportune.

In any of these cases, I only ever review a dismissed item one time - at which point it is either re-entered, a reminder is set, or I drop it. I code the top outside corners of all my pages with "A" for active, "D" for dismissed (and not reviewed), or "C" for closed (either all items done -or- dismissed items reviewed).

My system also seems pretty brutal compared to some others. I review dismissed pages one month later. Tasks can be deleted/trashed or reclaimed. If they are reclaimed, they are added back to my AF list in rewritten form.

I also maintain a "Someday" list, so technically, I could add a task to that, but I try not to.

As you can guess, there is the possibility for tasks to cycle through dismissed, reviewed and re-entered. This means no task is "lost" unless I intend for it to be, and I can throw out my notebooks 1 month after dismissing the last page.

I hate clutter.

Jacqueline,

I find that observation interesting. I have had the same experience ... and I have also had the same experience with items I've just let languish on lists before. It seems to say that if things are important enough, they will get done no matter what and if things are important to other people THEY will do them.

For the second part, I think I would start thinking about why those items got on your list in the first place. Could you have said "no" to them in the first place? For the second, I'm not sure what good comes of that observation. Maybe that it is not worth the pain of avoiding the items so long when they are going to get done anyway? Interesting.

When I dismiss an item (either forced by AF rules or deliberately) I decide whether I want to dismiss it forever or for a later review. In both cases the item gets crossed out in my AF list and if I want to review it later I write the item on a large piece of paper which I throw into my tickler system for the next or the next but one month.

Hi Mike, I dumped a bunch of items onto the AF list on several occasions (my bad!) - clearly, I need to work on saying no to myself at home. :-) But I think I've had a mental shift that's making that possible.

Christian - I like that approach. I will give it a try!

OOOhh, smileypete. I didn't see your idea about placing a week marker line. That's a great idea.

Just thought of a neat trick that can be done with day 'dividers' and a 7/14 day 'rolling' review done *first thing* every day.

Say I need to get flowers for Mum on Saturday.

I could clutter up todays entries with something that cannot yet be done.

Instead I just go back to /last/ Saturdays entries, annotate 'Flowers for Mum 21/3' near the top.

Then when I do my rolling review first thing on Saturday morning for /last/ Saturday, I see 'Flowers for Mum 21/3' as a reminder, LOL! :)

I put all reminders in my calendar. Reminders and fixed dates.

Less effort. The more I get accomplished, the lazier I become... ;-)

Andreas

"Less effort. The more I get accomplished, the lazier I become... ;-) " - I like it! I am amazed how much more simpler a number of my systems have become over the past couple of months ......

Andreas,

What sort of calendar do you use, paper, digital?

I use Gmail calendar email reminders for recurring reminders and longer term fixed dates, the above is just a quick method for one offs within a weeks time.

smileypete:

Nothing beats paper: I use a X47-timer. (Someone here in the forum has written a beautiful blog entry about it.)

The only digital thing I use is iCal for automatic reminders during the day (lunch time, for example :-D) and to make sure I wont forget tax deadlines and other stuff.