Get Everything Done

Sometimes I have a fair number of tasks left on a dismissed page -- maybe 6 or 7 items on a 35-line page, and I can't help but think that just giving one of them a little nudge might actually move that item forward. So, when there are still a fair number of items left on a page but none of them stand out, I wonder if there's a place for somehow "randomly" picking one of the remaining items and then working on it as you would normally in AF? I'm not sure how practical the "random" picking would be on paper (would require dice or a random number generator), and that's actually why I haven't given it a try.

A few years ago I tried writing some "someday-maybe"-type tasks on slips of paper and dropping them in a cookie jar, and then from time to time I would pick one and work on it. It was surprisingly effective in terms of breaking out of the usual habits of thinking and activity.

Also, for me, the biggest cause of procrastination is probably the "I don't feel like it" syndrome -- it's so easy to look at a list of tasks, feel uninspired, and say "I don't feel like it" to all of them. AF is very good at getting around this, but after whittling down 80% of a page, I still sense "I don't feel like it" creeping in ever so slightly. I might not feel like scrubbing the bathtub, or it might not stand out, or might not be the right time, but if it was randomly assigned and I could drop it after a minute (and move it to the end of the list), then from experience the resistance breaks down the minute I start working and I end up spending half an hour on the job.

So ... I envision working AF the normal way, and then maybe introducing a random choice element near the end of the process to squeeze that last little bit out of a list -- or to at least just clear one more item from a list before dropping it. Problem though is it will probably complicate the process.

Hi Simon,

I honestly feel that the last few tasks that remain after all the *easier* stuff gets picked off "feel ready" to be done by me just because I'm sick of having them on the list and yet don't want to dismiss them. If I pick them off by tossing a coin, throwing a dart, doing them in the order they're written, or even scheduling a 5 minute timed burst on 6 of them in one 1/2 hour period to get them started/done, it doesn't really matter.

I think that 70% - 80% point complete on a page is the toughest hurdle. You've picked off the least palatable items, but you still have 7-9 items on the list that you really don't want to do. I think any way you can push yourself over that hurdle, the better. Once you get down to 2-3 items, it becomes easy again because you want to see that page finished. The end is in sight and you're on the home stretch with maybe just an hour of work to do. And I want to go out by finishing something off, not take the dismissal way out! :-)

I don't think it would complicate the process either because you would just go back to doing AF regularly in terms of the standing out process once you get over the hurdle. It's not like you have to flowchart it. :-)

Oops, I meant 'most palatable items', not least.

Thanks Jacqueline -- I think I was interested in the random approach as a backup because quite often I'll try to "rescue" a page that is in danger of being dismissed by picking something and working on it for five minutes. Quite often it's surprising how five minutes turns into 30! But ... sometimes due to fatigue or various other external factors, I have less patience with older pages and feel a bit more aggressive about dismissing, and during those states I sometimes wonder whether it might've been better to just nudge things along a bit (by making a random choice) because the choice to dismiss was not being caused by the tasks, but rather by the external mood/fatigue/time constraints etc.

But ... why complicate things? After about two months of religiously using AF (has it really been that long?), I've only ever reviewed dismissed tasks once. That was after about 30 pages, and I only reintroduced about five or six tasks. It's probably the case though that quite a few more were reintroduced naturally -- at some point after being dismissed they became urgent again (prompted by the external world, not by reviewing dismissed items) and I just wrote them down.

I know what you mean Simon, I've made the conscious choice when there are a few items on a page sometimes not to dismiss them, but to move to something else somewhere on the old pages that I feel like doing right at that time. There's always something... I look at it as structured procrastination of a closed list made up of old pages.

Which to choose? Washing the bathroom floor on p. 6, organizing the pantry on p. 8 or washing the front closet floor on p. 10? This morning I chose the p. 10 item as on page 7 and 9 there were items I couldn't do at 6:00 in the morning. And because I did it really quickly, I got to finish off an item on p. 16 as well. To dismiss all of these would have been pointless because I've gone through and done my major dismissal already. What I have left is my "will do" list for the rest of the month.

More than one old manager of mine has called me "a finisher". I was that way at work, but definitely not at home. I think that's why my work has always been under control and my home life has been CHAOS (literally chaos as well as "Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome". I'm trying to use the tactics that I have used successfully for 20 years at work and be that way at home as well.

As long as I'm sticking to the list, I haven't dumped onto the list and I know it's something I really do have to / want to do, I'm ok with not following the instructions precisely. Where I ran into problems before was in not having a focused list and hopping around tackling umpteen projects at once.