Get Everything Done

For the last number of years, I've worked on my uglier projects using what I call a "task sandwich" of "work - fun - work - fun". It works exceptionally well. My usual fun task is reading, so I'm drawn to finish the work task really fast in order to get to the next chapter of my book. Now I find myself doing the same thing with my AF list, only I'm not reading, I'm posting on here which isn't good because it's harder for me to stop like I can when I'm reading. I don't have little fun things listed on my AF list, just bigger items like "plan skiing weekend" or "call so and so to get together".

I'm just wondering if people do the same unconsciously with their AF lists if they do have fun things on there - if your intuition "leads" you to those fun things after the work item. I thought of doing the same and initially tried it, only found that I would run out of fun things on a page - or the next few pages - at the time that I needed them most (when I come to the harder items on the page). It also made me gravitate to doing the fun thing vs. the work items.

I do this constantly.

I've got a peculiar job, which involves lots of travel (>150K miles in 2008) and lots of teleconferences at odd hours; additionally, when I'm not out of the country, I tend to work from home more often than not. And when I'm home, I generally define my own hours, so I don't need to make a terribly hard distinction between "work days"/"work hours" and "non-work" time.

I probably work--in the sense of "exerting effort toward goals for which I actually get paid"--50-60 hours in any given week, but I spread it out quite a bit, working 1-3 hours at a time, interspersed by reading, sudying Japanese, watching horror DVDs, running errands or going shopping, etc. I _never_ feel like I'm working too much; well, _almost_ never.

Given my workstyle, Autofocus' "work on an item for as long as you feel like it" approach works extremely well for me.

Definitely... I don't do it by tasks, but when I'm working at home and the time comes to move on to a new work page, I turn to the "personal" end of my book and do something from it. I'm MUCH more productive this way - the personal tasks that stand out to me are almost always very small ones, but I feel like I've gotten a bit of a break and return to work more energized.