Get Everything Done

Hi Folks,

I am really intrigued by Mark's comments that he was working on ways to combine the best attributes of DIT with AF. Here is what I have been doing for this last week and I am finding it works well for me. First of all, this is NOT an original idea -- I borrowed this from Zen to Done and perhaps others. With that disclaimer, here is a sequence that I would love comments on from Mark (please?) and others:

(1) Every morning or the night before, I review my entire AF pages.
(2) I choose the three most important things that I wish to accomplish tomorrow. These can either be things that must be done that day (time urgency) or things that I consider very important. I suggest limiting this to only three major things.
(3) Write these three things out on an index card or separate piece of paper that you can have with you all day.
(4) Try as much as possible to focus on these three things first thing in the morning.
(5) Try to complete them, but if one or more are really large items that will take a lot of time, then try to make significant progress on them. What that means is up to you. If it is something that you have been avoiding or dreading, then it may be just getting started -- making an outline, mind-mapping, whatever. However, I always aim for completion as much as possible.
(6) One you are "done" with these three things, then go back to your AF list and proceed as per normal instructions.

What I am finding is that this helps plan my day and provide more DIT-like guidelines to getting the most important things done. Once done, then one goes to the AF list. If you have little discretionary time that day, then choose only one most important thing to get done. You do NOT want to make this into a simple to-do list and avoid your AF list. It is just a little trick to help one focus on the most important things every day.

As I said, this is hardly anything new. But I am finding it to work well.

-David

David,

it's strange, I had almost the same idea a few days ago:

Making a closed list for mornings only (09.00 - 12.00) to be used for very important or urgent stuff, some kind of anti-overwhelm-GTD or like Lisa Peake's Emergency-GTD.

Have been using this for three days now and it has been working quite well for me, and the day isn't completely lost even if I don't get around to look at my AF list on that day. Because of the time limit there are only two or three items on that closed morning list.

But, yes, this is very similar to Leo Babauta's MITs in ZTD.

Just to add an additional variation:

I am using some elements of DIT, especially the task diary for that same purpose.

First of all, my appointments are kept on my Mac with an iPhone as my portable go everywhere device. I will then double my appointments in the task diary. This gives me a very good feeling as to how much time of my day is already taken. It actually makes an overview of available time much easier.

In addition to the "hard wired" appointments I will then need to add little day relevant tasks that need to be done on that particular day but not necessarily at a precise time, i.e. telephone calls, date critical correspondence or checks if certain items have been taken care of. This will mostly fill a portion of the day. Then I will write down my current issue and what I want (need) to do about it. This is sort of like the three MIT's. Even if I just manage to take care of things up to this point I will be sure that everything time critical has been taken care of...

Now I will use my AF list to proceed with anything else which will then be noted in the task diary as well.

Apart from that, my work habits are organized around some of the basic GTD principles like having one inbox and doing everything that can be done in two minutes right away. Especially this last rule will keep me from spending more time organizing tasks and writing them down than actually doing them. This should actually be a rule for AF: never enter something on the list, if it can be dealt with in two minutes or less.

Hi Rainer and Klaus,

Thanks for your very helpful descriptions of what you are doing!

Best regards,
-David

Hi Klaus

I understand what you say about not entering things into AF that can be done in two minutes or less but I'm not sure I would agree. Just because something "can" be done in two minutes or less does not automatically mean it is somethaing that "should" be done. One of the major benefits of AF is the way in which it helps us to identify what tasks are genuinely necessary. I think it is easy to get into habits of doing things and then getting to a stage where we don't question them. All of those 2 minute items add up ...... AF has certainly caused me to stop doing some of those smaller tasks altogether.

Take email for example - by regularly checking it I could keep on top of my current mail in several two minute or so bursts (but still accumulated backlogs when I was away). By putting it on AF I could not clear it in two minutes but as a result changed my method of handling it which has made my email response a lot more efficient.

We haven't discussed the problem of untrustworthy environments at work yet.

We might trust ourselves and we might trust our personal systems (AF, DIT, GTD, etc.), but do we trust those non-existent systems for filtering our input? E.g. every non-spam email is still delivered to my inbox regardless whether I am able to read it or not. There is still no device for queuing those emails.

Those of us who are often one phone call or one email away from complete overwhelm seem to need something like "current initiative", "most important tasks", "emergency gtd", or at least good old scheduling to put a stake in the ground to where they can come back to when their day derails. Are there unresolved organizational issues behind this?

Rainer - I think you make a very good point and I think AF is one of the most effective tools to identify when that is the case. By being aware that we are one phone call or email away from overwhelm, that awareness in itself is for many of us a step forward. Quite often we know we are overloaded but are so busy firefighting that we don't have the time to look around to see that there is a sprinkler system switch just behind us.

Once we can "see" the problem, then we can look at addressing it. The obvious question is whether it is in our control to change that organizational issue. If it is then AF will help to identify how - my own email management has certainly changed since starting AF. However, if we are in a work environment where the basic structure cannot be changed, then we may need to look at other solutions. Sometimes the solution may well be the use of scheduling or structured time - but at least that will be as a specific decision rather than habit.

When did Mark say he was trying to combine AF and DIT? I can't find that thread.

Steve, it was in the thread started by me titled "Does anyone do AF strictly all the time" - about 2/3 of the way down. He didn't elaborate on what he was going to try to do. He really is a master of suspense. :-) My guess is he'll work with it for awhile and come back and tell us how he's making out. I think his daughter is in town so he's probably making that a priority right now.

Mel had an excellent post on this somewhere on page 5 on this forum. I think Mark gave her some good advice and she went back to traditional AF. I had read it at the time, but wasn't at that stage yet so it wasn't really applicable at the time. But now that I'm at the point that she was, I too followed the advice and am going back to plain vanilla AF.

Christine B - You are right if you actually do 2 minute tasks without spending a second to consider their importance! Let me try to express myself somewhat differently:

Checking e-mail for me is a task done once (after lunch) or twice a day. This is more like a daily procedure like brushing my teeth ;-)

When I work my inbox to zero I will make one decision: is the item actionable?
If not it will either be tossed or filed right away (no need to write anything down)
If yes then I have to decide what to do with it. All those things that require only a very short time to complete are usually better taken care of by doing them right away than by having them clog up my AF list! An example would be a mail from a friend that asks if I am free friday evening to go to a movie. I could certainly make answering this e-mail a task in AF and I am convinced that it would be done in good time, but where is the point? I will just reply "yes" and be done with it in about the same time it takes to write it down!

If I am not sure about the importance or the duration required I will need to deal with the item more thoroughly anyway, so it goes on the list.

The important thing to remember is to always make good decisions and to not follow "rules" too closely. It will slow you down.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

Hi Klaus

I certainly agree with you on the responding to emails as instantly as possible where they are quick items and that is something I do also in my "check email" time. And I definitely agree about making good decisions :-) I do like the concept of the 2 minute rule in principle and would not advocate writing every <2 minute task into AF, but rather as you point out consider their importance first. However, for me part of that process was by the entering of that type of task into the lists to give AF the chance to sift and analyse them.

The prime example for me was my "stack/unstack dishwasher" task. It is a <2minute task yet I felt strong resistance to it. Putting it as a task in AF enabled me to identify the reasons for that resistance and now it is no longer a problem - neither does it get included within my AF lists anymore.

For me putting tasks into my list is not just about getting them done, it is about finding the best way to get them done. In my experience so far, what AF has identified has often been vastly different to what I would have expected by using what I would have seen as a common sense approach such as the 2 minute rule.

David, I think when you are facing an overwhelming day, making a list like you describe can relieve anxiety. However, I find that requiring myself to do these priority items before doing the AF list backfires. Any time I feel obligated to do something, I resist it. Even if I really need to do it! That's why the "choose from the current page or must-do today list" option works beautifully for me. If you want to pull those tasks out, I recommend giving yourself the same choice.

Jacqueline, yes I tried choosing one task from each page that I attempted to complete the next day. I just posted about this to the AF/DIT hybrid post. I found that I WAS more productive, but experienced a lot more pressure and stress than when I just worked the list. My hybrid approach really precludes you from working two tasks on the same page and also keeps you from spending more time on the last page. It might be a good experiment for someone to do who is stuck on the last page and isn't moving through all the pages consistently. But I bet they'll come back to vanilla like I have.

I think because people are having to pull these things out of the list because they're looming as crises/urgent, it would be valuable to look at WHY they're becoming an urgent item. What aren't you or someone else getting done ahead of time in order to prevent these crises?

I'm just saying that because I used to be in Corporate Reporting where at most companies, there's a crisis every quarter unless whatever can be done ahead of time is done. Even if it seems like you're re-doing something, if it can alleviate some of the work during the busy period by working on the process and identifying issues during the down time, it's valuable to do. Having worked with many people in this environment though, I've found that very few people do this. They'd rather twiddle their thumbs during the down period and panic during the busy time.

Couldn't agree more, Jacqueline. I just finished a video production which took nearly every waking moment (and even some non-waking moments) of the last several days. I REALLY don't want to have to be pressured like this again, so I am putting next month's production on my list now and I'm hoping that its tasks will stand out regularly so I can avoid a repeat performance. I love How to Handle 1,000 Things At Once by Don Aslett. He uses a powerful illustration to give us the benefits of EARLY work. Now I need to log off and do that. ;-)

Of course, this is considering that you DO have downtime - and if you don't, that begs another question of *why* you don't. Downtime for any knowledge worker's job should comprise quite a bit of their time - I try for about 25% (and I don't mean weekends). :-) Recommended again - Tom DeMarco's "Slack":

http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficiency/dp/0767907698/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237750224&sr=8-3

Jacqueline asked:

"I think because people are having to pull these things out of the list because they're looming as crises/urgent, it would be valuable to look at WHY they're becoming an urgent item. What aren't you or someone else getting done ahead of time in order to prevent these crises? "

As for me it's quite simple: I resist to work more than 3 unpaid hours of overtime per week. Since two of my colleagues are retired and wont be compensated with new staff I need to trash my backlog once in a while.