Get Everything Done

Hi everyone,

I'm an academic myself, and I'd like to start using Autofocus, but I'm wondering how to use it to manage my projects. So I have two questions.

First, in general, how do you use AF to handle large research projects such as writing papers?

Second, more specifically, how would I use AF to handle ordered tasks? I'm at my best when my to-do list contains really small "chunks" of tasks. The thing is, most of these have to be handled in a particular order.

I'm generally much less resistant to a series of smaller tasks than one large on.So for example, if I'm writing a paper, I would be more resistant to "Revise Table 3." than to "1. Compute new means and standard deviations 2. Compute statistic A using means and standard deviations 3. Compute statistic B using statistic A"

The thing is, these tasks have to be handled in order, so putting them all on my AF list as separate tasks is kind of frustrating, since I can't do the second and third subtasks without completing the first.

How would you handle this in an AF framework?

Thanks a lot!

R

P.S. I did see some project-related threads from the past, but none seemed to handle the specific issue I'm having.

I am not an academic. But, to avoid dependent items on the list, you can put only a reference to a project on the AF list, and go from there to your project list. Or to make it more explicit set only the next action (NA in GTD speak?) on the AF list and replace it with the next in line when that one is finished.

Hi AcademicGirl,

Oh, I am an Academic -- believe me. Smiles. I am a professor at a major research university and I wear many hats -- administrative, research, teaching, and service. I have posted here a lot and will be glad to share how I have AF working very well for me. I am leaving for the airport here soon for a 5-day trip, but will write more upon my return.

Best wishes,
-David

Grad student here! I usually do as Damien has suggested - just the name of the project and brainstorm/manage the specific tasks elsewhere. When I find myself resisting entries with just the project name, I get more specific with the descriptions of the tasks. I also tend to have multiple entries for the same "project" (where my thesis is considered a "project") - either multiple iterations of the same entry, or multiple disparate dissertation-related tasks so that I am consistently making progress on some part of it.

Like David Drake I am an academic with a similar mixture of roles to him. I deal with projects like writing papers or grants by initially just entering the overall paper or grant title, much as Sarah above. I usually have a pretty good idea of what the next step is, so don't need to break down such projects. However sometimes this can be an advantage if I encounter resistance, as creating a word document for the paper, or graph etc counts as working on the project: so you can do some work in a few seconds, cross it out and re-enter it at the end of the list very quickly. This can be a great way to break resistance that I learned from Mark Forsters books. See also

http://www.markforster.net/blog/2008/10/3/how-to-phrase-task-items.html

Happy to help with any other academic specific queries

Mark,

Indeed. From a time-management perspective there is little that is significantly different about an academic setting from most other professional settings.

I'm an academic, too. (I'm faculty, so I too am often dividing my time between research, teaching, and admin. Research leave this coming year, though!) My answers to your specific questions are essentially the same as Sarah's and Jaroslav's, although after some experimentation, I stopped trying to use AF for writing. I do use it for other research tasks, though, so I have items like 'Read article X', 'Look at book y', 'Make notes on z', and the like on my AF list.

This old (and eventually very long) thread I started on AF and writing may be one of the threads you've already seen, but just in case:

http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/643258