Get Everything Done

From the description of both the AF1 and the FV systems, it looks as if it should be entirely possible to simply keep my list and start processing it in the FV way. Are there any indications that this would not be a good idea?

To be more concrete, I currently have 72 open items on my list (most of the time there are between 60 and 70).

Mark said elsewhere on this site that he was hoping some brave souls would do exactly as you have proposed.

That is what I intend to do once I am done setting up.

This is what I am going to do. I have six pages in my existing list, with fifty-eight unactioned tasks. There are probably a few duplicates, but not too many. It has lapsed a bit from strict AF rules in the last couple of weeks, but I will be interested to see how FV compares.

<< Mark said elsewhere on this site that he was hoping some brave souls would do exactly as you have proposed >>

Yeah, Mark said so in a blog comment with reference to my current 240+ AF1 tasks that I'm reluctant to bring whole sale into FV. I've brought in so far only about 10% of that.

I may be braver if I haven't been "off AF1 list" for the last month or so, working just on adhoc daily urgent list instead. :-*

I was using a variation on AF, and I'm now using FV. So far, so good -- at least for the parts that were AF to begin with. Sub-lists are also working well. Compare the items in the sub-list to the benchmark you had before entering the list.

I've been using an adjusted AF1 (starting the day at the first entry of the day before) for the past few months. Tomorrow I'm jumping ship to FV using the same list. It has 127 open tasks remaining spread over 13 pages. Consider me a little anxious, very intrigued and somewhat excited!

I just kept the same list and changed the way I processed it. Mark warned that you could overwhelm it if you started with too many tasks, but I didn't find that to be the case. It force me to take action on items that had languished forever and I got done all my urgent new tasks. It just feels right.

I'm in the process of joining the ranks of the brave souls - just working out some of the mechanics of the transition, particularly with regard how I've been managing work vs. personal tasks. Normally I would have started from scratch but couldn't resist Mark's challenge. :-)

I keep my AF list in a composition book, and just switched over the FV rules without skipping a beat. As others attest, it helps to ensure that older items on active pages get some long overdue attention!

[Seraphim]
<<I'm in the process of joining the ranks of the brave souls>>

Same here. The first ladder really scared me, as it was ten items on a day of little unscheduled time, but I continued into this morning, and it worked out just fine. I never would have thought that I'd like having my work listed out for me in advance (sounds like a recipe for solid resistance), but this "what do I want to do before x" technique seems to kill off the resistance. I actually felt driven to complete the ladder so I could move on to the next one. My second ladder came to 11 items, of which checking this forum is the third.

My pre-existing list is almost a month of DWM2, preceded by some months of AF1. Since I had marked date boundaries in my AF1 pages, I was allowing them to be part of the DWM2 waterfall, so now I am starting my FV ladders at the edge of the waterfall. To handle earlier portions of the old AF1, I've entered a task in FV: "enter a few old tasks from AF1," so these will go to the end of the list in little packets.

Vegheadjones appears to have applied FV to a large existing list. So did I. Fine so far...

I did, too. Just started off today applying FV to my already-existing list, which I had been processing according to the latest iteration of AF1 (starting each day on the page where I started entering tasks the previous day). So far... I've knocked off a number of things that had been lingering at the beginning of the list and really did need the "do or die" pressure to finally get me to do something about them.

I'm not normally a tweaker but I'm mulling something over that will probably irritate Mark to no end. Good thing he's going to have a new grandchild to distract him. I'll post more about that later. ;^)

That's right Will, I did apply it to a large list, one where I was using a tweaked version of AF1. And while the list is now slightly smaller than it was at the start of yesterday, I am happy to say that-- more importantly--the things I am getting done are now truly the right things that needed to get done.

My list has gotten MUCH smaller since I converted it to FV yesterday.
In the past, my oldest item lingered for seven days.
Today, my oldest item is from yesterday.
I feel as if I am getting more living done in each 24-hour period. I can't say it's fun, but I am facing challenges head-on that I tried to avoid in the past. Thank you, Mark, for giving me more life.

I've switched this morning from processing my list AF-style (actually, sort of a mix between AF1 and SF) to processing it FV-style. My list was quite long, more than 300 tasks spread over 35 pages. This took *forever* to process AF-style, which is why I occasionally switched to SF.

So far, FV is working brilliantly. I've cycled the list 5 times today, even with about 5 hours of scheduled time that I couldn't work the list. Before, I was always struggling to cycle it at least once every two days, so I'm feeling more on top of my work already. The list is also getting shorter quickly, because I used to put tasks that I was anxious about forgetting, multiple times in the list, every time I thought about them. Because I'm now cycling the list multiple times a day (at least on this first day :-), I probably won't be so anxious about forgetting tasks that are buried somewhere in the list but are getting more and more urget.

My only concern is that with such a long list making the preselection can take quite a while, but once you've established the preselection, working those tasks becomes a breeze, it actually feels lighter than I've ever felt with any of the previous versions. And I've already noticed that when I don't have much discretionary time, it's quite easy to do a quick scan of even a long list and make a short preselection. Especially after a few cycles I sort of know what's in there, so the preselection goes a bit quicker.

I also have the impression that with FV it's easier to mix home and work lists, and I felt brave enough to put my daily checklist in there too. I used to have a separate checklist for daily stuff, but putting it in FV makes it easier to process some of those more than once a day, plus I feel it will eventually put more pressure on tasks that I should do sort of daily but am resisting.

Nicole:

<< I also have the impression that with FV it's easier to mix home and work lists >>

Interesting, I am also finding the same thing. Today I combined my work and personal into one list. I am still not sure how it will work out, but it just seemed like the natural thing to do, given Mark's instruction, "If you can't take action on the first item, cross it off and re-enter it at the end."

Thinking a bit more about mixing home and work lists: previously I was easily distracted by seeing home-items on the list while at work and vice versa. That still is somewhat the case when making the preselection, but once the preselection is made I'm not bothered at all by anything between the preselected tasks, so it's much easier to stay in a flow. Plus, once the first task is preselected any following preselection-decisions are made with relevance to that first task, so the focus 'work' easily remains 'work' while preselecting. And all that while still remaining sensitive enough to urgent home-related tasks, such as making a call that has to be made during office hours.

I like it.

Thanks Mark, for coming up with such an elegant and brilliant system!

Yes, I like it too. I think you are right on with your observations of why it works to mix personal and work.