Get Everything Done

Thus far, I love simplicity and clarity of FV.

Reluctantly, I have an initial concern/problem. However, before I voice it, I have to admit that I’ve not made the time to read through all the ‘Colley’s List’ threads, so my apologies if the rebuttal to this concern/problem is obvious to the more well-versed of you.

Let’s propose my first unactioned task (benchmark no.1) is ‘Order coffee’

Scanning through, benchmark no.2 is: ‘Email’

Further scanning creates benchmark no.3: ‘Phone client X’

And I decide I don’t want to do anything more than I want to do ‘Phone client X’, so my ‘mini-list’ is (in order of action):

(1) Phone client X
(2) Email
(3) Order coffee.

What worries me is if I have the task 'Voicemail' somewhere on my macro-list after ‘Email’.

I didn’t choose ‘Voicemail’ as a selected task for my mini-list, because I didn’t want to do it more than I wanted to do ‘Email’ … but in retrospect, I wanted to do ‘Voicemail’ far more than I wanted to do ‘Order coffee’.

But I find myself ordering coffee before doing voicemail.

Looking through the guidelines, I can’t see any particular reason NOT to order coffee (although I suppose that depends on the meaning of the term ‘precondition’), as ordering coffee is still relevant; it’s simply not as relevant (or as desirable) as doing voicemail.

Am I missing something obvious or mis-interpreting/mis-reading the guidelines?

Or is this the potential price/risk to pay for a system which will otherwise work brilliantly?

I had a similar concern. What I've found is that yes, I do occasionly do "suboptimal" tasks, but the speed at which I'm able to move through the list rather than dither about what's next seems to make up for it over the horizon of a day. At least so far.

The algorithm FV uses seems to give a "good enough" result over the course of a day. For me the day just flowed.

Neumatist, I don't think you're missing anything. The first 'benchmark' often will be one of your least desirable tasks on the list; that's why it's the oldest unactioned item. The chain is constructed to help you identify a (small) number of successively more desirable tasks to do first. The FV algorithm doesn't say "dot everything below the benchmark that you'd rather do" (which could very well be the entire remainder of the list).

I agree with ubi. What you seem to be suggesting is that you'd want to order your list from "want to do most" to "want to do just a bit more than the oldest task on my list" and then do the tasks from in that order. Obviously that is not going to work, because as ubi says, this could very well be the entire list.

The point is that you have one task that needs to be done (the oldest task), and that you identify some tasks that you'd rather do first and then do them.

Sooner or later "Voicemail" is going to end up on the preselection list because 1) you'll want to do it more than the oldest task on the list and 2) no tasks are remaining between the oldest task and "Voicemail" that you want to do more than both the oldest task *and* voicemail (such as email).

Also... I'm not sure if it's really important, but I think there is a distinction to be made between "I want to do X more than Y" and "I want to do X before Y". The latter is what Mark wrote about in the instructions.

I had a similar thing come up today (day one of FV for me). Using the list items here, I worked my way through the list and I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do before ordering my coffee. So I had an actioned list of 1, and I ordered my coffee, then I started the list over again and I had my coffee.

Also, you don't have to COMPLETE each item on your preselected list -- you only need to TAKE SOME ACTION on each item. So instead of completing the coffee order, maybe you can just start by deciding what kind of coffee; look up the price; decide where to buy it; etc. And then rewrite the task at the end of your list and get on with your next preselecting round.

How could anything be more important than coffee?

Or, rather, how could anything come BEFORE coffee?

[To Tom C and JFenter: I take your point, but if you had tasted the coffee in our office, you'd understand my predicament]


Thank you for your replies. Very helpful.

I was particularly taken by Tom L's assertion that having to do the occasional 'sub-optimal' task is a small price to pay for a system which flows well; as well as Ubi/Tijl's assertion that if you only stuck to the initial benchmark, then you'd have a heck of a long list of selected tasks - which would more or less defeat the purpose.

I also note the important distinction between 'wanting to do a task more than another' and 'wanting to do a task before another'.

However, in the case I initially presented, I wanted to do voicemail both before ordering coffee as well as more than ordering coffee (which, by the way, was arranging the bulk order of coffee for our team; not ordering my own personal coffee - just in case anyone thought I placed my daily pick-up from Starbucks on my list. I don't choose to enter such tasks on a list, and the last time I purchased a Starbucks on the way to work was approximately 10 years ago when I was single, childless and more care-free with my money than I wish to remember).

I suppose this leaves the question as:

Why do we have to start (or more accurately, end) our selected list with the first unactioned task? Why can't our starting point be the first task which stands out?

Is it to avoid having to include a formal dismissal system? Or is it to (deceptively) get us to deal with those tasks which we might otherwise fail to confront if we didn't have the help of structured procrastination?

Please feel free to point me in the direction of a different thread if this is being answered elsewhere.

Neumatist, Can't remember where I read this, but I think that primarily it's the second, to force us to either work on things we've been ignoring, admit that we never will.