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FV and FVP Forum > The ACB Problem...

This was already brought up once before but I don't recall anyone addressing it.

Let's say I have a list of three items. My list is:
A
C
B

A is my first unactioned item, so it gets a dot. I scan my list and ask myself, "Do I want to do C before I do A?" I say yes and put a dot. Then I scan and ask myself, "Do I want to do B before I do C?" I say no and my ladder is complete...

Unfortunately, I want to do B before I do A. With my current ladder, that won't happen.
March 16, 2012 at 16:48 | Registered CommenterjFenter
Seraphim addressed this in another post.
"Want to do X before Y" is not a transitive relation.
The point of FV is not to get us to do actions in some ideal order. The point is to get us to do more.
I've seen this confusion in a number of posts. The FV question is about order: "x BEFORE y."
But the point of FV is not to satisfy our desires in any particular order.
FV is a game to trick us to nudge us to do what our "higher" self, "rational" self, "future" self, or whatever self, deems more important than our distraction-seeking present self.
March 16, 2012 at 17:09 | Registered Commentermoises
Has anyone else read Lakein's book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life? It might have been the first book I ever read on time management.
In his book, he presents his eponymous question: "What is the best use of my time right now?"
Move over Lakein, here comes Forster's question: "What do I want to do before X?"
March 16, 2012 at 17:14 | Registered Commentermoises
There are always going to be tradeoffs. You can look for the perfect sorting algorithm -- but what will it take to maintain a system like that? You'd basically need to rewrite your list every time in order or "want to do before". Too much overhead.

The application of Colley's Rule in FV gives you 80% or 90% of the value at 10% or 20% of the cost of a full sort.

Practically, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Most of the time I don't think we really need to have so much precision in sorting our tasks. We mainly just need to DO them.

If there really are dependencies -- you really MUST do something in a particular order -- then here is what usually happens to me. Using your example, let's say I want to do B before A, because B is actually a prerequisite of A. Working your ladder, I'd first work on C, and then I'd come to A. But then I'd realize, "I can't do this because B isn't done yet." So, I'd work on B instead because it's all part of the same project. And then I'd work on A. If I stopped halfway through B, I'd cross out A and B, and re-enter them both at the end of the list, in no particular order. Or, I'd realize that A actually can't be started yet, so I'd take it off the list altogether, and only put B.

In other words, there's lots of ways to handle this.

This happened to me yesterday. I scanned my 600 tasks, and in the course of doing so, I chose about 25 tasks -- just simply following the rules.

About 10 of those tasks were all related to one pressing urgent project -- completing a file import into a database. This is why they all kept getting preselected. Some of them needed to be done "first", but for many of them, it was hard to say exactly in what order they needed to be done.

In the end it didn't matter. When I actually started working through the 25 tasks, the first one was "Read email from Mike RE import process". This wasn't actually the first item that needed to be done for the import project. There were some other items that needed to be done first. But the main thing is: I got started working on that project. I actually got most of it finished. By the time I came to the other 9 tasks related to the import project, most of them were already done and I just crossed them off and moved on.

Other projects aren't quite so simple as this one was. Sometimes I really need to spend time thinking through the dependencies. In these more complex cases, seeing "Task A related to complex project N" on my list prompts me to open up my project folder and figure out what I really need to do for that project. I make sure Task A is actually captured there, in my project folder somewhere. After reviewing the project, I enter project-related tasks that can be started now (with no dependencies) onto the list. Maybe I actually mark some of them as urgent and get them done right now.

Example: "Talk to wife about the greenhouse" appeared on my list and got a dot. When it came time to action this task, I remembered about 10 other things I needed to discuss with my wife. Many of them were more urgent than the greenhouse. So I got my list of things to talk about, added "greenhouse", went and found my wife, and talked about a few things on the list in the 5 minutes available. Greenhouse wasn't actually discussed. But that was OK -- more pressing things WERE discussed. And Greenhouse is still captured on the list for later.

Some of these examples presuppose that you are keeping separate project documentation and separate ongoing agenda documentation. I do keep a running list of things to discuss with my wife, for example. I have another list of things to discuss with my manager, and other lists for different teams and coworkers. And I have project folders. These are separate from FV. But the actual tasks DO go onto FV, and reminders to REVIEW these project and agenda lists also go into FV.

This is all based on Marks' article on project management from the SF days:
http://www.markforster.net/blog/2011/2/22/whats-next-progress-report-2.html
March 16, 2012 at 17:50 | Registered CommenterSeraphim
Mental trick: Evidently B and A are connected or you wouldn't be worried about this. So forget about B for a moment as it doesn't fit. Do C, then A. Except when you go to do A, actually do the B prerequisite of A.

But I wouldn't usually do that. If I see B on the list, I'll just tag it and do it after C because I know it belongs.
March 16, 2012 at 17:51 | Registered CommenterAlan Baljeu
The scenario as specified is not a problem at all, if you follow the FV instructions. Dot A then C. Do C. Realize that B is now urgent, so dot B (or move it to the end, then dot it, if you want to follow Mark's instructions precisely). Do B. Do A. Done.
March 16, 2012 at 18:40 | Registered Commenterubi
jFenter:

ubi's answer in the previous post is correct in theory.

I say "in theory" not to disparage his answer, but because in most real life situations it is not going to matter if you do A, C, B, rather than B, A, C. So you might have preferred B, A, C - so what? You've done all three tasks.

It's only necessary to use ubi's answer if B has to be done before A. And even then, if B is a necessary precursor to A, you might count B as part of task A and just do it anyway as Alan suggests.
March 16, 2012 at 23:34 | Registered CommenterMark Forster