FV and FVP Forum > Order of Preselected Tasks matter?
You can game the system, without violating the rules of the algorithm, by identifying a task further up the chain as Urgent. According to the instructions, anything – already on the list or not, preselected or not – that becomes urgent during execution can be moved or written afresh at the bottom of the list and dotted immediately, thus becoming the active task. This loophole allows for arbitrary re-sorting of the task order within the chain.
March 28, 2012 at 21:56 |
ubi
ubi
If you select 7 tasks and do all 7, what difference would it make which order you do them in? Just don't make this an excuse for selecting more stuff because the selection is supposed to be minimal.
March 29, 2012 at 1:36 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
@ Greenchutney: I am on the same wavelength as ubi and hence, to a certain extent, as Alan.
Having compiled the preselected task list, I have noticed myself scanning this list many times while following the FV rules to reverse work on it. Sometimes I suddenly realise that one of the preselected tasks is now more urgent than others. I simply follow the rule, move it to the end of the preselected list and follow the rule to always work on the "last" dotted task. I like to create positive habits, which help me to focus and to keep the straight line even in stormy times :)
At the end of the day the statement of Alan is true that, while strictly following Mark's rules - which by the way are turning out to be very flexible, the point is of getting things done and not to worry too much about the system ;)
Having compiled the preselected task list, I have noticed myself scanning this list many times while following the FV rules to reverse work on it. Sometimes I suddenly realise that one of the preselected tasks is now more urgent than others. I simply follow the rule, move it to the end of the preselected list and follow the rule to always work on the "last" dotted task. I like to create positive habits, which help me to focus and to keep the straight line even in stormy times :)
At the end of the day the statement of Alan is true that, while strictly following Mark's rules - which by the way are turning out to be very flexible, the point is of getting things done and not to worry too much about the system ;)
March 29, 2012 at 7:01 |
Stefano F. Rausch
Stefano F. Rausch
My selections recently have been resembling a closed list, and I have at times treated them as such (unordered). I realised that just yesterday. Since then, I focused on getting ordered chains again, and they look much, much different from my previous "closed lists". That is all due to the asking the "What do I want to do before ...?" question.
I am still unsure about the difference in effectiveness between my closed lists and ordered chains, but at least to mine the latter seems smaller and much more fun to do. It may be that it has the "climbing up a staircase" effect (or even "taking the escalators") that the chain gives me, while a closed list can leave me with a disarray of tasks to do.
I am still unsure about the difference in effectiveness between my closed lists and ordered chains, but at least to mine the latter seems smaller and much more fun to do. It may be that it has the "climbing up a staircase" effect (or even "taking the escalators") that the chain gives me, while a closed list can leave me with a disarray of tasks to do.
March 29, 2012 at 11:05 |
Natalia
Natalia
An ordered chain places first the task you want to do most and last the task you have to do for some time. It automatically creates a seemless difficulty increase so that when we hit the last task it doesn't seem so difficult as it looked. This is genius.
March 29, 2012 at 11:31 |
isd
isd
Unless the world has changed in the meantime, the only interesting answers to "what would I like to do before...?" should be further down the list. Nothing stopping me from reviewing the entire list each time, but if a task toward the top didn't attract me before I selected the current one, then none of them should grab my attention now.
I've been keeping my chains quite short, 3-4 items, which also means that my cycles back to the top are fairly frequent.
I started FV with a fresh brain-dump. I'm cautiously adding items from my SF list by including a recurring item "move 3 items from SF". Sometimes I add any 3 that attract my attention, sometimes the oldest or newest 3 items. That's giving me a good blend of things that have my current attention, without neglecting the backlog. Obviously, as I look through SF for items, I get to cross out things that I've already duplicated in FV.
So far so good.
I've been keeping my chains quite short, 3-4 items, which also means that my cycles back to the top are fairly frequent.
I started FV with a fresh brain-dump. I'm cautiously adding items from my SF list by including a recurring item "move 3 items from SF". Sometimes I add any 3 that attract my attention, sometimes the oldest or newest 3 items. That's giving me a good blend of things that have my current attention, without neglecting the backlog. Obviously, as I look through SF for items, I get to cross out things that I've already duplicated in FV.
So far so good.
March 29, 2012 at 11:41 |
Philip
Philip
@Natalia, you are probably very right. By asking the question, "What do I want to do before ...?", by definition one must be creating a "ladder" or "staircase" with increasing levels of fun/easy/urgent to do tasks as you move down the list. If you are not very deliberate with the question, you may end up with a bunch of tasks with no structure. Not necessarily a bad thing as long as you finish the closed list. But, the working flow is probably very different.
I will focus on the creating an ordered chain again and see how it feels compared to closed list.
GC
I will focus on the creating an ordered chain again and see how it feels compared to closed list.
GC
March 30, 2012 at 1:02 |
Greenchutney
Greenchutney
Greenchutney:
I did try working the preselect list as a closed list in my development of the system (btw no one has yet managed come up with a tweak to the system which I haven't already tested during the development phase!)
The first thing I discovered was that I didn't do the tasks in the order I would have done them had I stuck to the reverse selection rule.
The second thing I discovered was that doing the tasks out of order seemed to destroy the rationale behind the order.
As several people have remarked there are some very subtle linkages between tasks in the ladder. So once I'd done a task in the wrong order, the question arose "Why these tasks rather than any others?" For instance, if I'd selected Email for the ladder because I wanted to do it before writing a blog post, and I then did the blog post before the email, what was the rationale for having email in the ladder at all?
So what happened was that the entire selection process got undermined. I'm not saying that it didn't work at all, just that it didn't have the flow of the present FV process.
I did try working the preselect list as a closed list in my development of the system (btw no one has yet managed come up with a tweak to the system which I haven't already tested during the development phase!)
The first thing I discovered was that I didn't do the tasks in the order I would have done them had I stuck to the reverse selection rule.
The second thing I discovered was that doing the tasks out of order seemed to destroy the rationale behind the order.
As several people have remarked there are some very subtle linkages between tasks in the ladder. So once I'd done a task in the wrong order, the question arose "Why these tasks rather than any others?" For instance, if I'd selected Email for the ladder because I wanted to do it before writing a blog post, and I then did the blog post before the email, what was the rationale for having email in the ladder at all?
So what happened was that the entire selection process got undermined. I'm not saying that it didn't work at all, just that it didn't have the flow of the present FV process.
March 30, 2012 at 1:25 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
<< The second thing I discovered was that doing the tasks out of order seemed to destroy the rationale behind the order. >>
Mark, I agree. Interestingly, after being conscious of asking the right question, the constructed list does become a ladder and there just is no incentive to juggle things around.
GC
Mark, I agree. Interestingly, after being conscious of asking the right question, the constructed list does become a ladder and there just is no incentive to juggle things around.
GC
March 31, 2012 at 22:14 |
Greenchutney
Greenchutney
This was touched upon in the "ACB Problem" thread.
http://www.markforster.net/fv-forum/post/1759774
I am not looking for a perfect sorting algorithm as Seraphim puts it. But, having the flexibility to let the intuition to play out during the task execution (in addition to task selection) may be a good idea?
It is early days. I really don't want to tweak anything in FV but from my mindset perspective, this seems to flow better. But I wonder if it breaks the subtle workings of FV in some way?
GC