Get Everything Done

I started FV one week ago.
It has broken down twice already.

The first time was when a task became preselected that had stopped being clear what the next action was. I am one of those for whom the GTD division between goals and actions saved my life. My problem is that I unconciously avoid working towards goals where I haven’t taken the time to think, to figure out the next possible action. (This thinking is hard, but I can do it—but I think that’s why weekly reviews are dreadful sometimes, you really have to get in this “mode”.) Famously, Mark doesn’t have this problem, but I do, big time.

In this case, the item was to continue working on making an outline (like a mind-map) of a book I want to learn. I had worked on it on many chains before, but the book is DRM (I have postponed trying to crack it, after a couple of failed attempts) and the program I used to read it on my good computer kept crashing so I wasn’t really able to continue doing it.

Having this at the top of my list correlated with strong procrastination from even getting close to it on the chain.
I lost a day and a half just reading, being a mess… I had to really force myself to make do with a makeshift solution (putting the good computer—to write on—side by side with the bad computer where I could read the book). This solution is sure to be obvious to any reader but for me the problem is less coming up with next actions, but to overcome the strong unconscious resistance that comes with these unclear items.

The second time the system was derailed—and I’m kind of in the middle of this right now, but it’s only been a couple of hours, so I’m not freaked out yet—it was based around the following issue. Some tasks are of the nature that you want to do them again, soon, but not as the very next thing. But since you just worked on them, they’re at the bottom of the list.

One way to work on them soon again would be to deliberately make a one item chain, e.g. just working the thing at the top of the list for a while, and maybe I’ll need to do that more in these situations. However, there’s no clear cue to remind me of that. What happens is that I’ve worked on this exhilarating but exhausting task (usually either the most urgent task and I’ve made good progress on it, or the opposite—some “slacker” task like watching a TV series or reading a book for a while) and re-write it, thinking “Soon again, my friend”. I make a long chain (I use the question and the current benchmark following the rules as written, which gives me wildly varying chain lengths. I’ve ended up with one-item chains and I’ve had much longer, too) and as I get to the end, I see this beloved task and go “Noo! Not right away, but not after like eight things, either!” It’s something I want to do but I just crawled out of it, barely making it alive—going in again immediately would defeat the whole purpose of using this system.

In this case, the item happened to be the only really urgent item on the entire list—working on my paper for school. It’s one of the biggest projects for me in at least two years and I want to little-and-often it.
In fact, that brings me to the third issue, one that hasn’t derailed the system on it’s own yet but certainly affected my enjoyment of it, and, I think, contributed to the feeling of procrastination and helplessness the two times it did break down.

During the week that I’ve used FV, I’ve kept on being depressed—even becoming more depressed, as I broke a long streak of procrastination and did good work on the apartment, taking care of long neglected tasks like replanting the flowers, working towards fixing the lights, work on decluttering, getting a broken window fixed. I was doing good but I wasn’t feeling good, I still had slacker guilt.

Yesterday evening it just so happened that a task that had become more and more neglected became preselected.
Working on this paper for school. I’m several weeks behind. Initially when I started working with FV, I worked on it little-and-often, but I was doing a certain type of prepatory work (I have my own weird process with lots of outlines). When that finished, I didn’t select it for any chains. It didn’t feel big enough, it didn’t feel like something I wanted to do before the benchmark item. It’s hard to be conscious about these things. When it got preselected I made the chain long, but when I finally got to it, I worked on it for hours. The next step (which I had written down—I tend to rephrase the items as I rewrite them to evoke some feeling of the next action) turned out to be pretty fun, but challenging. I realized why I had been feeling bad and having slacker guilt. This is the only real urgent project on the list. This is the one thing on the list that is most important to do during this spring—anything else might be important, but not more important now than, say, half a year from now. The high stakes makes me procrastinate so I need tricks to make me alternate working on it with other things—which I why I turned to FV. But there is nothing in FV that inherently makes me select it often. My list (I’ve mashed together home, computer, phone and similar context into one, but I keep errands, school, grocery store and so on separate since I can’t really work on them at home) only has eleven items on it right now, but that’s enough (the items are big enough) for this school work to come up than daily.

Obviously, now that I’ve realized that this is the one project I need to put a few hours in as often as I can, I could be more conscious about it, but that wouldn’t be trusting the system.
I could go against FV to try to both select it almost every chain, and to make any chain following a chain ending with this schoolwork deliberately short. This would result in, best case, a sense of lack of trust in the system. Worst case, a resistance of working the system at all, and doing nothing instead.

Or I could try to forget this epiphany and try to learn trust in the system. I would feel like I was at the bottom of the ocean whenever I wasn’t working on this urgent task, but in the end hopefully I’d be finished with it and my brain would know that working FV is, in a sense, working on the most important thing, albeit indirectly.

I’ve decided to stick with FV for three more weeks.

BTW, I’m new, or at least I don’t think I’ve posted before. I’ve looked at this forum since the Autofocus 1 days, but I never tried one of Mark’s systems before. I read about them as they came out but they never appealed to me enough to try them before.

Sandra

PS
Eleven items, but I also have a huge backlog and someday/maybe–list that I could look into if I wanted to, from before I started FV. None of the things on that list are urgent, I think, and my FV version has been growing fast enough on its own so I didn’t want to inflate it. I don’t think a longer list would help me with my schoolwork angst.

Hi Sandra
Sorry for this but could you be more precise about what you mean i did not understand anything.
There are many foreigners like me (i am french) so we need short sentences and precises questions to be able to help you the best we can. I am also interested by what you mean by the division beetween goals and action in gtd would you explain the method and be more precise about what happened to you ;) thanks

I’m also a foreigner so it’s hard to express myself clearly.

I’ll answer your question about GTD. In GTD you have one list for all your goals “projects” and one for “next actions”. This has been discussed in this forum a lot.

Sandra, for the big school paper, could you block off a few hours a day to work on nothing but that? Then use FV for the rest of the day "guilt free" (without the big paper on the list since you already did a block of time on it)

>>My problem is that I unconciously avoid working towards goals where I haven’t taken the time to think, to figure out the next possible action<< When you have a task that's like this, taking the time to think through the possible actions 'counts' as 'little & often' on FV, so you can do the thinking & planning then cross it off the list and re-write the next action on the list

I’ll try that blocking-off thing, Lillian. Thank you.

»taking the time to think through the possible actions 'counts' as 'little & often' on FV, so you can do the thinking & planning then cross it off the list and re-write the next action on the list«
That’s true, but I seem to be less likely to select these unclear actions because I don’t even really realize that they are unclear. I *think* I know what I have to do (and resist them), but I don’t know, I really need to think them through.

Your post is very long. So instead of addressing everything, here are some great posts you should skim through. 

On Task phrasing:
http://www.markforster.net/fv-forum/post/1780322

On Projects to next actions:
http://www.markforster.net/blog/2011/2/22/whats-next-progress-report-2.html

On Goals:
http://www.markforster.net/blog/2006/8/21/getting-to-your-goals-step-one.html

As for the school paper, don't complicate things. Take out a sheet of paper. At the top write 'school paper submitted'and at the bottom write 'school paper not submitted'. 

Now spend some time to write all the necessary tasks in between to get you from bottom to top. Now either use the FV rules directly in this list. Or add some next actions to your master list. 

As for the 'clarifying' next actions' and what you meant by your writing tasks, I suggest using the "get____" structure which I posted a link to above. 

Also little and often approach should be used on all tasks so nothing falls behind. It should be used frequently more so on items that are growing urgent (like school paper).

Items in your someday/maybe lists and backlog should be 'pulled' from as you can handle more things to deal with. In other words, work on the 11 items, build consistency in the system and then gradually take items from your backlog and s/m list. If you attempt to add everything at once you'll definitely break down again because you'll get overwhelmed. I would say, breakdown those 11 items into as many small concrete steps you can think of and make your list easy to work on. Once that's complete then start to add from the backlog and s/m.

Sandra,

I don't know if this suggestion will be helpful to you, but it helps me every day. It gets to the question of "what's in a day's work?" or "when is it okay to take a break from the list (until tomorrow)?" I have used this as an adjunct to FV and the AFs, etc. Enough preamble. . .

The suggestion is to identify your Big Three tasks to be accomplished each day. You can copy these to a separate list, or highlight or tag them within the FV list in some way. I write the numerals 1, 2, and 3 in pencil, next to the corresponding task lines in the far left margin (left of the dots). I erase each of these numerals when the corresponding task is actioned (or at the end of the day in the rare case that one is not actioned), so that the margin is clear again tomorrow.

If you do this, your School Paper task will presumably have the #1 label next to it on most days, so when preselecting it should stand out and get dotted on one of the first chains for the day. If you're working little-and-often, and don't feel that you did enough on one pass, you can relabel it #1 when you rewrite it at the end; otherwise don't relabel it and make sure you preselect your #2 and #3 before the day is done. When all your Big 3 items have been dealt with, you can take a break and celebrate, or do bonus work.

Hope this helps.

Everyone:

Thank you for your advice. Here’s my update.

FV worked for a day more, then the next day it broke down again, for a fourth reason: I finished a work that I was so proud of finishing (something as small as drawing one page of comics) and I was so proud and weirded out by accomplishment that it was hard to start a new chain. I just wanted to show everyone, re-read the page and so on.

That’s why I haven’t been here, either. It was actually kind of nice to get away from the computer.

But after three days of it being broken down, I got back on the horse again today. One of my girlfriends phoned me and said that she was starting FV, too, so I thought I might as well get my act together.

I’ve been selecting the school thing more often, too. (To put it into perspective, it’s for the local equivalent to a bachelor’s degree, i.e. supposed to be a couple of months work.) Turns out that it’s not just procrastinating—it’s often things that I need to wait for my tutor to answer, and so on, to clarify things. But I’ve been doing a good amount work on it, too, if only a little less than ideal.

Now that I know how good it feels to get progress on this hated task, I tend to select it more often. Even if I’m unsure on what is next, I sometimes want to select it, it is gradually becoming an exception to my clarity issue. It’s still a problem project, though.

I tried blocking off time but ended up doing nothing, just procrastinated and didn’t even want to get into “work mode”. Just one more cup of tea, read a few more books before I get out of bed, that sort of thing.

Smileypete:
« If you suspect these tasks are on the list, maybe add a task at the end 'read list and try to clarify any unclear tasks'»

Very good idea! This could be just the trigger I need for the clarification Seraphim described below.

« Also FV should be great for ancilliary tasks like getting your study tidy, PC sorted, so it's all ready for when you block out quality time for your big project. »

True. As much as I’ve been miserable with FV so far (still determined to try to stick with it for the full month), everything is clean and a lot of small things have been “magically” fixed. :)

So FV is doing good things in my life, even though I don’t think it is very fun. I even feel resistance against the fun things I put in there as a treat to myself, like read comics or watch sitcoms.

GMBW:

«Also little and often approach should be used on all tasks so nothing falls behind. It should be used frequently more so on items that are growing urgent (like school paper).»

This is a medium sized big project, not some single-page affair, so of course I try to little-and-often it as good as I can.

Ubi:

«as an adjunct to FV […] identify your Big Three tasks»

This is familiar from Zen Habits and other places. The closest I got to trying it was with David Seah’s ETP, which I’ve tried from time to time but found really hard to keep up with sustainably.

For me, I think GTD and FV are somewhat orthogonal and you can dial one or the other up or down to your liking. Keep a separate project list, or not. Split in to context, or not. Work your lists FV method, or not.

The Big Three style though, I think I have a very hard time combining with a bigger list. It just becomes too much. I don’t know, and maybe I’ll give the Big Three method another chance in the future.

Daily agendas really don’t sit well with me because I get very demoralized if I don’t make my day’s goals, whether a more free form list can surprise me in that I sometimes get a lot more done than expected.

Your tweak, to put it in the margin, sounds like a good one, though.

Seraphim:

«When that happens, I decide that I need to "clean things up" and start looking for all the things that are unclear, because I want to do them before anything else. [followed by detailed, clear advice on this process]»

This is maybe the best idea. I need to learn another trigger for this because it doesn’t really stand out to me that way. Maybe I’ll try that whenever something unclear gets preselected, I will do a “clarify chain”.


Mark:

«Of course I have this problem. But when I have a project on my list for which I don't have any idea what to do next, I automatically make my first action to be to work out what the next action is.»

But this is a big difference.

For me, instead of making such an action, I tend to not even be
consciously aware of the problem. It just becomes an item with very
high resistance. I *think* I know what I have to do, but I don’t—I
need to take a small step back and spend five seconds to actually
think about the next action, but I’m sometimes not aware that that’s
what I need to do. It just becomes “work on XYZ? ugh, no, I don’t want
to do that before the benchmark”. Or if XYZ is preselected—“work on
the chain? but it will lead to XYZ… not fun…”

That’s why, for me personally and YMMV, the “Get _____” structure seems like the worst
idea in the universe. I do best when I put on my lists what to
actually do. Active verbs are my friends.

Sandra wrote >>FV worked for a day more, then the next day it broke down again, for a fourth reason: I finished a work that I was so proud of finishing (something as small as drawing one page of comics) and I was so proud and weirded out by accomplishment that it was hard to start a new chain. I just wanted to show everyone, re-read the page and so on<<

I'm not sure saying FV 'broke down' in this case is the best way to describe it. You worked hard to finish your work and took a few days off. Then it sounds like you came back to the list and went back to work. That doesn't seem like anything's broken. IIt's not necessarily a 'bad' thing to take a break from work when you need to. Of course, if you stay away from the list for 3-4 days everytime you finish something, it's going to take a long time to get through the list! :) The trick is finding the right balance between celebrating an accomplishment with an excited phone call to a friend vs a 4-day weekend!

Mark:

« So why not add that to the list? e.g.

"Celebrate finishing Project X" »

« So why not spell it out? e.g.

"Identify first action for Project Y" »

The first idea seems good and I will try it.

The second idea is what I’m trying but the phrasing trip me up
sometimes. I think I know what to do, but I really don’t. If I was
more aware why I resisted the task, I would spell it out.

Hopefully practice will make perfect.

Cricket:
« Try getting a full 8 hours sleep for an entire week -- plus a weekend! For the first few days you'll feel even worse. That's because your body thinks that now is a good time to clear out all those germs it's been holding off for the past age. Also exercise and eat well. Again, a full week plus weekend, to get past your body's first reaction. »

While it’s true that I am tired all the time, it doesn’t seem to be directly related to my sleeping patters. I wake up regularly every day including weekends and I try to get to bed early, too.
It usually takes at least a couple of months for me to get back on track when my sleeping gets out of whack (usually coincides with “daylight savings”… grr… second worst idea in the universe), but I’ve been doing ok sleepwise for a while now.

Excercise might be the thing, though.

« If this doesn't work, check with doctor and school counseling office. A low-grade infection or blood-sugar issue or low iron is easy to fix. Most school counseling offices have study-skills sessions. It helps to see other students in the same situation. »

I’m constantly getting things checked up. My next big blood check up is in june.

« Plan ahead for when you finish a project. Plan to have a short celebration, then get back to work. »

Similar to Mark’s suggestion. Wilco!

« This discipline of identifying what needs to be done, and knowing how to do that step, is a valuable skill. Handling this sort of project and workload is one of the most important things you will learn. At school, they know how much work you have, and how difficult each project will be. They want to make you work hard -- very hard! -- but not break you. Your boss will give you more work than you can possibly do, with very little guidance. Maybe not your first boss -- some of them look to the long run and want to help you learn -- but certainly your second. »

A few years ago GTD really worked out well for me and that coincided with a big job that I did pull off, so I’m happy about that. But I’m interested in FV since it’s more focused. I find that things get preselected that would never ever have been selected in GTD, and sometimes they take like five minutes and really improve my home. (To get a similar effect back in the GTD days, sometimes I would use dice to select things from on my context lists.)

Lillian:
« The trick is finding the right balance between celebrating an accomplishment with an excited phone call to a friend vs a 4-day weekend! «

Hopefully the more projects I finish the less celebration I will need? We’ll see.

Alan:
« Following Lillian, maybe it's a matter of balance. All work and no play makes me avoid work. Adding some fun items into the FV list makes it easier to continue. »

I do put fun items in the FV list and sometimes it works great, sometimes it even makes the fun things not fun. When I’m doing something boring I’m only looking forward to the next fun thing on the list, and when I’m doing that I’m still stressing out about the boring items.
But this could be a question of habits.
I’m still dedicated to trying one month of FV.
The last few days it has worked very well.

Thanks for the tips. The plus/minus thing sounds like a much faster way to do what I would eventually end up having to do anyway.

This is what happened: I decided to give up on the system and divide my days into either working on the paper or total vacation. So my “giving it a chance for a month” never happened. I guess I have to do that again sometime.
But I did finish the paper. 43 pages (sounds little, but…). (As you guys were clear about, FV is for discretionary time and as long as I had that thing, and only that thing, hanging over me, my time was spoken for.)