Get Everything Done

I am going to give the following a try: Prepare a list of tasks/projects that you want to complete this week.

Work through the list FV style.

All other stuff gets moved to a "someday/later list"

Advantage: Get the feeling that you are "done" for the week.
Disadvantage: Weekly overhead in the form of performing a weekly plan

What do you think?

I have a recurring task in my FV list "FV list pruned." When I feel my list is getting to burdened, I dot this task. To prune my list, I judge each task's urgency by asking myself, "When would I like to have begun this task?" I grab the first answer that occurs to me. If the answer sounds like something temporally close, like "soon, this week, in a few days, tomorrow, today, already," or something similar, then I leave it on the list. If the answer indicates something further away like, "I'm not sure, Someday, Later, in a month or so, this summer," or the like, then I either cross it off as no longer relevant (per the FV rules), or I defer it. Deferring a task mean moving it to my "Maybe Someday" list, or my calendar (which functions as my "Tickler File" by reminding me of something on a later date) for a specific time in the future. ("Maybe Someday" is the same as a "Someday / Maybe" list, I just like calling it "Maybe Someday" - rolls off the tongue.)

This pruning occurs roughly about once a week, and it allows me to move far future tasks off my FV list, keeping it focused on the more immediate present, without the weekly overhead of replanning everything from scratch.

Mark: One of your initial posts illustrating the FV showed pages from a loose leaf notebook (many were guessing about what the "dots" were for). The notebook looked very nice and appeared to be leather. What kind (brand?) of notebook was it and where can you buy them?

Marshall

It is Friday and now the 5th day in trying the "FV weeklist".

I feel that I mostly achieved what I wanted for the week and I am excited about making my new list for next week.

What I have found in working on this list during the week:
- As ideas/tasks comes up I still add them to the FV weeklist.
- The new items either gets moved of the list when selecting my new chain IF I do not want to focus on this item in the current week.
- My items on the list averaged between 10-20 items. This enabled me to really focus.
- This method helps with visualizing the week to come and what you want to get out of the week.

Lillian: Why only your home list and not your work list?

MattewS: What I am trying is to list 10 "project/goals" for myself. This 10 must be the most NB I can work on at this stage. So in my FV Weeklist I add tasks/mini projects that will help me accomplish these goals. I am also trying not to start a new "project/goals" if one is still in progress...One at a time principle. (I know this is not always possible). How is your system progressing?

I love what Matthew said "the issue I have with all the systems, and yes this may just be my way of seeing or not seeing, is I get lost in the multiple projects, choices, time. So while I'm fine on any particular project, getting it done on time, or even multiple projects all of a for client type - I get lost in muddle with long term and short term and life planning and personal and new ideas for personal not paid speculative projects and what to do today vs later..." This is exactly what I feel and live.

This is interesting because Whan thimothy Ferris in his book the 4 hour workweek says that we have to make a choice about stuff he does nt explain how he does it himself. And I never found any explaination about this. I mailed him and asked for an answer but he didnt answer.
Anyway,

The question is how can we collect and organize all that stuff ? And the secont may, for me as important as the first one, how do I choose and decide what to do at the right time and for the hight payoff ?.

When our work becomes un manageable it has a real meaning and believe me or not that's indeed the case for now.

I have no many solution only one which works for me. Not perfectly but it works. it is GTD organization. I mean not really the processing part but the collecting, organizing, review part.

This is how I do and I hope this will help someone in the forum as you helped me so much all of you.

1. Is to understand that all must be collected in one place I use for this Omnifocus. It is my whare house. I stock everything. Info, tasks, ideas, projects, in all domains personnal, profesionnal in every perpective. then clean what must be. Then I am sure I did not forget any information and so on. I can the seach by keyword what I need and put dead line in this information. Let's say it is a kind of AF or SF List except that it is collected by Inbox and projects.

2. Is to extract from the database all what I really want per day. The most priority for me is when. If I do it know this is because it is important. I prepare my day at least in the evening or if I can't in the early morning. I extract on my paper note book left page for a kind of corneil notes organized by project commercial at the top, administration at the bottom. I carefully choose. Right page is for incoming notes during the day or information about the project

3. Review and report. Then When I feel like I report in a few words my stuff in Omnifocus. Later I will carefully choose the stuff I will do asap I use for that context with What, When, who and where.

So i dont use OF for acting. I use oF for collecting, organizing and sorting.
I also use daily FV list to do what I am focus on at the present time.

The system is completed by perspective review by horizon I will may be explain one time if some are interested and when they will be organized, what there ar'nt for now.

Hope that's help

@ Nico : I do like your idea, which does remind me of the Big Rocks Leo Babauta is talking about in Zen To Done.

What I will start from next week on is to choose 5 [ + 2 ] Big Rocks for the week, which I do commit to in substancially bringing forward. Why 5 [ + 2 ]? Well, the working days in the week are ( normally ) 5 and 2 days at the weekend. Furthermore, these will be projects and not single tasks. On each day I will additionally choose 3 [ + 2 ] Most Important Tasks, which I definitely have to work on / complete.

To sum it up: I will have at least 4 [ + 2 ] tasks + the oldest on the FV list, totalling to 5 [ + 2 ], which will be the first preselected list of the day to be knocked off in the morning! That should be more than rewarding and improve the focus on the important stuff :)

Thanks for reminding me.

Nico- my list at work doesn't get that big that fast. Of course, most of the items are at the "work on project X" level rather 15 tasks related to project X

matthewS:

I will expand on my previous post to give a more clarity on my current thinking and to expand on my definitions:

Project/goals (PG): I define this as anything that will take more than one session to complete.

PG's are either urgent or not. The urgent PG's must always be on your current workable list. If you hide this then you will always feel that there is something lurking somewhere that is going to bite you.

For non-urgent PG's (NPG) you have a choice to add them to you current workable list or not. But they most probably are the one's that is important to yourself. (Steven Covey wrote that these are the not urgent but important items). The urgent PG's are normally important to somebody else!

The problem with NPG's are that they can easily flood your workable list especially in a system like FV where it is a universal capturing and work system combined. During an average day I can easily think of and capture 5 new NPG's. This will flood the system and ensure that you will work on a lot of NPG's a little/often, but not getting any finished or getting the wrong one's finished.

So what to do with NPG's? My thinking is that you must have one NPG on your list. Cannot have zero as this will mean you are only fighting fires. It is difficult to keep only one NPG, but this is my aim.

Which NPG? This is where it comes to the list of 10. The only way you can measure if a NPG is important is to measure it relative to your other NPG's.
If you have a 100 NPG's then select the top 10 from this 100.
From the top 10 you then select 1 NPG to complete and to include in you current work list and focus on getting this done. The other 90 go into someday/maybe list.

Tasks that can get done in less than one session I leave on my daily workable list..no need to move it off.

Do note that I will still capture my NPG ideas during the course of the day and will only move them off when I am making my chain.

I realize reading again the thread that I did not explain how I have my weekly task and projects with Omnifocus. As all items are grouped by contexts which are now, next, later, someday, may be AND most items have a DEADLINE (END DATE) I can use the deadline perspective with sorts all items by project like in my contexts

The result is indeed powerful
When I review my items each day and weekly I give them a context lets say When ? 1. Now
Then I know that it is in the short list of things I must quickly do
Then imagine I find another task and dury the review I decide to do it next (what means when the now tasks will be done) then It goes in the When ? 2. Next

Therefore when I work and act I carefully look at all the projects which appears in the now context. They are classified by project so, let's say I work on MF project:

My now list says "- Read the MF forum about the FV week list", ok its done. I cross it
Then I see all task are done about the project I just go to the project to see if there is an hidden one. Oups Yes !!!! - Think about the tips of matthiews, lilian and miracle about " FV week list". I decide to do it next. I can't just now I must now do My company account. Ok I took a rest but I have to work. Then I give it a new context When: 2.Next (I will do it later because it is very interesting.

Here is how it works.

Each week during the review I determine what I want to do for the next week but not only. For also the month or the quarter. At the end of each quarter I control Where I am in my objectives and where I what to go

It is as simple as that. Configuring the system needed a little time. Time for me to understand how I work and what I want to do. But it is great. Hope this will give helps for omnfocus or toodledo users.

Last Tip
If I need a FV or AF list I have a perspective which sorts all item by creation date one by one without taking care of the project. Then It will be messy but in the spiritual spirit of AF and FV