Get Everything Done

An older iteration of Mark's work on the final version (perhaps completely different, for all I know) had something to do with "1-to-7", which he abandoned before completing the final version in its final form. I'm curious whether Mark has shared -- or Mark, whether you'd be willing to share -- the rules of that old iteration, or one of them if there were multiple. I'm just curious what it entailed.

It sounded really interesting at the time! My curiosity is still piqued.

In any case, though, thank you for creating the final version, as well as the others. I use FV often and find it very helpful. I'm a graduate student in electrical engineering, and at the end of the semester now I'm finding myself wishing I had used FV more consistently instead of slacking off. I'm going to use it to get a lot of reading done over the winter break, anyway.

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. Let me see if I have this right: Did you re-categorize everything daily, or simply change the order of the categories? I understand how you renumbered them, but I'm not sure whether the number associated with each category changes accordingly, or whether you're essentially pushing things into new categories. The latter seems to make sense for the first few categories, but then how would "new stuff" become "recurring daily"?

Ah, I see. So it's a conveyor belt toward expiration (like DWM) but with 6 or 7 different kinds of incoming tasks added at different points on the conveyor belt. Fascinating.

I don't suppose you recall what category or categories of incoming work were primarily overloading the system?

Mark,

Thank you again for sharing this with us. Ever since this thread, I have been brainstorming possible ways to make something like this work. One thing that occurred to me early is that you have too many pages, and therefore too many new items before they start getting weeded out. But decreasing the pages, by itself, is not enough. So I've kept thinking.

An idea has come to mind lately that might be heresy, but let me bounce it off you. Suppose we put "new stuff" on page two. This would mean that incoming new stuff gets filtered out rapidly unless you "touch" it. If something new comes in, you have to do *something* on it tomorrow (even just brainstorming) in order to toss it into play, or it gets eliminated. The best part is, you can always put it back in later if you *really* want or need to, because the system will handle new stuff quickly and keep them from piling up over days.

I'm thinking something like this:

1. Urgent
2. New stuff
3. Incomplete
4. Recurring

What are your thoughts?

But there's no dismissal or deletion (other than voluntary), no separate points of incoming work, and it lacks the simplicity and algorithmic nature of Mark's systems, so it's not really comparable to this one. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it - It looks workable and it clearly works for him. But it isn't really comparable to this one, I don't think.

Austin,
I like your thinking.
I've been letting your recent idea 'cook' in my head:
1. Urgent
2. New stuff
3. Incomplete
4. Recurring
I think there could be something of worth here. Of course, how would this work in a conveyor belt type way? We can't really re-number the previous day's page as that would completely change the catagory and associated items (IE: we don't want "reocurring" to become "Incomplete"...

Mark Thomas,

It works the same way as in the system(s) Mark Forster described above. The categories don't label all the tasks on the page - they only label what sort of tasks get put into the page on a given day. So on your first day of working the system, you might do a recurring task and re-write it on page 4. The next day it will be on page 3, where it will be joined by incoming Incomplete tasks. The recurring task doesn't "become" incomplete; it just sits on the page where incomplete tasks are now being entered. If you do it that day, you re-write it on the new page 4. If you don't, then the next day it's on page 2, where it is joined by incoming "New Stuff." Make sense?