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The surprising thing was how many pages I filled up with tasks. For the last six months or more, I've been following a modified DIT setup. I usually have 15-20 items on my Task Diary every day, together with about 20 items on my Will Do list (my daily checklist). I couldn’t figure out where the 160 tasks came from!! Even taking re-entries of recurring and unfinished tasks into consideration, this is more than 4x my usual daily list size. I just can't figure out what caused that.
Maybe it has something to do with DIT's process of entering new tasks on tomorrow's Task Diary page -- so the current page doesn't grow nearly so fast (or at all) through the day. But even my typical "today" list plus my typical "tomorrow" list adds up to under half of today's FVP list.
The same explosion of tasks happened a few months ago when I took a short excursion into an interesting old AF variant that someone had re-discovered in the forums. But in that case, it just turned into a mess, and I went back to DIT pretty quickly, whereas FVP did a pretty good job keeping me feeling on top of things.
That might not be a bad thing. I do have a feeling that FVP is guiding me to the highest-value tasks, even if I can't articulate what they are ahead of time. Agile Scrum does the same thing -- it allows you to respond and focus where you'll achieve the greatest value -- but at least during the current sprint, you have a VERY clear picture of what "DONE" looks like, even if you don't have perfect visibility beyond that sprint.
But I can still imagine I will struggle with this aspect of FVP. With my team at work switching to Agile Scrum this year, and myself sticking with DIT all year, I've really become addicted to wanting to know what "DONE" looks like, and then driving to get closure on that. Today wasn't quite so unpredictable as AF can get sometimes, but still a little disorienting.
<< I've really become addicted to wanting to know what "DONE" looks like, and then driving to get closure on that. >>
Here are a couple of things you can do to give yourself a greater sense of closure and/or accomplishment:
1. At the beginning of the day write down a short list (4 or 5 items) of the things you most want to achieve during the day. At the end of the day did you achieve them using FVP?
2. Put the date next to each task as you complete it (e.g. 26). That way you can see exactly what you have achieved during the day. You might even want to write the day's finished tasks out as a separate list at the end of the day and ask yourself "Did I spend the day doing the right stuff? If not what should I have been doing instead?"
<< TASK EXPLOSION! >>
Remember that DIT and FVP work on completely different premises.
DIT is designed to keep you completely up-to-date with your work and to end every day with everything done. To achieve that you have to be very restrictive about what you put on your list.
FVP on the other hand aims to give you the optimum path through a long list of things which you may or may not really want or need to do. That implies that some things on the list (possibly quite a lot of things) may never get done. The success of the system is measured by what you do do, not by what you don't do.
<< DIT is designed to keep you completely up-to-date with your work and to end every day with everything done. To achieve that you have to be very restrictive about what you put on your list. >>
Yes, I think you've nailed it. With DIT I would tend to put ideas, random tasks, etc., into my "Explore" list in OneNote, and wouldn't move it to my DIT list till it had a chance to percolate and I decided it really needed to be done. With FVP, I just put it straight onto the FVP list. I think that's the main difference. It seems obvious, now that you point it out. :-)
<< If I already know I have things I want to do more, I guess I don't feel the need to add it to the list (yet). I get the feeling I can put it on the list later if I want. >>
My memory isn't that good! If I know what I want to do, I need to write it down or I will forget, and be angry at myself later for not capturing it! LOL
<<At the same time, I'm impressed at how much gets done on the list compared to the length of the list. On previous systems, I used to make really long lists and not action very much of it. >>
Yes, in these two days I've been using FVP, I get the same feeling. But I remember that the AF systems had the same kind of result at the start also. I guess we'll have to watch and see how FVP does in the longer term.
<< 1. At the beginning of the day write down a short list (4 or 5 items) of the things you most want to achieve during the day. At the end of the day did you achieve them using FVP? >>
Thanks Mark! This prompted me to try rephrasing "the question": "If you could get only one of these two things done today, which would you choose?" This has been having a very dramatic effect on the way I do my pre-selection, and so far, I really like it! All through the day, I've been repeatedly coming back to those really important things that I want to finish. Whenever I've made good progress on them, then I feel some gentle pressure from the daily recurring things that need attention (like email, or spending a few minutes here!), and then those get pre-selected.
<< 2. Put the date next to each task as you complete it (e.g. 26). That way you can see exactly what you have achieved during the day. >>
Thanks for this, too. Instead of crossing out the completed task, I've decided to highlight it, and write the completion time next to it. This gives me a better sense of what I got done, and how long I took (although it's not as easy to read as a sequential "Done List"). Tomorrow I'll use a different colored highlighter.
<< This prompted me to try rephrasing "the question": "If you could get only one of these two things done today, which would you choose?" This has been having a very dramatic effect on the way I do my pre-selection, and so far, I really like it! >>
That's an interesting variation though a lot of tasks on my list are quite time specific as far as the "want" goes. For example I want to make my cup of tea before I check my email. FVP can cope with that without any problem. Your question would not be capable of fine-tuning the order like that. It's a silly example I know, but there are lots of similar situations in my day.
Anyway I'll be interested to hear how it works out for you.
What I want for my life and what I want right now differ depending on a ton of things.
Yesterday worked really well with "if I could choose only one of these two tasks to get done today, which would I choose?"
Last night, I changed it up a little. My wife was out with the kids, and there were some things I wanted to get done before they got back. So I just changed the question to "if I can only get one of these two tasks done before they get back, which one would it be?" shortened to "which do I want done before they get back?" Worked great!
After they got back and I got settled back into my work again, I changed the question to "which do I want done before bedtime?" Again, worked great!
Today I had an important morning meeting which needed some preparation, so I used the same technique, "which do I want done before the meeting?" And again, it worked great!
In all these cases it really helped me focus on my most important objective at the time -- not just my passing wants. Which is what I really needed at the time!
But after the meeting (and all the other meetings I had today), I was pretty wiped out, so I changed the question to the standard "what do I want to do more than N?" and it worked great! [and led me to the forum here. :-) ]
So I think I'll keep trying this, adjusting as needed, in order to provide the right focus at the right time.
I am glad that's working for you! I actually gave it up pretty quickly, because I started finding it tedious and made my lists look cluttered. Plus, changing the question the way I did, gave me a great focus on getting specific things DONE, which is exactly what I was looking for, so the need for a kind of "done list" wasn't so pressing. I may try it again in the future.
Your examples are interesting. I actually had similar examples, like "take a break" or "drink water". Most of the times these tasks got passed over, but when I started needing a break, i.e., I was getting a headache from sitting at the computer too long or whatever, I really did think, if I do nothing else today, I'd better take a break, otherwise I'll get a migraine. Or I'd better drink some water, to keep up my energy level. Etc. So it actually worked out really well -- keeping me focused on getting the main things done, and taking those breaks IN ORDER TO allow me to keep focusing on getting the main things done, if that makes any sense. :-)
Anyway, I was really surprised how well this worked, and how I had even more of a sense of getting the right things done, even a sense of closure, than I did with DIT. (At least on these first two days with this approach.) I'll keep going with it, and see if that experience holds up.
Thanks again for a great new system! :-)
As for putting the finishing times on the list - I wouldn't do that all the time, but occasionally I do a "time audit" where I write down each thing I do along with the start and end time. Since I don't do these things very often, I frequently forget to write down each thing as I do it, or I fail to note the time when I switch tasks.
However, if I'm working from a list (especially if it already has items like "go to the bathroom" and "drink water"), then I'll keep going back to the list and I'll much more easily remember to note the time.
I have the same experience in working Mark's systems - they really do pull you in, and time can fly by.
I agree with your "occasional time audit" idea also -- I've done it for weeks at a time (with DIT), but once I get a strong sense of where my time is going, there's no point in keeping it up every day.
RE-SELECTION - This has become a complete non-issue. If a dotted task seems stale (which rarely happens), I just delete it, or cross it off and add it to the end of the list. I suppose if this was happening all the time, it would make it feel more like "cheating" or somehow reduce the effectiveness of the system. But it happens so rarely (I can't remember it happening at all in the last couple of weeks) that it's not an issue.
TASK EXPLOSION - I have ~300 tasks on my list right now, which is certainly a lot more than I ever had with DIT! 300 might seem like a lot to most people but compared to my typical AF1, DWM, SFv3, and FV lists, it's small. Those would all typically grow to 800, 900, 1000+ tasks and eventually become completely unmanageable. FVP handles 300 tasks easily. It actually seems a lot smaller, and I feel very much in tune with the whole list. I have also stopped using supplementary lists such as "someday/maybe" and "idea" lists -- it just all goes into FVP, which takes care of it all very easily.
MISSING DIT'S SENSE OF CLOSURE -- This was a problem at first, but it just sort of faded away. I've found FVP drives things to closure all by itself. It keeps your focus on things till they get done, while allowing side excursions whenever there is a need. Since the WORK ITSELF is driven to closure pretty quickly, I guess I just don't feel a need for the DAY to have as much closure. At the end of the day I almost always feel pretty happy with the stuff that got FINISHED (not just moved forward).
DIFFERENT QUESTIONS FOR DIFFERENT CONTEXTS (posted at http://markforster.squarespace.com/fv-forum/post/2506535#post2507226 ) -- I still find this very effective, but I think it's more of giving my mind a nudge in the right direction and seeing what stands out, rather than actually asking a question to make a comparison with each item on the list. Lots of discussion on this topic in Mark's Dotting Power post ( http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/6/10/dotting-power.html ) and in this thread ( http://markforster.squarespace.com/fv-forum/post/2532623#post2532994 ).