FV and FVP Forum > Changing Pen Color Every Day
Seraphim:
No, I'm not still doing it. In spite of the advantages, in the end I found it was a distraction from the purity of the list.
No, I'm not still doing it. In spite of the advantages, in the end I found it was a distraction from the purity of the list.
June 25, 2015 at 16:21 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
I used a different color each day for a couple of weeks after I started with AF1. I wanted to be able to easily count the number of items I had crossed off each day. Originally I had done this by dating them as I crossed them out, but it was slow to pick out the dates that way. Going by color was much faster.
But before long, I saw that the daily metric was irrelevant because I don't spend all of my time working from the list, and not all tasks are the same size. A one-task day might ultimately be more productive than a 16-task day if I spent the day working off-list. My compulsion to count and track things is strong, but it wears off quickly if there's no value.
Also, when I started repeating colors, it wasn't as easy to count the day's tasks because I'd have to read each one to determine whether I had done it today, or the last time I used that color.
Next, I struggled with the temptation to color-code things by category. The moment I tried to work up a sensible scheme, I realized that I was yet again getting much too fancy with a time-management system that thrives on simplicity.
I still use multiple colors, but now there's no significance to the colors. I use whatever's at hand that I feel like seeing. It gives the list a cheerful look and lets me use up all those crazy-colored pens.
Using different colors, even randomly, does detract from the purity of the list. Some tasks "look" better than others - literally. I won't worry about that unless I end up with a majority of unactioned tasks in a particular color.
But before long, I saw that the daily metric was irrelevant because I don't spend all of my time working from the list, and not all tasks are the same size. A one-task day might ultimately be more productive than a 16-task day if I spent the day working off-list. My compulsion to count and track things is strong, but it wears off quickly if there's no value.
Also, when I started repeating colors, it wasn't as easy to count the day's tasks because I'd have to read each one to determine whether I had done it today, or the last time I used that color.
Next, I struggled with the temptation to color-code things by category. The moment I tried to work up a sensible scheme, I realized that I was yet again getting much too fancy with a time-management system that thrives on simplicity.
I still use multiple colors, but now there's no significance to the colors. I use whatever's at hand that I feel like seeing. It gives the list a cheerful look and lets me use up all those crazy-colored pens.
Using different colors, even randomly, does detract from the purity of the list. Some tasks "look" better than others - literally. I won't worry about that unless I end up with a majority of unactioned tasks in a particular color.
June 25, 2015 at 19:40 |
JulieBulie
JulieBulie
I am still using different color pens. Here's why:
- I like the way it looks; it's pleasing to me.
- As you said, Seraphim, it gives closure to the list for the day. And it gives me a sense of the rhythm of my list.
- I can really tell if I've been productive because then I generally have lots of things added to the list that day. I can tell if my day has been ruled by meetings or other off-list activities (i.e., recreation) because there will be few things on the list that day. This encourages balance moving forward.
Mark and JulieBulie, can you comment further on what it means to detract from the purity of the list? I'm not experiencing anything that I identify with that.
- I like the way it looks; it's pleasing to me.
- As you said, Seraphim, it gives closure to the list for the day. And it gives me a sense of the rhythm of my list.
- I can really tell if I've been productive because then I generally have lots of things added to the list that day. I can tell if my day has been ruled by meetings or other off-list activities (i.e., recreation) because there will be few things on the list that day. This encourages balance moving forward.
Mark and JulieBulie, can you comment further on what it means to detract from the purity of the list? I'm not experiencing anything that I identify with that.
June 26, 2015 at 12:03 |
Lenore
Lenore
Lenore:
<< can you comment further on what it means to detract from the purity of the list? I'm not experiencing anything that I identify with that. >>
I'm not saying that my experience is or should be the same as anyone else's, but I found that having different coloured inks distracted me during the selection process and also made me too conscious of the running of the list - rather like driving a car with one of those computers which tells you your average speed, your fuel economy, whether it thinks you're in the right gear, whether you're exceeding the speed limit, etc. The first thing I do is always to turn such things off!
Oh, and I also found that I sometimes picked up the wrong colour pen, which added a completely unnecessary irritation factor when I wrote or deleted a task in the wrong colour for the day.
<< can you comment further on what it means to detract from the purity of the list? I'm not experiencing anything that I identify with that. >>
I'm not saying that my experience is or should be the same as anyone else's, but I found that having different coloured inks distracted me during the selection process and also made me too conscious of the running of the list - rather like driving a car with one of those computers which tells you your average speed, your fuel economy, whether it thinks you're in the right gear, whether you're exceeding the speed limit, etc. The first thing I do is always to turn such things off!
Oh, and I also found that I sometimes picked up the wrong colour pen, which added a completely unnecessary irritation factor when I wrote or deleted a task in the wrong colour for the day.
June 26, 2015 at 12:56 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Basically I meant the same as Mark, right down to the irritation of grabbing the wrong pen.
The list works best FOR ME if I restrict my interactions with it to adding tasks, picking them out, crossing them off, and occasionally dismissing them. In other words, using it as the tool that it's meant to be. Any additional "management" makes the list a project in itself. That's okay if you're getting a return on that additional effort. Lenore and Seraphim are, and I can understand why. But I wasn't.
Also, as I explained, there's the possibility that seeing different colors makes some tasks more inviting than others. This effect might be intensified by having entire (daily) blocks of tasks all the same color. I can't say if that's actually the case, but I can tell you that I have a whole page of pink tasks that I never seem to want to do. (One page does not prove anything, though.)
As for closing out the day, I draw a line under the last task, and put tomorrow's date on the next line. I think Mark recommended that way back in AF1. The date lets me see exactly how old a task is (in case I want to know), but doesn't draw undue attention to itself. It's not the most spectacular closing-out-the-day ceremony, but it's all I have the energy for at the end of the day.
I might even stop dating the pages. It's easy enough to see whether one task is older than another just by its position on the list. So far, I haven't cared about the precise date.
The list works best FOR ME if I restrict my interactions with it to adding tasks, picking them out, crossing them off, and occasionally dismissing them. In other words, using it as the tool that it's meant to be. Any additional "management" makes the list a project in itself. That's okay if you're getting a return on that additional effort. Lenore and Seraphim are, and I can understand why. But I wasn't.
Also, as I explained, there's the possibility that seeing different colors makes some tasks more inviting than others. This effect might be intensified by having entire (daily) blocks of tasks all the same color. I can't say if that's actually the case, but I can tell you that I have a whole page of pink tasks that I never seem to want to do. (One page does not prove anything, though.)
As for closing out the day, I draw a line under the last task, and put tomorrow's date on the next line. I think Mark recommended that way back in AF1. The date lets me see exactly how old a task is (in case I want to know), but doesn't draw undue attention to itself. It's not the most spectacular closing-out-the-day ceremony, but it's all I have the energy for at the end of the day.
I might even stop dating the pages. It's easy enough to see whether one task is older than another just by its position on the list. So far, I haven't cared about the precise date.
June 26, 2015 at 17:02 |
JulieBulie
JulieBulie
JulieBulie:
<< I might even stop dating the pages. It's easy enough to see whether one task is older than another just by its position on the list. So far, I haven't cared about the precise date. >>
I'm not dating the pages at the moment. Sometimes I find it necessary if I'm compiling statistics either for my own purposes or for reporting on this website. But I always feel a sense of relief when I no longer have to.
The more the list operates in the background the better. As you say any additional management makes the list a project in itself. There are times, such as when I'm developing a new system, when the list has to be a project in itself. But my aim is always to get to the stage where it isn't.
I loved the pink tasks btw. Do you think you'd have got them all done if you'd written them in a different colour? If so, which? We might be on the verge of an exciting new discovery!
<< I might even stop dating the pages. It's easy enough to see whether one task is older than another just by its position on the list. So far, I haven't cared about the precise date. >>
I'm not dating the pages at the moment. Sometimes I find it necessary if I'm compiling statistics either for my own purposes or for reporting on this website. But I always feel a sense of relief when I no longer have to.
The more the list operates in the background the better. As you say any additional management makes the list a project in itself. There are times, such as when I'm developing a new system, when the list has to be a project in itself. But my aim is always to get to the stage where it isn't.
I loved the pink tasks btw. Do you think you'd have got them all done if you'd written them in a different colour? If so, which? We might be on the verge of an exciting new discovery!
June 27, 2015 at 12:28 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Mark:
"I loved the pink tasks btw. Do you think you'd have got them all done if you'd written them in a different colour? If so, which? We might be on the verge of an exciting new discovery!"
It might have been better for the Internet had red been chosen for URL links instead of blue. People tune out blue and focus on red.
I helped my friends grow a large amount of plants with color after discovering the colors plants "see" back in 2006, and how to use tuned LED arrays to grow them more effectively. This was before the general public and manufacturers jumped behind LEDs for growing plants and lighting homes, at least in the west.
I had asked myself a question, "If plants aren't really green per se, but rather, they reflect green and absorb other colors (so we see green), then what colors do plants 'see'?"
I set about learning what colors they see best and which they benefit from during each stage of growth. At one stage, some benefit from a very narrow range of blue, and at another, red. I found an article at the time on a warehouse in Japan that had been turned into a greenhouse powered by giant LED arrays, after a storm wiped out much of Japan's lettuce crops. The LEDs reduced costs dramatically. A movement was then started to produce more of these LED greenhouses across Japan.
I'd experimented with LEDs before and had a longstanding fascination with them, so I wondered if one could grow more efficiently with LEDs chosen for their specific color wavelength. We invested about $150 in used red stop lights on eBay. We bought used standard house lamps for their AC cords, cut them off, and soldered them to the stop lights as they had no AC cord ends. After setting up a grow area, we aimed the LED stop lights at the plants and monitored their progress. The leaves got so much focused color they burned black in areas! We upped the distance between lights and plants as it appeared when given white light plants receive a balance of colors and a lower "volume" of red or blue; and when given a focused intensity of one color from that full spectrum of white light—in the exact range of that color they can "see" well—the plants developed a desperate need for sunglasses!
All this to say, focused use of color with plants and people is fascinating science—but there's not a lot out there on use of color for time management!
"I loved the pink tasks btw. Do you think you'd have got them all done if you'd written them in a different colour? If so, which? We might be on the verge of an exciting new discovery!"
It might have been better for the Internet had red been chosen for URL links instead of blue. People tune out blue and focus on red.
I helped my friends grow a large amount of plants with color after discovering the colors plants "see" back in 2006, and how to use tuned LED arrays to grow them more effectively. This was before the general public and manufacturers jumped behind LEDs for growing plants and lighting homes, at least in the west.
I had asked myself a question, "If plants aren't really green per se, but rather, they reflect green and absorb other colors (so we see green), then what colors do plants 'see'?"
I set about learning what colors they see best and which they benefit from during each stage of growth. At one stage, some benefit from a very narrow range of blue, and at another, red. I found an article at the time on a warehouse in Japan that had been turned into a greenhouse powered by giant LED arrays, after a storm wiped out much of Japan's lettuce crops. The LEDs reduced costs dramatically. A movement was then started to produce more of these LED greenhouses across Japan.
I'd experimented with LEDs before and had a longstanding fascination with them, so I wondered if one could grow more efficiently with LEDs chosen for their specific color wavelength. We invested about $150 in used red stop lights on eBay. We bought used standard house lamps for their AC cords, cut them off, and soldered them to the stop lights as they had no AC cord ends. After setting up a grow area, we aimed the LED stop lights at the plants and monitored their progress. The leaves got so much focused color they burned black in areas! We upped the distance between lights and plants as it appeared when given white light plants receive a balance of colors and a lower "volume" of red or blue; and when given a focused intensity of one color from that full spectrum of white light—in the exact range of that color they can "see" well—the plants developed a desperate need for sunglasses!
All this to say, focused use of color with plants and people is fascinating science—but there's not a lot out there on use of color for time management!
June 27, 2015 at 15:46 |
Michael B.
Michael B.
Michael B.
Thanks for all the information in your post. Fascinating stuff!
<<
All this to say, focused use of color with plants and people is fascinating science—but there's not a lot out there on use of color for time management! >>
Maybe it's time there was - I think my notebook is about to get multi-coloured again!
Thanks for all the information in your post. Fascinating stuff!
<<
All this to say, focused use of color with plants and people is fascinating science—but there's not a lot out there on use of color for time management! >>
Maybe it's time there was - I think my notebook is about to get multi-coloured again!
June 27, 2015 at 16:24 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Trace over the pink letters with red and see if those tasks start standing out!
June 27, 2015 at 16:30 |
Alan Baljeu
Alan Baljeu
ColourFocus!
June 27, 2015 at 16:46 |
Michael B.
Michael B.
I'd like to add that I have always crossed off completed items with a colored highlighter pen. Usually blue or purple. Using a highlighter for the done items still allows me to easily read the text if I need it (rather than crossing it out with a strike through which makes it harder). I find that the blue or purple is dark enough that I naturally skip over it when scanning and stop at the "white space" that the undone items are in.
June 29, 2015 at 5:42 |
Brent
Brent
I can't swear that the pink tasks were ignored because of their color! I think the real reason is that most of them were stragglers from earlier pages. I consolidated the stragglers and carried them forward all at once. (The smarter way to do this would have been to reformulate them; I copied them wholesale.) They were tasks that I was unwilling to dismiss, but also unwilling or unable to act upon due to various complications and the pages were getting worn out. I suppose it's not especially strange if it takes longer to work through such tasks; in fact, some of them are going to the tickler file because I injured my hand recently and can't do the "handy" projects for a while.
We certainly do react to colors, though. I know there have been studies regarding the effect of color on appetite, for example. Warm colors=hungry. I've often edited for a living, and people complain about all the red ink - I switched to orange for editing early on just because it's less harsh. Red is abused so much in advertising and websites that I've been conditioned (or have I conditioned myself?) to ignore it when reading!
Going forward, perhaps for a week or two I'll experiment with one color per page, regardless of date. (The color is for writing tasks; cross-out colors don't matter.) This should be fairly reliable as long as I don't renew/consolidate old, unactioned tasks all at once like I did before, which I knew was a bad idea even as I was doing it. One color per page will keep individual tasks from "standing out" for reasons other than their appearance, and comparing pages in a few weeks will provide a clue as to whether certain colors make some pages more appealing than others.
Next, there's the question of whether it's a particular shade of pink, and whether all of us respond to pink in the same way... oh dear... this is starting to feel like a new "project"... but I will leave all of that to someone who can get government funding for a study!
Seriously, though, I expect the problem will be that the colors help me remember which tasks are on which page - and that may prejudice me for or against certain pages. Not because of the color, but because of what's written in them. That can't happen if all the pages are the same color.
We certainly do react to colors, though. I know there have been studies regarding the effect of color on appetite, for example. Warm colors=hungry. I've often edited for a living, and people complain about all the red ink - I switched to orange for editing early on just because it's less harsh. Red is abused so much in advertising and websites that I've been conditioned (or have I conditioned myself?) to ignore it when reading!
Going forward, perhaps for a week or two I'll experiment with one color per page, regardless of date. (The color is for writing tasks; cross-out colors don't matter.) This should be fairly reliable as long as I don't renew/consolidate old, unactioned tasks all at once like I did before, which I knew was a bad idea even as I was doing it. One color per page will keep individual tasks from "standing out" for reasons other than their appearance, and comparing pages in a few weeks will provide a clue as to whether certain colors make some pages more appealing than others.
Next, there's the question of whether it's a particular shade of pink, and whether all of us respond to pink in the same way... oh dear... this is starting to feel like a new "project"... but I will leave all of that to someone who can get government funding for a study!
Seriously, though, I expect the problem will be that the colors help me remember which tasks are on which page - and that may prejudice me for or against certain pages. Not because of the color, but because of what's written in them. That can't happen if all the pages are the same color.
June 29, 2015 at 16:23 |
JulieBulie
JulieBulie
It's been three weeks now, and I have the results of my brief, undisciplined, unscientific, poorly sampled, non-peer-reviewed, nonblind experiment:
Ink color doesn't do much, except for the effect I described in the last paragraph of my June 29 post. It provides a strong visual cue as to what page I'm on. ("Oh, these are all the things that came up on Monday. What a rotten day that was.")
As for pink specifically: Page 15 was pink, and I finished it earlier today. Pages 12, 13, 14, 16, and 17 are still around, as are an odd smattering of lower-numbered pages, including page 2, which is the original pink page (and I should have dismissed it by now).
So, pink doesn't have any magic powers, unless you think it's significant that one pink page was very resistant and the other was practically effortless.
Ink color doesn't do much, except for the effect I described in the last paragraph of my June 29 post. It provides a strong visual cue as to what page I'm on. ("Oh, these are all the things that came up on Monday. What a rotten day that was.")
As for pink specifically: Page 15 was pink, and I finished it earlier today. Pages 12, 13, 14, 16, and 17 are still around, as are an odd smattering of lower-numbered pages, including page 2, which is the original pink page (and I should have dismissed it by now).
So, pink doesn't have any magic powers, unless you think it's significant that one pink page was very resistant and the other was practically effortless.
July 18, 2015 at 0:51 |
JulieBulie
JulieBulie
Somewhere you wrote that you were using a different color of ink every day on your FVP list, and it was giving you lots of interesting insights.
I've been doing the same thing for a few days. It does have many benefits:
- It helps me see how long things have been on list.
- It helps me keep all my tasks in one list (work and personal) (most personal tasks carry over from the weekend, so they are a different color)
- It helps me get closure for the day
- It's fun. :-)
I was wondering if you are still doing this, and how it is working for you.