Lenten Challenge 2024

This year’s Lenten Challenge starts on Wednesday 14th February and ends on Thursday 28 March, both dates inclusive.

The challenge is to keep to the same time management system for the whole period. You can enter the challenge by nominating which system you are going to follow in the Comments below. The system does not have to be one of mine. You can change your entry up until the start date (your local time).

This is not intended to imply, include or exclude any religious belief whatever.

Entries:

Voluntas: Dreams

Vegheadjones: The Bounce

Paul MacNeil: Autofocus 1

Ryan Freckleton: Resistance Zero

Topher Jake: SMEMA

avrum: Touchstone System

Brenda: DWM2

Sev: 5T

Brent: DIT with index cards

Mike Brown: Simple Scanning

Will: FVP

Pablo: Simple Scanning/Bullet Journal

Alan Baljeu: RTM/Lapse

Caibre 62: Anchored AF2

Aaron Hsu: Time Surfing

Austin: Do More Better

Fintan: DIT (Work & Personal)

Mark Forster: FV

Will: FVP

Adam T: FVP

Brandon: Dreams

Bence: Anchored AF2

Margaret1: RTM

Cameron: Dan Charnas’ Work Clean

Arneo K: FVP-NQ-FVP with New Question

Tobba: Seraphim’s RTM System

David: Dreams

ChatGPT's Opinion of Me

Yes, I am familiar with Mark Forster. Mark Forster is a well-known author and time management expert who has written several books on productivity and time management, including “Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play,” “Do It Tomorrow,” and “Secrets of Productive People.”

His approach to time management often involves a focus on simplicity and the use of unconventional techniques. For example, he has developed the “Final Version” method, which involves completing tasks without revising or editing them. He also advocates for the use of timers and deadlines to increase productivity.

Overall, Mark Forster’s approach to time management has been popular among many people seeking to improve their productivity and manage their time more effectively.

Lenten Challenge 2023

This year’s Lenten Challenge starts on Wednesday 22nd February and ends on Thursday 6th April, both dates inclusive.

The challenge is to keep to the same time management system for the whole period. You can enter the challenge by nominating which system you are going to follow in the Comments below. The system does not have to be one of mine. You can change your entry up until the start date (your local time).

This is not intended to imply, include or exclude any religious belief whatever.

Entries:

Mark Forster: Halving

Caibre 65: Simple New System

Ian S: Dreams/No List

eiron: Prioritised Shuffling

Alan Banjeu: LAPS

Seraphim: Randomizer Execute/Explore Variant

Pablo: Simple Scanning

Kohl: AF4+3T

Brenda: Timed Bursts with Rotating List

Jacqueline: Simple New System

Aaron Hsu: Frog and Chain

Colin: Make Time (Knapp + Zeratsky) + Resistance Zero

Margaret 1: Serial No List

David: Dreams

Eric SP: DIT

Mike Brown: Ultra Simple Guide to Time Management

Paul MacNeil: Simple Scanning

Ryan Freckleton: Resistance Zero

Tobba: Random RAF

vegheadjones: Persona Kanban feeding into 3T

Ville: DIT

Will Ross: FVP (late entry 28 Feb)

Fintan: DIT (late entry 1 Mar)

Ed Z: Elastic AF (late entry 4 Mar)

Blog Now Fully Back to Normal (I think)

This blog is now back to normal as far as I can see. Apparently the whole upset was caused by one misplaced “>” in an HTML sequence in a post. As there are a huge number of posts on this blog, it took a long time to track down.

Troubles always come in threes, so they say, and I was also having unrelated problems at the same time with my domain name (markforster.net) and my email address. I am pleased to say that these have now been fixed too.

As a result:

1) you can use markforster.net or markforster.squarespace.com as before

2) you can email me on either mf@markforster.net or markforster@aol.com. It doesn’t matter which you use, but please don’t use both at the same time

Thanks everyone for your patience.

Resistance Zero: Amendment/Recommendation

As I’ve gained more experience with the Resistance Zero system, I’ve found that it works a bit better if the scan is done from the beginning to the end, and the dotted tasks are then actioned from the end to the beginning. 

I’m also personally finding that it works best if the scan is done quickly without any lengthy attempts to decide whether a task is at zero resistance. So I say “No Resistance” at the start of the scan, but don’t repeat it again during the same scan.

How Yesterday's New System (Resistance Zero) Compares with Other Systems

Yesterday’s new system is based on using scanning to reduce resistance. Many other time management systems use scanning a list to select what to do next. How do they compare for the purpose of lowering resistance?

Yesterday’s system (I must give it a proper name - suggestions? Resistance Zero)

The whole list is scanned in one go, which allows for one’s mind to do a mini-assessment of every task on the list. This allows for all factors to be taken account of, and also allows the mind to advance each task in readiness.

FV and FVP

Both these systems use scanning to compare tasks in order to create a “resistance ladder”. After a complete scan, further scans are only done over a restricted portion of the list. This means that many tasks are done which are not at zero resistance. This increases the energy needed to do them and also keeps resistance to the list as a whole quite high.

Autofocus

In this system and its variants only one page at a time is scanned so resistance is not lowered on any of the other pages. Instead of being done at zero resistance, all the tasks are done which are below the maximum tolerable resistance. This does have the effect of reducing resistance to the other tasks on the page, but only while that page is being worked on. Again resistance to the list as a whole can build up quite rapidly.

Simple Scanning

Only a small portion of the list is scanned each time and tasks are done up to the maximum tolerable resistance. 

————————————-

Basically what the new system offers over these systems is a much faster reduction of resistance, plus only having to do tasks for which there is no resistance at all. The result is increased speed, less effort and no resistance to the system as a whole.

Resistance: How to Make the Most of It - The Resistance Zero System

Following up from my post yesterday, here is a simple system to make resistance a positive in your work and activities instead of the negative that it is for most people.

1. Write out a list of the things you have to do. You can build the list up gradually, but the aim is to eventually cover everything in your life that doesn’t happen on a set-time basis. You can add further tasks at any time.

2. Starting at the end of the list, scan back through the list dotting every task which you feel zero resistance to doing. 

3. Starting from the end, take at least some action on every task you’ve dotted. Re-enter as necessary.

4. Repeat Steps 2-4.

NOTES:

1) Zero resistance means absolutely no resistance whatsoever. 

2) You must do a complete scan at Step 2 so that every task is considered. This is very important, because it is the scanning process that reduces the resistance you feel for each task. If you skip or foreshorten the scan, resistance will rise instead of fall.

3) This is intended to be a fast scan, so that your brain selects the tasks for action action without conscious thought. It’s similar though not identical to the “standing out” process used in many of my systems.

Resistance: The Key Time Management Concept

The more I think about it and the more experience I get, the more I realise that the key to good time management is how one handles resistance.

I don’t mean resistance by other people to our brilliant ideas. I mean the resistance we have ourselves to what we know we should be doing. Imagine for a second what it would be like if you had no resistance to any of your work. Wouldn’t you just sail through it, getting everything done when it should be done without any reluctance or struggle to get going or keep going. Everything in your life would be beautifully ordered and you’d be able to look back with pride on your ongoing achievements.

Or would you?

Doesn’t resistance have an important role to play? Without it there would be a danger of taking on far too much, taking on tasks which you are not properly qualified to do or which you haven’t properly researched, and in short behaving like an over-revved engine. Resistance in other words is an important tool provided by nature to prevent us from getting into trouble or danger.

So it’s not a question of abolishing resistance, but of learning to handle it properly. 

Years ago I wrote about an interesting phenomenon concerning resistance. I realised that in a list of tasks of varying degrees of resistance, every time you scan the list the resistance to the tasks you haven’t selected decreases. This is actually the basis of those of my systems which use intuitive scanning. You can test this yourself by drawing up a short list of tasks, marking each out of 10 for the amount of resistance you feel to it, doing a scan and then re-marking the remaining tasks before you do the next scan.

Why does this effect happen?

I think it’s because every time you scan the list you do a micro-assessment of each task. On each scan of the task the micro-assessment changes because your brain has been working on it subconsciously between scans. The task actually becomes more approachable with each scan. If this doesn’t happen with a particular task, it’s probably a sign that you shouldn’t be doing it at all.

A problem with many time management systems is that they encourage you to action tasks too early in the process. This has two possible results, one good, one bad.

The bad one is that forcing yourself to do tasks in spite of your resistance to them, has the effect of raising your resistance to screaming point, and you take refuge in valueless displacement activities.

The good one is that forcing yourself to act in spite of your resistance will eventually teach your brain how to handle resistance itself much better. But this is at the cost of properly “softening up” the tasks. You will therefore be spending much more mental energy.

In my next post I’m going to suggest a way of making effective use of the reduction in resistance caused by the scanning process.

Some Suggested Improvements to NQ-FVP

The two main problems with NQ-FVP are 1) it tends to be rather inflexible, and 2) it concentrates too much on the end of the list where the new and re-entered tasks congregate, to the exclusion of the beginning of the list where the older and unstarted tasks congregate.

I am experimenting with a couple of small changes to the rules which improve both these aspects. These are:

1) When you’ve done a task (and re-entered it if necessary) you can go directly to the previous dotted task if you wish, without having to scan to the end of the list.

2) You are limited to two dotted tasks per scan. This does not include the root task at the beginning of the list. Note that this is two dotted tasks per scan, not two dotted tasks on the list. You can do a scan with two dots, do one of the tasks and then do another two-dot scan, and so on.

My three or four hours’ experience so far is that this gets rid of the lengthy scanning process and removes most of the frustration of being stuck at one end of the list with a whole load of tasks between you and the work you know you should be doing.

If anyone wants to try this out at the same time as me, I’d welcome your experiences and comments.

Some Aspects of NQ-FVP (Part 3)

In Part 2 I said that I would deal with how NQ-FVP can be used as a long list, a short list and a no-list system, all at the same time.

In fact this is very simple because the system naturally suits itself to isolating a group of tasks at the end of the list where they can be dotted and re-dotted as much as is required.

To do this, decide which tasks on your NQ-FVP list you want to be in your short list or no-list, dot them and move them to the end of the NQ-FVP list by the usual method of doing and re-entering them.

Alternatively you can move them by reprioritising your list. This is done by deleting the relevant tasks and re-entering them at the end of the list. Either way you have moved the tasks to the end of the list where you can action them as many times as required. This is very flexible because you can include other tasks on the NQ-FVP list as much or as little as you like.

You can use the same technique with Simple Scanning though it is less flexible.

Some Aspects of NQ-FVP (Part 2)

Yesterday in the first part of this article I wrote about why I keep coming back to NQ-FVP, and promised that in part 2 I would answer the question of why I keep leaving NQ-FVP in the first place.

It’s a question which I haven’t seriously asked of myself until now. So the answers I come up with will be just as interesting to me as to anyone else, and possibly more so.

The easy short answer is that I am always looking for the perfect system and, although I feel that NQ-FVP isn’t the perfect system, it’s the best I have.

That raises a lot of questions which are much more difficult to answer: 

• Is it actually possible to have a perfect system?
• What would the perfect system look like?
• Am I right in thinking that NQ-FVP isn’t the perfect system?
• Are there changes I could make so that NQ-FVP becomes the perfect system?

Is it actually possible to have a perfect system?

I think the answer must be “no” and for the same reason that there’s no perfect car, perfect house, perfect phone or anything else. The most one can say is “That’s my perfect car/house/phone”, meaning that it perfectly suits your personality and your present needs and circumstances. My perfect car wouldn’t be your perfect car, and so on.

So I’m forced to the conclusion that, no, I can’t come up with a universally perfect time management system. But you can have my perfect time management system and if we’re lucky it will suit you too.

What would my perfect system look like?

That’s easy to answer. It would have to be a system into which I could feed everything I have to do, want to do, or should do. Everything would then come out in exactly the right order, allowing for importance, urgency, and desirability. It would respond immediately to changes in circumstances. It would deal equally well with things I want to do, and things I need to do but don’t want to do. It would reduce resistance to a minimum, and have minimum overhead. It would provide both motivation and momentum. 

Am I right in thinking that NQ-FVP isn’t my perfect system?

Let’s mark it out of 10 for each of the above qualities (bearing in mind that these are my answers for my perfect system and your answers might well be different) 

• Everything I have to do, want to do, or should do. 10
• Exactly the right order, allowing for importance, urgency, and desirability. 6
• Respond immediately to changes in circumstances. 8
• Things I want to do 10
• Things I need to do but don’t want to do. 4
• Reduce resistance to a minimum. 8
• Minimum overhead 7
• Motivation 8
• Momentum 8

That’s 69 points out of 90 or 77%, which isn’t a bad score, but still a fair distance from being perfect.

Are there changes I could make so that NQ-FVP becomes my perfect system?

 I don’t know that I can get it to 100% perfect - is anything? But I can certainly think up some pointers to increase the score. These are all about how I use the system, rather than changes to the system itself.

• Don’t overload it with tasks
  Even the most perfect car won’t take too many passengers or too much weight, and it wouldn’t be the perfect car I want if it did (my car’s a two-seater and that’s the way I want it). It’s exactly the same with a time management system. NQ-FVP will grind to a halt if I put too many tasks in it. The system can enable me to get stuff done more efficiently and effectively, but what it can’t do is get me to do more than I am physically or mentally capable of doing. So I must either avoid putting too much into the system in the first place, or aggressively weed tasks so that my work becomes more and more concentrated and targetted.
  
  
• Don’t overload it with dots
  Dotting too many tasks at a time slows the whole system down and makes it inflexible. I aim to never have more than five dotted tasks at a time. That’s what I’ve got dotted at the moment on my current list of 66 tasks, and includes the one I’m working on at the moment.
  
  
• Scan quickly
  Scanning time is the main overhead in this system. If I scan slowly, weighing every task, it takes an unacceptably long time. But even worse, it encourages me to dot too many tasks. And even worse than that, it takes a long time to correct if I miss a task that I should have dotted. Fewer dots gives much more flexibilty without any penalty.

Conclusion

I think it would be very difficult to improve the actual system of NQ-FVP. Most attempts to do so are trying to cure problems caused by incorrect handling. The quickest way to kill it is to have a huge ponderous list of unweeded tasks, covered in a multitude of dots caused by long exhaustive (and exhausting) scans. Keep the list well-weeded, scan quickly and aim at a maximum of 3-5 dots in the whole list.

Next…

In Part 3 I shall be dealing with how NQ-FVP can be used as a long list, a short list and a no-list system all at the same time.

Some Aspects of NQ-FVP (Part 1)

I’ve said several times on this blog and in the comments that the system that I keep coming back to is NQ-FVP. The name NQ-FVP is derived from the Final Version (FV), through the Final Version Perfected (FVP), and finally  the NQ bit which stands for “No Question”.

NQ-FVP is a clumsy name for sure, but it does reflect how the system was developed, and anyway there are plenty of acronyms flying around which hardly anyone knows what they stand for, e.g. IKEA (Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd) or CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart).

So NQ-FVP it’s going to remain. Click here for the rules.

So what are the distinguishing features which make me come back to this system time after time?  

• It’s relatively fast and relatively simple. There are faster and/or simpler systems, but they lack NQ-FVP’s other features.
• It’s a long list system which feeds a short list system and even sometimes a no-list system.
• It will sooner or later work through your whole list, even if you are constantly adding to it.
• It’s a low resistance system mainly driven by your intuition about when a task is ready to be done. 

Of course the obvious follow-up question is what are the distinguishing features which make me leave this system time after time?

I will answer that in the second part of this article.

How to Think About What's Important

Four rules:

1. Think about it as much and as often as you can.

2. Avoid thinking about anything irrelevant or time-wasting.

3. Take 10-20 minute naps.

4. Get a good night’s sleep

This is all to do with the way the brain works. If you think about something a lot your brain cells will make connections and those connections will get strengthened. So if you think about things which are important to you your brain will automatically produce a web of connections. 

The trouble is that if you think about irrelevant time-wasting stuff, your brain cells will be producing a web of connections about that as well. And there is a limit to how much stuff your brain can deal with at any one time. Do you really want your brain to be full with a web of connections about why x said y to you at the party last night?

Central to the whole process is sleep because it’s when you are sleeping that your brain strengthens the connections of what you have been thinking about, It’s also when it clears out unnecessary stuff. How does it know what’s unnecessary? It’s the stuff you haven’t been thinking about.

I'm Out (But for a Good Reason)!

I’ve had to withdraw from the Lenten Challenge, not because the system I was using didn’t work, but because I got the idea for a new system and wanted to try it out. 

I’m not going to tell you any more about it because I don’t want to distract anyone from the Challenge. Enough to say that it’s a No List variant, and requires the ability to count up to ten (which, looking at the deletions on my list, I apparently don’t have).

Lenten Challenge 2022

FINISHED! Congratulations to those that stayed the course

This year’s Lenten Challenge starts on Wednesday 2nd March and ends on Thursday 14th April, both dates inclusive.

The challenge is to keep to the same time management system for the whole period. You can enter the challenge by nominating which system you are going to follow in the Comments below. The system does not have to be one of mine. You can change your entry up until the start date (your local time).

This is not intended to imply, include or exclude any religious belief whatever.

Entries:

Eiron Page - Productivity Bingo +

Mrs Move Forward - DIT

Brenda - Autofocus 1

Michael von Feld - Autofocus 1

John R - DIT

Adam T - FVP

Aaron Hsu - Time Surfing

Alan Baljeu - GAP (Mark II)

JulieBulie - AF

Will - FVP

Seraphim - AF4R Experiments

tomcal - AF4R Experiments

vegheadjones - FVP

Fintan - DIT

Christoper - Autofocus 1

Brent - Adventure Mode

Paul MacNeil - Simple Scanning

avrum - Choose the Next Task

Caibre65 - Anchored AF2/FIFO Combination

Diana - FVP

Colin - Make Time - Highlight, Laser, Energise, Reflect

Virix - Weighted Randomizer

Sitkeys - AF4R

Mike Brown - Carl Pullein’s 8+2 prioritization and Time Sector system, implemented in Teux Deux

Margaret1 - CHECKLISTS

Eugenia - Simple Scanning

Austin - DMB

Belacqua - Superfocus

Brandon - How to Make Your Dreams Come True

Will - FVP (on MS To Do App)

Paul B from Canada - Spinning Plates

Cameron - Getting Things Done (late entry 7th March)

Mark Forster - Flexible Autofocus

Stabilizing Your Systems

One of the problems many people who visit this website have (including myself) is finding a stable time management system to stick with. 

Here’s a method which may help you in finding one, while still allowing you to experiment with others.

What you will need is an app in which you can drag bullets from place to place within a list. I’m using Roam Research but there are hundreds of others. You probably have one already.

1. Make a short list of time management systems which you feel you might want to use (you can add more at any time to the end of the list)
2. Drag the system you are currently using to the top of the list
3. Use it for as long as you want to
4. Select the next system you want to use and drag it to the top of the list.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 ad infinitum

The result will be that the systems you most often use will be at the top of the list while the others sink towards the bottom. This should gradually (or not so gradually) have the effect of introducing more stability into your choice of system.

Pressing the Button

I’ve been reading in today’s newspapers about a study at Heidelburg University in which people were shown a succession of images and had to press a button to show whether they considered each image Good or Bad. The purpose of the experiment was to measure the amount of time it took for people of various ages to make decisions of this type. 

According to the press release this involved the participants in three actions for each image:

1) An intuitive decision

2) Pondering it

3) Pressing the button

Apparently after the age of 60 the brain’s speed at carrying this process out declines considerably. As someone considerably older than that I can testify to the truth of the finding!

No further details were given in the articles, but two thoughts struck me immediately. 

The first was that it would be very easy to get a good score by cheating 

The second was that this is very applicable to the speed at which decisions are made from a to-do list about which task to do next.

So how can one cheat? There are multiple ways. For example:

- push the Good button each time. No decision is made so only step 3) is needed.

- push the Bad button each time. Ditto.

- push the Good and the Bad button alternately. Ditto.

The problem with all of these is that it’s obvious you’re cheating. But you can be a little bit more sophisticated.

- push either the Good or the Bad button regardless of what the image looks like. Step 2 - the longest - is left out.

- decide which button to push before the image is displayed. Assuming there is even a small gap between images, only Step 3 would be needed. 

The last one would be the most difficult to detect as cheating. 

Now it’s quite possible that there were measures in the actual experiment which would have prevented any of these happening, but they are not mentioned in the brief description.

So if the speed of the decision can be greatly increased by leaving out steps 1) and 2) how is this applicable to the speed of deciding which task should be done next off a list?

Well, there is one way which I left out. It’s not exactly cheating either. And that is to make an intuitive decision and press the button immediately without pondering it.

So what you are aiming to do is to decide immediately without any second guessing. That takes practice but is quite achievable.

As an exercise write down ten tasks which you could do now. Once you’ve written them down, and without reading through the list, run your finger or a pen rapidly down the list (go as fast as you can while still being able to read the tasks). Stop at any point and then do the selected task for real. Do the same several times again until you’ve got the feel for it. 

That’s how it’s done. And you will almost certainly find that making your choices quickly in this way will also speed up the work you do on the task.

An important point:

When you are running your pen down the list keep going forward. Do not go back if you think you’ve missed a task. if you find yourself thinking about whether you’ve made the correct choice, stop thinking and just do the chosen task.

Question: Was the choice of tasks any worse than if you had spent time pondering them?

What Would You Do If You Had the Perfect Time Management System?

This was originally a comment which I put on a Forum discussion about expressing one’s values. As it was tagged onto the end of the discussion I don’t think many people saw it. Here it is, slightly edited.

The ideal time-management system would not only help you to reach your ideals and goals, but would also help you to find out what your ideals and goals are. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Imagine for a moment that you found the ideal time management system which banished all resistance and unerringly pointed you to the right thing to be doing at every successive moment in order to achieve your ideals and goals as easily and painlessly as possible. Having found this perfect system, what would you use it for?

You probably wouldn’t use it to watch every series on Netflix while drinking endless six-packs of beer. Or am I being too optimistic?

And ​most of you (I hope) wouldn’t turn into Dr. Evil with dreams of world conquest, shortly to become reality.

My guess is that once you’d started to realise the potential of this amazing system you would try it out on some fairly easy things which you’d always wanted to do, and then, as you gained confidence and experience, you would extend your range while getting a clearer picture of what you were capable of and what you wanted to achieve.

So to me, the sequence is System > Ambitions, rather than Ambitions > System.

The Final Version Perfected (FVP) Instructions - Reposted

Somehow the instructions for FVP seem to have vanished from this blog, so I am reposting them here.

The Final Version Perfected (FVP)

 Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 11:58

This is an amended version of the instructions for the Final Version (FV) time management system. It contains an improved algorithm and a new question.

 

Introduction

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are the long-awaited instructions for the Final Version Perfected (FVP) time management system. I don’t know if it’s the best time management system ever devised. What I do know is that it is the best time management system that I have ever used myself. It’s shown itself to be even more resilient, responsive and quick than the Final Version.

FV and now FVP are based on my earlier time management systems, particularly the extensive range of AutoFocus and SuperFocus systems developed over the last five years. These were unique in that they were constantly developing with the assistance of a large band of commenters on my web-site. Anyone who has tried one or more of these systems will recognize the strong family resemblance that they have with FV and FVP. The most striking resemblance is that they are all based on one long list (either paper or electronic) which can be used to capture just about every possible action that springs into one’s mind. There is a minimum of special markings or annotations.Such a list depends on an effective algorithm to process it. There are three main requirements which have to be kept in balance. These are urgency, importance and psychological readiness. Traditional time management systems have tended to concentrate on the first two of these. The neglect of psychological readiness is probably the reason that most people don’t find time management systems particularly effective or congenial.The most distinctive feature of FVP is the way that its algorithm is primarily based on psychological readiness - this then opens the way to keeping urgency and importance in the best achievable balance.

The FVP  Algorithm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The FVP algorithm uses the question “What do I want to do more than x?” to preselect a chain of tasks from the list. What exactly is meant by “want” in this context is deliberately left undefined. There may be a whole variety of reasons why you might want to do one thing more than another thing and all of them are valid.The chain always starts with the first unactioned task on the list. Mark this task with a dot to show that it’s now been preselected. Don’t take any action on the task at this stage.This task then becomes the benchmark from which the next task is selected. For example, if the first task on the list is “Write Report”, the question becomes “What do I want to do more than write the report?” You move through the list in order until you come to a task which you want to do more than write the report. This task is now selected by marking it with a dot and it becomes the benchmark for the next task. If the first task you come to which you want to do before writing the report is “Check Email”, then that becomes the benchmark. The question therefore changes to “What do I want to do more than check email?”As you continue through the list you might come to “Tidy Desk” and decide you want to do that more than checking email. Select this in the same way by marking it with a dot, and change the question to “What do I want to do more than tidying my desk?”. The answer to this is probably “nothing”, so you have now finished your preselection.The preselected tasks in the example are: Write report Check email Tidy desk  At this point “Tidy Desk” represents the task you most want to do at the moment. Do it. Note that as in all my systems, you don’t have to finish the task - only do some work on it. Of course if you do finish the task that’s great, but if you don’t then all you have to do is re-enter the task at the end of the list. Now what are you going to do next? “Check email” is the previous task you selected, but that isn’t necessarily the task you most want to do. What you can say though is that it was the task you most wanted to do up until you selected “Tidy Desk”. This means that you only need to check the tasks that come after “Tidy Desk” in the list. So what you do next is to ask yourself “What do I want to do more than check email?” again, but you check only the tasks which come after the task you have just done (Tidy Desk). Once you have worked your way back to the first task on the list and done it (this may never happen!), you take the next unactioned task as your root task.That’s it! You’re now ready to go. Everything else is further examples and explanation.

A Longer Example ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In this example for ease of understanding no new tasks are added while working on the list. This of course is unlikely in real life. Your initial list of tasks: Email  In-Tray Voicemail Project X Report Tidy Desk Call Dissatisfied Customer Make Dental Appointment File Invoices Discuss Project Y with Bob Back Up     Put a dot in front of the first task:     • Email    In-Tray   Voicemail   Project X Report   Tidy Desk   Call Dissatisfied Customer   Make Dental Appointment   File Invoices   Discuss Project Y with Bob   Back Up   Now ask yourself ” What do I want to do more than Email?”   You work down the list and come to Voicemail. You decide you want to do Voicemail more than Email. Put a dot in front of it.     • Email    In-Tray • Voicemail   Project X Report   Tidy Desk   Call Dissatisfied Customer   Make Dental Appointment   File Invoices   Discuss Project Y with Bob   Back Up     Now ask yourself ” What do I want to do more than Voicemail?” You decide you want to tidy your desk.     • Email    In-Tray • Voicemail   Project X Report • Tidy Desk   Call Dissatisfied Customer   Make Dental Appointment   File Invoices   Discuss Project Y with Bob   Back Up     There are no tasks you want to do more than tidying your desk, so you have the following dotted tasks:   Email Voicemail Tidy Desk    Do the Tidy Desk task.   Your list will now look like this:   • Email    In-Tray • Voicemail   Project X Report • Tidy Desk   Call Dissatisfied Customer   Make Dental Appointment   File Invoices   Discuss Project Y with Bob   Back Up    Now start again from Tidy Desk (i.e. the last task you did). and ask yourself “What do I want to do more than Voicemail?”  The only task you want to do more than Voicemail is Back Up. Do it.   The list now reads:    • Email    In-Tray • Voicemail   Project X Report • Tidy Desk   Call Dissatisfied Customer   Make Dental Appointment   File Invoices   Discuss Project Y with Bob  • Back Up   There are no further tasks beyond Back Up, so there is no need to check whether you want to do any tasks more than you want to do Voicemail. You just do it. The list now reads: • Email    In-Tray • Voicemail   Project X Report • Tidy Desk   Call Dissatisfied Customer   Make Dental Appointment   File Invoices   Discuss Project Y with Bob • Back Up    There is only one dotted task left on the list and that is Email. You now need to check whether you want to do any of the tasks more than Email. So ask the question “What do I want to do more than Email?” You already know that you want to do Email more than In-tray, so you start scanning from the first task after the task you have just done (Voicemail).   You decide you want to do Make Dental Appointment more than Email, so you dot it and change the question to “What do I want to do more than Make Dental Appointment”. The answer is “Discuss Project Y”. As this is the last task on the list you do it immediately, and then do Make Dental Appointment immediately too. There’s no need to scan because you already know that you want to make the dental appoinment more than you want to file invoices.   The list now reads:   • Email    In-Tray • Voicemail   Project X Report • Tidy Desk   Call Dissatisfied Customer • Make Dental Appointment   File Invoices • Discuss Project Y with Bob • Back Up    So the tasks on the original list have been done in the following order so far:   Tidy Desk Back Up Voicemail Discuss Project Y with Bob Make Dental Appointment   These tasks have been done in the exact order of what you want to do most at the time. There may be a huge number of factors affecting what you want to do most, but you can allow your brain to sort them out for you below the level of consciousness simply by asking the question “What do I want to do more than x?” and applying it in the way shown above.    If you are having trouble following the example above, then I suggest you write the list out on paper and work through it by hand.

Additional Tips  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The best way to sink any time management system is to overload it right at the beginning. FVP is pretty resilient, but at this stage you aren’t. So build up the list gradually. My advice is to start off with the tasks and projects that are of immediate concern to you right now, and then add more as they come up in the natural course of things.Tasks can be added at any level, e.g. Project X, Plan Restructuring, Call Pete, Tidy Desk. If at any stage you find that a task on the list is no longer relevant, then delete it. If you find that your preselected list is no longer relevant (e.g. if you have had a long break away from the list or some new factor has come into play), then scrap the preselection and reselect from the beginning. If one or more very urgent things come up, just write them at the end of the list and the algorithm will automatically select them next (assuming you do actually want to do them of course). Similarly if something already on the list becomes very urgent, then just cross it out and move it to the end of the list.Remember that the aim of any time management system is to help you to get your work done, not get in the way of doing your work. So don’t be afraid to adjust priorities as and when you need to. However don’t overdo this - stick to the rules when possible as they will ensure you deal with your work in a systematic way.

 Why It Works

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At the beginning of this article I said there were three factors which every time management system needs to address: urgency, importance and psychological readiness. Let’s see how FV deals with each of these.

Urgency. Because of the nature of the preselection process, urgent tasks tend to get selected because generally speaking the human brain wants to do things that it knows are urgent. If things come up that are particularly urgent they can be added to the preselected list at any time.Importance. Generally speaking the human brain is a bit less keen on doing important stuff than it is on doing urgent stuff. This is particularly the case when the important stuff is difficult. However the FVP preselection process ensures that the entire list is kept under continuous review and your brain will start to flag up that it wants you to get on with stuff it thinks you might be neglecting. If this doesn’t happen, then it’s likely to be because you would be better off getting rid of it altogether.Psychological Readiness. This is where FVP really enters new dimensions. By using a pre-selection process, the brain is softened up towards the selected tasks. But this isn’t all. The selection process is based on what you want to do. This colours the whole preselected list so that even tasks which seem like chores get affected. 

Predicting Your Day

Yesterday I started to revisit a very successful system from 2008, which I left after about a week to follow other ideas. Although it worked brilliantly and never let me down once, for some reason I’ve never come back to it.

The system in question is Predicting Your Day. You can read the instructions for yourself, plus the two follow-ups (which are clearly linked). But in summary, the idea is that at the beginning of the day you write down a list of what you predict that you will do that day. You then work for the rest of the day without reference to the list. The result the first time I tried it was astonishing, and it continued to work well for the whole time I used it.

Late yesterday afternoon I came across it while searching for something else and decided to have another crack at it. The results were just as astonishing as before. I put twenty-three tasks on the list, and had done all but two or three by mid-evening without once referring to the list. I then had a quick look at the list and finished the remaining tasks in no time at all without looking at the list again.

This morning I started first thing with 64 tasks on the list and at 08.45 I have already done 15 and am working on the 16th (this blog post). 

The most notable thing about this is the speed at which this all gets done. I find myself going from one task to another without any resistance or time spent deciding what to do.

Right, that’s done. It’s 08.52. What’s next?