This is interesting. I might try it.
I remember that "important vs. urgent" discussion, so I suppose I must have been channeling it when I made my bulletin board into a graph-quadrant with "long-term" as the X-axis and "short-term" as the Y-axis, and pinned cards with my major tasks onto the graph. (That hasn't been that helpful because the tasks are so broad, but it does keep me sort of grounded.)
I read the method and don't see how it keeps one from prioritizing the easier, less intimidating items.
Yeah, one of these days I'd like to get around to trying something like that. Maybe next week, if I think of it.
Doesn't it feel a bit too Bain Consulting-y? This company's full of Bainiacs and they see everything in the world as a 2x2 matrix.
"long-term" as the X-axis and "short-term" as the Y-axis
Uh, are all your cards on the diagonal?
6: What do you mean? "Long-term" means they're strategically and/or monetarily important for my organization; "short-term" means they need to get done soon. They can be one, the other, or both to varying degrees.
I read the method and don't see how it keeps one from prioritizing the easier, less intimidating items.
This is kind of what I meant in the 3rd paragraph. I think under this system, you only tackle intimidating items when your anxiety kicks in, which is the same mechanism that we all already use, and so there's no improvement there.
8: Yeah, true. OTOH, considering I have (a) my billboard-graph, (b) a whiteboard with tasks at hand more broken down, and (c) an Outlook to-do list, and they all work together only dubiously, this might be a good way to make things more rational.
7: I was joking, in the most obnoxious way possible, that short-term and long-term sound directly related.
10: I got it because getting jokes is a priority for me.
8: I don't know if it works, but I would surmise that the idea is that you catch yourself by surprise on a day when you really are ready to do whatever horrific task is lurking. The system keeps you from staying in denial about what you have to get done, but is low pressure enough that you might be able to make yourself get to the hard stuff before anxiety alone would do it.
It's probably the sort of thing that works great for some people, and not at all for others.
It doesn't sound that different to structured procrastination:
http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
Let me continue my project, well underway IRL, of becoming a crashing bore on the subject of Org-Mode. SO GREAT. There's substantial overhead if you don't already use Emacs, but if you do, seriously, so great.
One thing I like about GTD but have trouble doing in practice is decomposing big scary tasks into digestible steps. When I put the effort in to break down an unpleasant job I'd otherwise procrastinate on, I really am able to get through it faster and with less misery. But the breaking-into-pieces-and-putting-the-pieces-on-my-list is itself a gross, procrastination-worthy task.
13: Indeed, he even mentions structured procrastination at one point in explaining part of the system.
Same here. Also, I have a tendency to pretend I've broken something up when I really haven't -- split a task into six parts, five of which are 1% of the work and the remainder is 95%. And then I do the first five and still have basically the whole thing left to do.
Step 1: Get coffee
Step 2: Start computer
Step 3: Open word processor
Step 4: Write novel
"So, how's the novel coming."
"Great. I'm three quarters of the way done."
I was sent to Franklin Day-Planner indoctrination way back in the day (before it merged with the 7 Habits of Effective People stuff). I recall being impressed that it was basically a cult/philosophy of life as much as a day-planner system. A lot of emphasis on the founder of the company, Hyrum Smith (a descendant of Joseph Smith's brother) . Turns out he's had an interesting time of it, subsequently being ex-communicated from the Mormon Church after confessing to adultery and later being reinstated.
The actual excommunication proceedings were "quite pleasant" in relative terms, he said, noting the sympathy for his devastation and the feeling of relief that he wasn't hiding any longer. But regaining his membership years later was "a very unpleasant experience. I was interrogated for 4 1/2 hours" by local church leaders, culminating in an interview that ended in a recommendation that he be rebaptized. The reason he was grilled so long? "I came into the room and I wasn't crying. When you reach a point where you are very sure that the Lord has forgiven you, you know the Lord has and sometimes it takes the church a little longer. I had done all my crying in private. So when I came in for this meeting I was very excited. Several of the brethren couldn't understand that and were offended by it." While the meeting "wasn't pleasant, it ended well."
Reversible Excommunication would be a good name for a band tumblr racehorse.
Is there a software version of this with a nice GUI interface. orgmode.org looks intimidating.
When I have certain kinds of urgent/ easy tasks, I'm not good about writing them down. I find it easier to just do them, and then I don't get to the report that's due in a week.
This system looks like it might work for me. I did GTD for a bit, and it was good for helping me organize what I wanted to do but was no help at all in getting me to do what I didn't want to do. I would either list stuff I didn't want to do and feel bad that it sat there on the list for so long, or I'd leave it off the list and still have a back-of-the-head nagging about it, which is the thing these to-do systems are supposed to eliminate.
Adultery is such a boring thing to get excommunicated for. The cool kids get excommunicated for apostasy.
One of my friends got excommunicated from the Catholic church. Turned out to be a lot of work, he had to sit down with a bishop in person, I think.
I've used Autofocus off and on for about a year now. The great thing about it is that it's universal capture and pretty much zero overhead. You just write everything down you want or need to do whenever you think about it, without having to categorize it according to quadrant or contexts or anything else. It all just goes into your list in whatever order it comes to you.
The list has an algorithm that moves you through the items and a mechanism for pretty painlessly sorting out the wheat from the chaff. It also effectively (at least for me) encourages a "little and often" approach to tasks without having to do much of any work upfront breaking large tasks/projects down into chunks.
I found GTD had way too much overhead, i.e. I spent a lot of time setting up and maintaining and tweaking parts of my GTD system rather than getting actual work done.
It's definitely worth a try if you're unsatisfied with your current productivity. There are several flavors too, and numerous electronic implementations to be found in the forums on the website.
Mark Forster's latest development is called Final Version, and I'm probably going to try that out soon the next time I feel the need to resume using a system to help me get s&*t done.
I find this stuff interesting to think about, but lately I tend to get bogged down in the fact that there is so much going on that I actually don't even have time to get it all on a list.
I have some more thoughts about this which I might manage to get together this weekend, but right now I have to write a letter by 5 p.m.
Yes, but your productivity has been negatively impacting your commenting. The management has been meaning to have a chat with you about this.
I'm too tired to work because I spend so much time and effort putting it off in the correct order.
27: You don't have to get it all on the list in one go, or even ever. You just put things on the list when you think of them. Like I said: extremely low overhead to this system.
28: It's really just that I'm busier and more engaged at work than I used to be, so I can't comment much from work anymore.
I use a list based method for managing tasks, also non-structured, but it's a little different in that I recopy the entire list periodically and don't cross out and re-enter partially done items. I just run multiple lists in parallel and recopy when roughly half the tasks are done. The random-access nature of doing all this on paper is an important part of what makes it work for me, as I can annotate partially done items in little illegible scribbles in the margins, and add random arrows in different colored pens. There's no way this system could be translated to a computer short of using an iPad type device to basically replicate paper (and even then I don't think it's possible to get the input as smooth as writing with a pen). The best part of my method is that my notebook fills up with neatly crossed out items (and I cross out items even on superseded lists just for neatness). It's a bit of a morale boost to flip through pages of Shit That's Been Done, Bitches! which I really sort of need from time to time.
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My boss today is wearing something that looks exactly like a sweater turned inside out, complete with outside tag, except that there's a word across the front that's the right way around. Is this some kind of fashion thing? I'm hesitant to ask.
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It means your employer is about to go broke because lack of qualified management.
Is the word "MOM", "WOW", "TOOT" or "AHA"?
35: lock your windows, Stormcrow. Moby Hick has been sneaking into your house and commenting from your computer.
I was jogging. 6.2 miles in 63 minutes. But I still can't run just one mile in under eight minutes.
All right, now I've read the autofocus link. I think it is either a very poor fit for my organizational challenges, or I'm missing the point.
Among other things, it seems better suited for people whose work is less time-sensitive and externally-driven than I'm accustomed to. Part of my challenge is that I can create a detailed to-do list, start working my way through it, and then have multiple interruptions and new urgent tasks arrive. By the end of the day, I have accomplished a lot, but it's often not what I was planning to do. And that's *with* judiciously saying no a lot, and ignoring irrelevant interruptions.
The structured procrastination link strikes me as fine in theory for a solitary writer, but disturbingly inconsiderate in practice. Seriously, just keep ignoring reminders from the departmental secretary? It doesn't matter how much more work and trouble you create for her (him)?
I am open to the idea that I'm just being pigheaded. Certainly my current juggling act is far from ideal.
I can stay focussed for four hours.
Partly, yes, it is disturbingly inconsiderate. It is, after all, proposed by a senior academic.
Arguably, though, you aren't really creating that much work for the dep't sec'y, because you are the only person that can do that work. All they have to do is nag you, and presumably if you never get around to doing it, then it's only really your problem. Arguably.
Has anybody tried the. Mac/iPhone app Things?
Among other things, it seems better suited for people whose work is less time-sensitive and externally-driven than I'm accustomed to. Part of my challenge is that I can create a detailed to-do list, start working my way through it, and then have multiple interruptions and new urgent tasks arrive.
Take a look at the Superfocus variant. It was built to better handle the issue of frequent interruptions and new urgent tasks. It just leaves out the specific task of "first, create a detailed to-do list" and relies instead on its task-selection method to help you figure out what to do next.
The Final Version also has a method for dealing with new urgent tasks. I haven't actually tried FV out yet, but lots of forum commenters seem to be using it successfully in situations that sound similar to yours.
Witt, the book Time Management for System Administrators is all about dealing with time-sensitive external interrupts... but I'm not sure it would translate to dealing with people. Parts might, as sysadmins are responding to users. Maybe something for medical offices?