Autofocus
I am an organization junkie. After 2 years of fumbling to perfect my GTD system, I have finally found The time-management system which allows me to feed my weird moleskine addiction at the SAME TIME: Autofocus.
Here are the quickstart instructions from the website:
The system consists of one long list of everything that you have to do, written in a ruled notebook (25-35 lines to a page ideal). As you think of new items, add them to the end of the list. You work through the list one page at a time in the following manner:
- Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them.
- Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you.
- Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so.
- Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it.
- Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out
- Move onto the next page and repeat the process.
- If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items.
- Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.
That’s it. I’ve used it for both my personal and work tasks in the past week and it’s amazing how much I’ve gotten done since then. It’s the first system I’ve tried where I actually spend more time DOING tasks than organizing them. You really have to try it to believe it.
Originally published at daveandsabrina.com by Sabrina. Please leave any comments there.