PowerSecretsForLife.com

8Sep/094

Experience with Revised AutoFocus 2

In my continuing quest to try and report on the various AutoFocus approaches for the past 2 weeks I have been experimenting with Mark Forster's revised rules for AutoFocus.  After my last post on using AutoFocus 2 with OmniFocus I switched back to paper and pencil methods.  So here is my report on using the revised AutoFocus.

First I have to say I was quite happy to be back to pencil and paper.  I felt that this worked much better for me.  One of the things I've liked so much about AutoFocus is that it builds a sense of momentum, but I felt this was lacking somewhat using AutoFocus where there was really no notion of a page, and little sense of completion or progress.  It's a little like running on a treadmill compared to running outside.  I think an AutoFocus app could be built, but I don't think you can just take a GTD app and redeploy it as an AutoFocus application and get all the benefits of AutoFocus.

In many ways this experiment with the revised AutoFocus rules was something of a failure.  The major change here is the use of modes a reverse mode and a forward mode.  Forward mode is handled by entering a task on your list called "Switch to Forward mode" and then when that is the task that sticks out you switch to Forward mode.  Over the two weeks I've been doing this I only found myself switching into forward mode 3 times.  I found the tail end of my list far more compelling and important.  The beginning of my list that could only be reached using Forward mode really didn't have that many truly critical and important tasks so they tended to get dismissed each day (with a few exceptions).  Dismissing those tasks always seemed very reasonable and painless.  There were tasks that I dismissed that I wished I'd gotten around to doing, but none of them were a big deal.

Overall I have to say that I was pretty happy with the new revised rules because they do help you get back to the beginning of the list and I continue to like the new dismissal rules.

Let me share my stats for the past few weeks because I think they are fairly interesting.  I found them pretty interesting.

Date Items created Items completed Items dismissed Open items Open pages
7/31/09 30 22 1 64 11
8/1/09 15 6 1 72 11
8/2/09 0 7 1 6 4 12
8/3/09 38 24 1 77 12
8/4/09 29 8 1 97 13
8/5/09 17 7 2 105 13
8/6/09 12 11 1 105 14
8/7/09 56 42 0 119 15
8/8/09 4 7 2 114 15
8/9/09 30 28 0 116 16
8/10/09 27 22 2 119 17
8/11/09 25 8 0 136 17
8/12/09 12 12 0 136 18
8/13/09 43 11 2 166 19
8/14/09 21 27 7 153 20

It's clear that I'm opening pages much faster than I'm closing them out, at least some are getting closed out.  If this trend continues though I'll end up with an untenable number of pages.  There seem to be only 3 possibilities for addressing this issue:

1) Dismiss items faster

2) Do a better job of taking small actions more frequently so that I can cover more pages.

3) Add fewer tasks

#1 is an option and I'm sure there are more tasks that could be dismissed faster  (AutoFocus 1 handled this a bit better.  #2 is an option, but already feel that there are times through the day when I'm shifting my attention too many times - often to things of lower importance.  #3 isn't in the spirit of AutoFocus where you can dump things in and filter them.  I think this is actually working pretty well because the things that aren't getting done in general are not that critical.  My worry is that I am still spending too much time on things less critical rather than spending more of my time on the truly important things in my life.

You'll see from the dates above that this experiment is a few weeks old now. I have done another variant involving prioritizing critical items. I'll post the results of that tomorrow.

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  • David Drake

    You simply MUST try Mark’s just-released version 4 of Autofocus! It is the best yet! I think it is brilliant. I urge you strongly to try it!

    Best regards,
    -David

  • admin

    Thanks for the feedback David. I’m not very happy with AF4 quite honestly. I find it very difficult to get enough attention on current tasks. In fact I find it basically unusable for me. I’m doing a modified version of AF4 that I like a lot. I’ll write something here about it in a couple weeks once I have some metrics to show my progress.

  • David Drake

    Really? I seem to not have a problem reaching my active list at a minimum of once a day, usually more. But I realize that others may have problems. I have not seen anyone complain about this on Mark’s website. I would urge you to post the problems you have encountered there and see what discussion ensues.

    -David

  • admin

    Hi David, thanks for your thoughts and encouragement.

    I have no problem with AF4 getting to my active list. I also love that my backlog rapidly gets done and I have fewer open pages. That’s a good thing. The problem is only being able to get enough things done on it that are relatively urgent before I’m sent back to the backlog. I have about 200 open tasks and many of the things in the backlog can be done and should be done, but are less important and urgent than the items on the Active list. I think it may depend on the environment one is working in. If I say, were a student or I worked from home and largely set my own schedule and assignments were do two to three days out then AF4 might work fine. If you work in a fast paced business where many things come onto the list rapidly and need to be dismissed rapidly then I don’t think its as useful. From the posting on Mark’s site AF4 seems more consistent with his Do It Tomorrow approach. I haven’t read his DIT book so may be judging a book by its cover, but there are many things going on my Active list that actually need to be done today. I will write up a post over on his site later today.

    I did start my experimenting with AF4 with my existing list, perhaps its different if you start from scratch, however my instinct is that the same issue will eventually crop up.

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