;)
Mark Forster is the author of three books about time management and personal organisation. The most recent, Do It Tomorrow, was published by Hodder in 2006.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 8:59 
The Italian version of “Do It Tomorrow” published by Sangiovanni’s is now on sale (price € 15.95). You can read more details (in Italian) and order by clicking here.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 15:37 Here are a couple of options which I have been trying out for DWM, which have the aim of ensuring that you can keep the important stuff moving. You can use both of them at the same time if you wish:
1) The Current Initiative.
This is similar to the Current Initiative in DIT and is designed to be “The thing that you do first every day”. The idea is to select one project to which you want to give special treatment for a while.
The method is to write the selected project in BLOCK CAPS on your list. Every day when you start work on your list, your starting point is that project. You must do some work on it before moving on to any other task. Apart from these rules, you treat it like any other recurring task.
Once you have completed the project or got it sufficiently up and running, you can select a new Current Initiative.
2) Next Pass Mark-Up.
At present when you scan through the list you can either pass by a task or do some work on it. The “Next Pass Mark-Up” adds one further thing you can do, which is to mark the task up for action on the next pass through the list.
You then must take some action on that task on the next pass, unless it is physically impossible to do so.
Unlike the Current Initiative, under which a project remains Current Initiative until another one is chosen, the Next Pass Mark-Up does not remain with the task if it is re-entered.
This is not intended to be a method of prioritising tasks, and therefore tasks can only be given this designation as they are considered for action during a normal pass through the list.
The mark-up should be used very sparingly, otherwise the list may be slowed down and resistance increased.
The recommended method of marking a task for this purpose is to draw a small circle in front of it:
○ Call Bill Smith
This can then be filled in when you start work on the task, so that your current place on the list is marked (like the normal dot):
● Call Bill Smith
And finally the task is crossed out in the normal way when you finish working on it:
● Call Bill Smith
DWM Monday, February 8, 2010 at 16:43 Please note: This post assumes a knowledge of both the “Do It Tomorrow” (DIT) and the Day-Week-Month (DWM) time management systems. If you don’t have this knowledge please don’t bother to read it!
One thing that’s becoming increasingly clear to me as I work the new DWM system is that it is not just close to DIT, but actually is DIT.
To see this, let’s examine the statistics which I published in my previous post on February 5th:
Feb 6. 0 (36)
Feb 7. 0 (46)
Feb 8. 0 (50)
Feb 9. 0 (40)
Feb 10. 1 (43)
Feb 11. 16 (62)
Feb 12. 25 (42)
Remember that in DIT you enter all tasks by default under tomorrow’s date with the idea that you take action on them tomorrow. There are however two important exceptions to this. One is that you can enter urgent tasks “below the line” so that they are done today instead of tomorrow. The other is that you can allow yourself to get behind by 4 or 5 days. If you get further behind than that you are supposed to audit your commitments.
If you look more closely at the statistics qyoted above you can see that DWM has kept completely to these principles, except that it has moved the entry point one week into the future. February 12 was where tasks for “tomorrow” were added, and February 11th was today’s list. February 10 consisted of one task which had got behind one day. The 17 tasks shown as already completed on February 12 were the equivalent of DIT’s urgent tasks entered “below the line” today.
Feb 6. 0 (36)
Feb 7. 0 (46)
Feb 8. 0 (50)
Feb 9. 0 (40)
Feb 10. 1 (43) = DIT’s “Behind by 1 day”
Feb 11. 16 (62) = DIT’s “Today”
Feb 12. 25 (42) = DIT’s “Tomorrow”
The only real changes to DIT, apart from the method of entry, are:
1) There is now no need to make a distinction between “same day” tasks and “everything else”.
2) The rather nebulous audit procedure in DIT has been changed into an automatic dismissal process.
I’m sure you will be asking “What about DWM’s 1-month entry point?”
Well, all the 1-month entry point is really doing is adding a pre-screening process to DIT. Instead of relying on the audit to weed out unnecessary tasks, there is now a process by which anything can be added to the list but is weeded out automatically if it no action is taken on it within one month. It also means that anything that gets on the 1-week list has had at least some preliminary action taken on it. There will of course come a time when unactioned 1-month entries co-exist on the same page as new 1-week entry tasks, but there is unlikely to be much confusion between them.
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 21:56 I’ve now been working DWM for a complete week and it’s still working extremely well for me. I don’t intend to publish another summary for at least a week unless something happens worth reporting.
Here are the stats for the pages I’ve used so far:
Feb 6. 0 (36)
Feb 7. 0 (46)
Feb 8. 0 (50)
Feb 9. 0 (40)
Feb 10. 1 (43)
Feb 11. 16 (62)
Feb 12. 25 (42)
————
Feb 28. 18 (99)
Mar 1. 5 (27)
Mar 2. 5 (33)
Mar 3. 5 (11)
Mar 4. 29 (47)
Mar 5. 6 (18)
Totals: 105 (554)
Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 22:01 All still going well with DWM. I don’t remember enjoying working any of my previous systems as much as this one.
I’ve now completed all the actions for the first three pages: Feb 6, 7 and 8 and there is only one left on Feb 9, so I don’t think I will have any tasks being dismissed until Wednesday next week at the earliest.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 15:56 The new DWM system is throwing up some interesting new perspectives. One that has struck me quite forcibly is the repetitive nature of most of my work. Previous time management systems have tended to disguise the number of times that one re-enters the same task on the list.
But DWM separates out re-entered tasks from new tasks, and rather to my surprise I discovered that the number of new tasks that I’m putting on the list is decidedly in the minority. For example, yesterday I re-entered 43 tasks and only added 11 new tasks.
This reinforces a point I have often made, which is that good systems are all important in being well-organised. If the majority of tasks are repetitious, then making sure that those tasks are being carried out as efficiently as possible will bring about huge time savings.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 23:56 I haven’t been around much today because of some outside engagements, but nevertheless the new DWM system has proved its worth. Everything I needed to get done has got done, and quite a bit more. My pages for Feb 6th and Feb 7th have now got no unactioned tasks on them, so I won’t be in danger of any tasks being dismissed until next Monday.
The real crunch of course will come in eighteen days time when the original 1-month page becomes the 1-week page. Until then it is really impossible to judge the system properly.
In the meantime, I keep feeling more and more that the system is very psychologically powerful. I don’t think that I’ve felt quite so motivated and in control of my time with any of my previous systems.
DWM Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 12:27 It’s a bit unsatisfactory referring to the new system as DIT2/AF5 so I’ve decided to refer to it from now, until we come up a better, by the provisional name “The Day/Week/Month Time Management System”, for short “DWM”.
DWM Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 0:44 Day 4 has gone even better than Days 1-3, in spite of my broadband connection failing late this afternoon which is why I’m writing this at 12.45 am. I’m beginning to appreciate the power of this system.
Here are the stats as they are now:
Feb 6. 0 (36)
Feb 7. 1 (46)
Feb 8. 8 (50)
Feb 9. 23 (39)
Feb 28. 25 (99)
Mar 1. 6 (27)
Mar 2. 14 (31)
Totals: 77 (328)
DWM Monday, February 1, 2010 at 18:52 I’ve been working my new system now for three days. So here are the statistics as at the end of Day 3 for each active page that I have now. The first figure is the number of task remaining unactioned on the page. The second figure (in brackets) is the total number on the page.
Feb 6. 2 (36)
Feb 7. 10 (46)
Feb 8. 23 (40)
Feb 28. 27 (99)
Mar 1. 4 (24)
Totals: 66 (244)
Bear in mind that because of the short month, Feb 28 was open to new entries for two days.
DWM Monday, February 1, 2010 at 12:39 Here is video from December 2008 of me being interviewed by Amanda Malloy of Videofocus. It’s mainly in a “Do It Tomorrow” context, but contains many good points and is in my humble opinion well worth seeing. It lasts just over 30 minutes.
Monday, February 1, 2010 at 11:17 Usually when I release a new time management system I have tested it quite thoroughly myself. This is important because often any drawbacks only become apparent quite a while down the line.
But in the case of the new DIT2/AF5 system, I think it might be more helpful to have other people working on it with me at the same time so that we can share our experiences of it together.
So what I am going to do now is to share the basic outline of what I’m doing now, so others can run with it and see what they can make of it. I’m not going to go into much detail because I think that would destroy the purpose of the exercise - the detail should appear from our experience of working the system.
This is what it consists of:
1. You need a page-a-day diary with plenty of lines. Also some form of bookmarking for today’s date and the two entry pages (see below) - though turned down page corners are probably quite sufficient.
2. All new tasks are entered on the page which is one calendar month from today’s date. Example: Today’s date is February 1st. New tasks are entered on the page for March 1st. Tomorrow I will enter new tasks on March 2nd and so on.
3. All re-entered tasks are entered on the page which is one week from today. So any task I re-enter today (Monday February 1st) goes on the page for for next Monday (February 8th). Tomorrow (Tuesday) they will go on the page for next Tuesday 9th and so on.
4. Nothing is ever entered on any page, other than the pages currently one month and one week from today’s date.
5. All active pages are treated as if they were one long list and you continue to circulate round them doing the tasks that stand out.
6. All tasks which are on pages earlier than today’s date have expired. They are dead, done for, dismissed, deceased.
The thinking behind this is that you can put anything you like into the system. If you do nothing about it, it will remain there for a month and then expire. If at any time you commit yourself to a task by taking some action on it, you are put under increased pressure to get it finished by being given only seven calendar days to do some more work on it. Of course many tasks are done in one go, so can be deleted without being re-entered.
That’s all you need to get started.
Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 7:44 The new system I’m working on was provisionally called DIT2. But that doesn’t really apply any longer since the latest changes I have made make it far less like “Do It Tomorrow”. In fact about the only similarity now is that they both use a page-a-day diary to write tasks in.
It doesn’t bear much resemblance to Autofocus either, so calling it AF5 isn’t going to work either.
Hmm…
Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 17:45 I’ve had to make some major changes to my ideas for DIT2, which is going to mean that it will take longer than expected to publish it. The earliest is likely to be sometime in the first half of March.
It’s still based on a page-a-day diary, so if anyone has already invested in one in anticipation the money won’t be wasted!
There are some interesting new concepts which I have now included:
a. You can put tasks into the list without actually committing yourself to doing them. Once you have committed yourself to doing a task, it is then treated in a different way.
b. The little and often approach is encouraged, and the system is so constructed as to encourage you to keep going.
c. There is automatic purging of tasks which you haven’t committed yourself to doing.
d. The system can cope easily when you have days you can’t work on it. You don’t have to forecast these - you respond after the event.
e. You can do any task in the system next without breaking the rules.
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 13:45 While working on my list early yesterday, I came to a task “Buy notebook”. I passed by it saying to myself:
“I haven’t got the car out yet, so I’ll do it later.”
By the time I got to the end of the list I had passed by several other errands for the exactly the same reason. Then on the next pass round the list when I came to the same task again, I still hadn’t got the car out. So I passed the task by again. (Perhaps I should explain that my car is garaged a short walk away from my house).
I suddenly realised that most of these tasks had been hanging around for several days simply because I had only finally got the car out when it was time for evening meetings - by which time it was too late to do any of the tasks.
Looking through my list I could see that many other tasks had similar pre-conditions which weren’t getting addressed.
Anyway, I put “Get car out” on today’s list, and the result is that a whole stream of tasks got done which had been hanging around. I also spent a bit of time identifying other pre-conditions which were holding things up and made sure they were dealt with too.
If you’ve got some tasks which are “sticking”, have a look at what you’re saying to yourself when you pass by them. “I’ll do it later because…”
Then tackle the “because”!
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 13:23 After all the lessons which I’ve learned through developing the various versions of Autofocus, I thought it was time to look again at Do It Tomorrow and see whether any of these lessons could be used to improve it. The answer is a resounding “Yes!”
I’m now testing out what I hope will be the final version of my revisions, and I hope to publish it fairly soon in the form of a supplement to DIT, which will be free of charge.
The revision keeps the basic structure of DIT, especially the concept of “one day’s work in one day” which was its most innovative feature. However the system is now more flexible and responsive to what goes on during the day. In particular it can now cope extremely well with tasks that need to be done more than once a day. The Current Initiative is streamlined and is better integrated into the system as a whole.
The biggest difference is in the “audit procedure”. Instead of being just a recommendation, it is now incorporated into the system in such a way that it happens automatically. No thought needed!
How does DIT now compare to AF? Well, it now seems to be as responsive as AF, is a universal capture system like AF, and forces one much quicker to either do something or discard it. I’m hoping that it will hold up well under the further testing that I will be giving it.
Monday, September 7, 2009 at 12:24 A couple of news items:
The first translation of AF4 is into Chinese (traditional). Many thanks to Catus Lee.
There is a brilliant file by Andreas Hofmann which gives an animated version of my demonstration of AF4. This is an absolute must for quick understanding of the system. Many thanks, Andreas, this was a huge undertaking.
Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 12:38 I must admit that by the time yesterday’s demo was finished I felt very tired. This was a surprise to me because normally AF4 is a very restful way to work, and I use it all day as a matter of habit. I hadn’t allowed though for the extra energy required by the fact that it was a performance!
Another factor was the extra overhead through working the system as a blog entry. Although I spend a huge amount of time each day on my computer, I really do not like using it for a To Do list (of whatever type). I find paper and pen much quicker and easier, and it has a meditative natural quality about it which the computer entirely lacks.
There were certain “extras” necessary for demonstration purposes. I had to number items, change from normal to italic, to bold, to strikethrough and so on. As my regular readers know, I abhor having to annotate entries, so I found the extra fiddling with each task a real strain.
So the whole thing seemed much more like hard work yesterday than it normally does. I was also conscious that having an audience changed what I was doing. I did an impressive number of tasks yesterday, but they are probably not quite the same ones that I would have done if I’d been working normally.
And I’m still trying to work out how to get back to my usual way of working. I feel that yesterday disturbed things, and put them out of their rightful sequence. I think for list purposes I am going to pretend yesterday never happened. I will just pick up my written list from where I left it two days ago.
Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 10:34 Here are the preliminary instructions for AF4 as demonstrated yesterday. I will write them up in more detail later, but basically everything you need to work the system is here.
I will give the system for paper and pen, but it is easy to adapt the system for electronic use.
You will need a ruled notebook.
1) Draw up your list of things to do with one task per line. (If you already have a list you can continue to use it). You don’t need to put everything on the list at this stage as you can add other tasks as and when you think of them.
2) Draw a line at the end of the list. Everything before this line is known as the Backlog. As you think of new tasks add them after the line. Everything after the line is known as the Active List.
3) You start with the Backlog. Look through the tasks in the Backlog in order and work on any tasks which feel ready to be done. Delete each task when you feel you have worked on it for long enough, and re-enter it at the end of the Active List if you need to do more work on it.
4) When you come to the line, do not go into the Active List. Instead return to the beginning of the Backlog and continue to move through it in it doing any tasks which feel ready to be done. Keep circulating in this way, until you have done a complete pass through the Backlog without any tasks being done.
5) You now cross the line into the Active List. Move through the Active List in order working on any tasks which feel ready to be done.
6) When you reach the last task on the list, you then go back to the beginning of the Backlog and repeat the process from Step 3.
7) When you have crossed off all the tasks in the Backlog, you draw a line at the end of the Active List and this now becomes the Backlog.
So just to recap:
Your list is divided into two parts, the Backlog and the Active List. You circulate round the Backlog until no more tasks seem ready to be done. Then you do one pass through the Active List. After that you return to the Backlog. Once you’ve done every task in the Backlog, the Active List becomes the Backlog and you start a new Active List.
Deleting undone items
After you have been working on the Backlog for some time it may be reduced to a few tasks which for some reason or other you are reluctant to tackle. At this stage you may find that when you go back to the Backlog from the Active List you do a complete pass of the Backlog without doing any of the tasks.
If this happens, you should delete all the remaining tasks in the Backlog using a highlighter instead of a pen stroke, and then proceed as in Step 7 to make the Active List the Backlog.
The next time you come to the beginning of the list, you should finally cross off the highlighted tasks by deciding what to do with each one in turn. You may elect to abandon it, re-enter it on the Active List (with or without re-phrasing), or put it into a reminder system for review at a later date. In making the decision what to do with each task, you should look at the reasons why you haven’t done it yet.
Other implementations
It’s perfectly acceptable to use sheets of ruled paper rather than a notebook. You need two lists, a Backlog and an Active List. If you have undone items to review as in the previous paragraph, you will need to keep the old Backlog list until this has been done.
Electronic implementation is easy, as seen on my example yesterday. Rather than use Strikeout for actioned items, you can simply delete them. There’s no need to put new tasks in italics - I did that purely for demonstration purposes. You might want to use Bold for the current task, as it helps to find your place again.
Mark Forster
There is a brilliant file by Andreas Hofmann which gives an animated version of my demonstration of AF4. This is an absolute must for quick understanding of the system. Many thanks, Andreas, this was a huge undertaking.
