Basically it is a system which combines the best bits of DIT, the AFs and DWM:

1. Like DIT it is based on one day’s work, but it incorporates several improvements to make it more flexible.
2. Like AF it dismisses stuff which you aren’t prepared to do, but does so much more directly.
3. Like AF4 it works on a “backlog” and a “current” list, but ensures that this is related to one day’s work.
4. Like DWM stuff which isn’t done within a certain number of days gets dismissed, but without the endless page turning.
5. And best of all it puts the screws on very quickly with the important stuff, while allowing the urgent less important stuff to flow quickly.

If you can imagine DIT with the problem solved of what to do when you don’t finish all today’s tasks, you’ll be pretty close.

Some of that’s happened, but the sense of unlimited time available for what I want to do has so far eluded me. In fact I am so busy most of the time I don’t know how I ever fitted full-time, or even part-time, work into my day. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing - just not what I’d envisaged.

One of the problems is that I don’t seem to be able to switch my mind off inventing time management systems. I’m always getting brilliant ideas, and when I get a brilliant idea I want to try it out. And if I’m trying it out then I want to tell other people about it, and discuss it with them and get them to try it out too. So before I know it, I’m doing almost as much work for nothing as I was previously doing for money.

The above is just a preamble to saying that I have now come up with yet another new time management system. It is however very different in the way it works from the Autofocus and DWM systems which I have introduced over the last sixteen months or so. About all it has in common with them is that it uses one long list.

What it does do however is what the Autofocus systems aimed to do, but never quite achieved, which is to autofocus - to zoom in on the things which really matter while not neglecting the mundane but essential tasks which are part of everyone’s lives. So I’ve actually started to get moving with the walks, the music, the languages, the trips and the books. And I may even be able to find time without too much difficultly for that fund raising project which my church seems keen to get me involved in.

How does it work? It’s too early to go into detail, but it is basically a new way of combining some of the time management principles which I have worked on over the years, plus some new ideas.

More soon.

P.S. I almost forgot to say that I think it will work just as well for those who are not retired!

I’ve been notified by the publishers of the program that there is now a Version 2 which can be downloaded on 30-day free trial from their site.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.