The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniFocus > OmniFocus 1 for Mac
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
Cull your task list ruthlessly Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Here is a great article on LifeCleaver.

One of the suggestions at the bottom of the article talks about keeping track of killed projects so you don't go back and add it again.

One brilliant point about OmniFocus is it does just that!
When you drop a project, it stays in the list.
Brilliant.

Here is the link:
http://www.lifeclever.com/cull-your-...st-ruthlessly/

And the article:

I came to a realization yesterday. It’s something I’d understood on one level or another for a long time, but this was the first time I’d articulated in a way that really sank in:

I create new tasks faster than I could ever accomplish them.

Coming to this realization gave me a tremendous sense of freedom. I imagine other addicts feel the same way when they hit rock bottom and realize it can only go up from here.

Face It: You Are Your Own Worst Manager

Imagine a boss who doesn’t do any work himself. He just sits at home all day thinking of what you’re doing wrong, what you should be doing next, and giving you new projects and tasks constantly without any thought to how busy you already are and how much you have left to do. This boss has no concern for your personal life, couldn’t care less whether you have enough time to spend with your loved ones or simply play and relax. As far as your boss is concerned, your a lazy good-for-nothing who needs to be constantly whipped into shape.

That boss is inside you. It’s the part of your brain that worries in the most literal sense of the word, worrying away at your problems like a wolf gnawing at a wound. You can go to the movies or have a drink with a friend, but if there’s the slightest friction in your life, your brain is in the back there trying to find a solution. When a potential solution appears, a new task gets added to the notepad and processed into your system.

Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should

The problem is, we GTD-ers get a little too good at capture. Everybody has those moments where they think “Wouldn’t it be great if I did X?” But most people don’t write each of those ideas down immediately, process them, and then attack them methodically. They usually put them aside and go on with their day; only the most pressing ideas (i.e. the solutions to problems that are actually problems) keep pinging them until they finally put a solution in action. People who embrace GTD are generally very smart people who are frustrated by seeing good ideas go to waste. Personal progress is very satisfying, so we use a methodology that helps us efficiently capture each idea and see it through.

But the strength of GTD is also its greatest weakness. We get so good at capturing and executing tasks that we get sloppy. We throw everything into the machine. Where most people rely on inertia and friction to filter out the stuff that doesn’t really need to get done—saving their sanity—we reduce those obstacles until our task-accomplishing runs up against the one limitation that GTD can do nothing about: Time.

(If you’ve ever looked around you at people who don’t use GTD, and marveled at the fact that they have jobs, pay taxes, and in general get through life just fine, and also have time for hobbies, while you feel like you’re doing tasks every minute of every day and never seem to catch up, you know what I’m talking about here.)

We use all our time up, because there’s no opposite force (beyond divorce, anxiety attacks, heart problems, and so on) forcing us to save enough of our time for ourselves. Like smoking, unchecked GTD is a habit that feels good in the present, with long-term health consequences.

Eliminate Productivity Cruft

According to Wikipedia, “cruft” is a term used by computer programmers to refer to code that duplicates “code elsewhere in the system, is unnecessarily complicated, is a poor solution to the problem it solves, is left over from a previous change, etc.” In his wonderful little book, In the Beginning…was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson talks about how operating systems become increasingly weighed down by cruft as the software gets more and more bloated with each new feature.

Adding capabilities to a system is great, but if there’s no simultaneous, regular process for simplifying and reducing it at the same time, it will eventually spiral out of control and collapse under its own weight. This is one of the main reasons Apple decided to start from scratch, so to speak, with OS X. To make a fast, modern operating system, they had to sacrifice backward compatibility and begin from square one. It was a painful transition, but the result was a marvelous piece of uncrufty software.

Purging Isn’t Enough; Hire Yourself an Agent

OK, so your “worst boss” is the part of your brain that’s been trained to capture every thought and idea and turn it into action, building a pile of tasks far faster than the rest of you can accomplish them. Every once in a while, I get totally fed up and strung out and, in a fit of pique, cull my task list ruthlessly.

A good task purge makes me feel better right away, but within a day or two I start coming up with new tasks and projects at an even faster rate. “With all that free space on my task list, I must have a lot of time to spare!” Wrong.

The trick is to automate the task removal process, too. Imagine an agent, someone who’s in it for you, who comes into your office and yells at your boss and says “No, you don’t need him to do these four tasks. Life will go on. He needs to sleep. He needs to play. He needs to walk his dog. Forget the someday/maybe list, just get rid of it.”

Make this step an essential part of your Weekly Review, and put it at the end of the process, because an empty list is a temptation to add even more tasks.

The Rejected Task Killfile

Keep track of the tasks you’ve removed in a killfile, so that you don’t keep adding them. For instance, you might keep telling yourself you need to organize all the photos in your iPhoto database according to some new, better scheme. But during your weekly task cull, you decide it just isn’t worth it: you can find what you need and three hours fussing in there just isn’t necessary.

Problem is, if you don’t record the fact that you at one point decided against doing that task, your brain will keep reminding you, and you may even add it back to your list, only to remove it the following week. So keep track of all the tasks you’ve at one point decided simply weren’t worth the effort, and respect your own past choices. Sometimes, even the best of us have weak moments.

The fact is, we often add tasks to our lists as a way to stave off anxiety. The first sign I’m really anxious is that I start adding new tasks left and right. Guard for that behavior.

At the end of your weekly review, go through each and every task on your list with the following questions in mind: What will happen if I don’t do this? Chances are, nothing much.

I’m doing my weekly task cull now. Wish me luck. If you have success with this, let me know in the comments.

Last edited by SpiralOcean; 2007-12-05 at 08:23 PM..
 
Good article. I think as people work on their GTD system, they occasionally have these "ah-ha" moments that take them "to the next level".

One of those moments for me was definitely the realization that it's okay to move projects between "Projects" and "Someday/Maybe". I've noticed that sometimes, a little project becomes "part of the scenery" and isn't getting done. If it's not truly important, cull it or move it to Someday/Maybe.

(I haven't figure out how best to handle Someday/Maybe in OF, I like having a separate OmniOutliner file for this).

Another "ah-ha" I had recently was to remove all projects that could never be finished to a separate "areas of focus" list. That helped to clarify and simplify a lot of things as well. For instance instead of "maintain XYZ server", I have separate, clearly defined projects like "XYZ December 2007 upgrades".

I have to disagree with the bit about non-GTD'ers .. most non-GTD'ers I know (or I should say, most people that don't have any kind of "system") don't "scale" well. I think you need some kind of clear mental system, even if it's not GTD, if you want to run a business or juggle a lot of commitments or stay on track during big life events.

Last edited by OOO; 2007-12-05 at 08:53 PM..
 
For me, I used to have more of a fantasy that I could do everything and anything. The point in the article about time, is becoming ever more clear to me.

Without a system like GTD, I don't know if I would be seeing that limitation. My head just thinks I can be doing everything.

The more years behind me, the more I begin to say no to projects that I know aren't worth it to me. Projects that aren't worth the time spent on them.

One analogy I've been using...
It's like there is a penny 1 mile away.
I ask myself, do I want to walk 1 mile to pick up a penny?
no. It's not worth the effort.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by OOO View Post
(I haven't figure out how best to handle Someday/Maybe in OF, I like having a separate OmniOutliner file for this).
For me... I use the "on hold" project status for someday/maybe.

right click on the project and select on hold.

When I do my weekly review, I go through my on hold actions to review the same way I would review a someday/maybe list.

I use the project filter for on hold project to only view my on hold projects.
 
I think it's an important point not to let this article stop a person from throwing thoughts as they have them into the inbox.

The point of the article is to cull, to learn to make decisions about the stuff we have.

The thought of, I've got too much stuff to do anyway, so I'm not going to throw it into the inbox, will end up clogging up the psycie.

One point of GTD is it gives you a system to get all those nagging thoughts out of your head.

The point is when processing the inbox, and you get to an item that you have already decided not to work on, you delete the item or put it into a someday/maybe list.

In the GTD book, Allen talks about making agreements with ourselves.

If we have a project there are a couple choices to make:
• Is this something I want to work on, if so what is the next action.
• Is this something I want to work on, but now is not the time, someday maybe.
• Is this something I no longer want to work on, drop the project or delete it.

There is no shame with putting something in the someday/maybe list, and 6 months later realizing that the project no longer is something you want to do.

The problem occurs when we have a project we want to work on, but never do anything with. We have broken an agreement with ourself.
 
Here is an excerpt from the book:

-------------------------------------------

How Do You Prevent Broken Agreements with Yourself?
If the negative feelings come from broken agreements, you have
three options for dealing with them and eliminating the negative
consequences:
• Don't make the agreement.
• Complete the agreement.
• Renegotiate the agreement.
All of these can work to get rid of the unpleasant feelings.
Don't Make the Agreement
It probably felt pretty good to take a bunch of your old stuff,
decide that you weren't going to do anything with it, and just toss
it into the trash. One way to handle an incompletion in your
world is to just say no!
You'd lighten up if you would just lower your standards.
If you didn't care so much about things being up to a certain
227

THE POWER OF THE KEY PRINCIPLES I PART THREE
level—your parenting, your school system, your team's morale, the
software code—you'd have fewer things to do.*
I doubt you're going to lower your standards. But once you
really understand what it means, you'll probably make fewer
agreements. I know I did. I used to make a lot of them, just to win
people's approval. When I realized the price I was paying on the
back end for not keeping those agreements, I became a lot more
conscious about the ones I made. One insurance executive I
worked with described the major benefit he derived from imple-
menting this system: "Previously I would just tell everyone, 'Sure,
I'll do it,' because I didn't know how much I really had to do. Now
that I've got the inventory clear and complete, just to maintain my
integrity I have had to say, 'No, I can't do that, I'm sorry.' The
amazing thing is that instead of being upset with my
refusal, everyone was impressed by my discipline!"
Another client, an entrepreneur in the personal
coaching business, recently told me that making an
inventory of his work had eliminated a huge amount
of worry and stress from his life. The discipline of
putting everything he had his attention on into his
in-basket caused him to reconsider what he really
wanted to do anything about. If he wasn't willing to toss a note
about it into "in," he just let it go!
I consider that very mature thinking. One of the best things
about this whole method is that when you really take the respon-
sibility to capture and track what's on your mind, you'll think
twice about making commitments internally that you don't really
need or want to make. Not being aware of all you have to do is
228
*It has been a popular concept in the self-help world that focusing on your val-
ues will simplify your life. I contend the opposite: the overwhelming amount of
things that people have to do comes from their values. Values are critical ele-
ments for meaning and direction. But don't kid yourself—the more you focus
on them, the more things you're likely to feel responsible for taking on. Your
values may make it easier for you to make decisions, but don't think they'll
make things any simpler.
Maintaining an
objective inventory
of your work makes
it much easier to
say no with
integrity.
CHAPTER 11 I THE POWER OF THE COLLECTION HABIT
much like having a credit card for which you don't know the bal-
ance or the limit—it's a lot easier to be irresponsible.
Complete the Agreement
Of course, another way to get rid of the negative feelings about
your stuff is to just finish it and be able to mark it off as done. You
actually love to do things, as long as you get the feel-
ing that you've completed something. If you've begun
to complete less-than-two-minute actions as they
surface in your life, I'm sure you can attest to the psy-
chological benefit. Most of my clients feel fantastic
after just a couple of hours of processing their piles,
just because of how many things they accomplish
using the two-minute rule.
One of your better weekends may be spent just finishing up a
lot of little errands and tasks that have accumulated around your
house and in your personal life. Invariably when you capture all
the open loops, little and big, and see them on a list in front of
you, some part of you will be inspired (or creatively disgusted or
intimidated enough) to go knock them off the list.
We all seem to be starved for a win. It's great to satisfy
that by giving yourself doable tasks you can start and finish
easily.
Have you ever completed something that wasn't initially on a
list, so you wrote it down and checked it off? Then you know
what I mean.
There's another issue here, however. How
would you feel if your list and your stack were
totally—and successfully—completed? You'd proba-
bly be bouncing off the ceiling, full of creative energy.
Of course, within three days, guess what you'd have?
Right—another list, and probably an even bigger
one! You'd feel so good about finishing all your stuff you'd likely
take on bigger, more ambitious things to do.
Not only that, but if you have a boss, what do you think he or
229
Out of the strain of
the doing, into the
peace of the done.
—-Julia Louis
Woodruff
It's a lot easier
to complete
agreements when
you know what
they are.
THE POWER OF THE KEY PRINCIPLES I PART THREE
she is going to do, after noticing the high levels of competency
and productivity you're demonstrating? Right again—give you
more things to do! It's the catch-22 of professional development:
the better you get, the better you'd better get.
So, since you're not going to significantly lower your stan-
dards, or stop creating more things to do, you'd better get com-
fortable with the third option, if you want to keep from stressing
yourself out.
Renegotiate Your Agreement
Suppose I'd told you I would meet you Thursday at 4:00 P.M.,
but after I made the appointment, my world changed. Now, given
my new priorities, I decide I'm not going to meet you Thursday
at four. But instead of simply not showing up, what had I better
do, to maintain the integrity of the relationship? Correct—call
and change the agreement. A renegotiated agreement is not a
broken one.
Do you understand yet why getting all your
stuff out of your head and in front of you makes you
feel better? Because you automatically renegotiate
your agreements with yourself when you look at
them, think about them, and either act on them that
very moment or say, "No, not now." Here's the prob-
lem: it's impossible to renegotiate agreements with
yourself that you can't remember you made!
The fact that you can't remember an agreement
you made with yourself doesn't mean that you're not
holding yourself liable for it. Ask any psychologist
how much of a sense of past and future that part of your psyche
has, the part that was storing the list you dumped: zero. It's all
present tense in there. That means that as soon as you tell yourself
that you should do something, if you file it only in your short-
term memory, there's a part of you that thinks you should be
doing it all the time. And that means that as soon as you've given
yourself two things to do, and filed them only in your head,
230
It is the act of
forgiveness that
opens up the only
possible way to
think creatively
about the future at
all.

Father
CHAPTER 11 I THE POWER OF THE COLLECTION HABIT
you've created instant and automatic stress and failure, because
you can't do them both at the same time.
If you're like most people, you've probably got some storage
area at home—maybe a garage that you told yourself a while back
(maybe even six years ago!) you ought to clean and organize. If so,
there's a part of you that likely thinks you should've been cleaning
your garage twenty-four hours a day for the past six years! No
wonder people are so tired! And have you heard that little voice
inside your own mental committee every time you walk by your
garage? "Why are we walking by the garage?! Aren't we supposed
to be cleaning it!?" Because you can't stand that whining, nagging
part of yourself, you never even go in the garage anymore if you
can help it. If you want to shut that voice up, you have three
options for dealing with your agreement with yourself:
1 | Lower your standards about your garage (you may have done
that already). "So I have a crappy garage . .. who cares?"
2 | Keep the agreement—clean the garage.
3 | At least put "Clean garage" on a "Someday/Maybe" list.
Then, when you review that list weekly and you see that
item, you can tell yourself, "Not this week." The next time
you walk by your garage, you won't hear a thing internally,
other than "Ha! Not this week."
I'm quite sincere about this. It seems that there's a part of our
psyche that doesn't know the difference between an agreement
about cleaning the garage and an agreement about buying a com-
pany. In there, they're both just agreements—kept or broken. If
you're holding something only internally, it will be a broken
agreement if you're not moving on it in the moment.
 
In "Do It Tomorrow," Mark Forster compares life to a menu in a restaurant. You could order everything on the menu, but you certainly couldn't EAT everything on the menu.

Deciding what to do is largely deciding what not to do.
 
Yes. Over the last few weeks, feeling secure about OmniFocus, I dumped a lot of projects into it from kGTD and other lists, but I quickly had to whittle them down by moving most of them onto the on-hold list. As long as that list gets reviewed regularly it's better to keep things there than being skipped-over and ignored in the active list.
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Task List for Multiple Users momenza OmniFocus 1 for Mac 3 2012-04-10 03:16 PM
As a shared task list HunterBoss OmniOutliner 3 for Mac 2 2010-03-22 01:23 PM
Total effort in Task list sbjordal OmniPlan General 3 2008-06-06 02:28 PM
Publish a ToDo or Task list toddbg OmniPlan General 2 2006-08-14 02:02 PM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 04:42 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.