Peace of Mind Organizing

Getting back on task

29 October 2009

Over the past ten months I’ve written here about my love of the task-management system Autofocus. I do love it. A lot. I’ll let you click on the links and learn about it, but, in a nutshell, it involves one long, bound to-do list upon which you dump all your tasks, in no order, and work through it in a particular fashion. There’s no prioritizing, no rewriting the list.

We’ve established that I love it. But if I’m being honest, I’ll confess here that I fell off the Autofocus bandwagon for a little while.

It may have had to do with my traveling. I had it with me in Australia and I jotted down all sorts of tasks inspired by the Australian organisers’ conference I attended. Then I got busy getting ready for my trip to LA for another organizers’ conference and I stopped using my Autofocus notebook properly. I’d write things in it. But I wasn’t using the method and getting stuff done. I was concentrating on urgent tasks.

Another challenge I had was that while I was in Australia, Autofocus founder Mark Forster came out with another revision of the system, AF4. He was so enthusiastic about it that I wanted to try it. But after I did, I discovered I was less enthusiastic about it.

So earlier this week, I decided to go back to the original Autofocus system of handling my task list, which involves moving from front to back of the notebook. In order to do it properly, I have to revisit (and accomplish or dismiss) old tasks before I get to the shiny new ones.

It took me a couple of days to get all the way through the notebook. I have 58 pages of tasks, 18 of them active. (In other words, I’ve crossed off 40 pages of tasks since I started AF on January 5, 2009.) The beautiful thing about my new determination to get back on the Autofocus bandwagon is that in going through these old tasks, I got some stuff done that I’d actually forgotten about. Stuff that will be very good for me and my business (like arranging some guest blog posts). These are tasks that without Autofocus would simply have withered on the vine, I’m confident.

As November approaches and with it the holiday season plus the challenge of writing a novel in a month, I know that my newly re-energized Autofocus list will keep me on task and productive. To me, that’s what a task management system is all about.

Next week I’ll post about another bandwagon I’ve fallen off of (Wii Fit), one that I’ll be climbing back onto very soon.

Tagged with: autofocus, mark forster, productivity, time management, to-do list

Comments