Paul Cornell : Do It Tomorrow

Do It Tomorrow: A Diagnostic Procedure

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:20:00 GMT

I'm reading through the Do It Tomorrow book by Mark Forster...

From Chapter 12, "Completing the Day's Work"...

My own rule is that if I have not caught up completely within three days at most, I will initiate a diagnostic procedure....there can only be three things wrong: 1) You are not working efficiently. 2) You have too much to do. 3) You are not leaving enough time. [To remedy,] work in closed lists and batches of similar actions....look...at your commitments...leave a certain amount of time unscheduled during the week.

Have you read the book yet? If so, I'd like to know what you thought of it. Please let me know in the comments below this post.

Do It Tomorrow: Sequencing Tasks, False Emergencies

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:35:00 GMT

I'm reading through the book Do It Tomorrow book by Mark Forster...

From Chapter 6, "Emergency, What Emergency?"...

Now how does Mick impose order on the random sequence of [tasks]? He does it by creating some distance between himself and the [tasks]. He has a buffer zone in which the random [tasks] can accumulate and be put into order...Notice that Mick does not just create distance; he also imposes an ordered sequence...
It could be argued that Autofocus (AF) has no sequence. However, it does; you determine an ordered sequence of tasks each time you go through your AF list.

Your 'default setting' should be 'Do it tomorrow.' You should be prepared to change it only when there is a very good reason. If you are in doubt, then it can wait till tomorrow! The immeidate degree of urgency should be restricted to emergency services and to such situations as face-to-face interaction with customers, helplines, order lines and similar. Other than those, only genuine unexpected emergencies should qualify [to do it now]...
How freeing that concept is! It seems that we live in a world where most of us are expected to read our e-mail every few minutes and respond instantly. Constant switch-tasking like this only hurts our productivity.

Do It Tomorrow: Problems with Traditional Time Management

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:13:00 GMT

I'm reading through the book Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster...

From Chapter 4, "The Problem with Time Management"...

To reduce our work, we need to reduce our commitments....The right place for prioritizing is at the level of goals and commitments. Since all of your work flows from your commitments, it is absolutely essential to be selective about which commitments you are going to take on. The only sensible way of doing this is to decide which are the really important ones for your life and work...

Putting our work into a different order [prioritizing] doesn't increase the speed or efficiency with which we are working. Instead in can lead to our having multiple backlogs of 'unimportant stuff'....If we have too much work, prioritizing by importance won't help to cut down the amount of work we have....If we are overscheduled and not leaving enough time, then prioritizing by importance does nothing to help us...

If I have a million tasks to work on, and I put them all in order, while it may help me to determine which task to start working on first, it still doesn't help me finish tasks faster or any more efficiently. Instead, I need to determine which of the million tasks are genuine drop-everything emergencies that I absolutely must work on today, and everything else can be left for tomorrow or some other fixed future date. For really big tasks, I must break them down into smaller tasks that I can fit into the flow of a given day's work, working on a little chunk of it each day. And to reduce receiving millions of more tasks getting added to the list, I need to begin determining what I'm willing to commit to in order to do my best work, and give up what I'm no longer willing to commit to.

All a to-do list consists of is a more or less complete of outstanding tasks which has no relation to a day's work...

The notion of an open-ended, seemingly endless to-do list must be abolished. Instead, I need to break tasks down into meaningful chunks and schedule them ahead of time. But how to do this? One of Mark's suggestions is to schedule time buffers during our workday by adopting the default behavior of Do It Tomorrow for all incoming tasks that aren't genuine drop-everything emergencies or are otherwise date-sensitive. More about how to do this in a future post.

Autofocus: Moving to Just One List

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:31:00 GMT

Now that I've read through several chapters of the book Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster, I'm adjusting my approach to Autofocus (AF) just a tiny bit.

I now have just one AF list both for work tasks and non-work tasks. If a multi-task project pops up, I create a separate AF list to manage that.

I put a date next to each task, with that date being tomorrow by default, unless it is a genuine emergency and must be done today. (Tasks with deadlines more than a day away go into my Calendar.) This helps me remember to Do It Tomorrow, but it still keeps me diligent to finish tasks within a reasonable time frame instead of always putting them off until whenever.

Perhaps when I finish Mark's book, I'll make even more changes!

Do It Tomorrow: The Principles

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:24:00 GMT

I'm reading through the book Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster...

From Chapter 2, "The Principles"...

One thing at a time...
I am so much more successful at doing one thing at a time instead of pseudo-multi-tasking. (Multi-tasking is a myth, by the way. We should really be thinking about it as switchtasking.) I get so much more satisfaction by concentrating on a task and seeing it through to completion, putting other tasks aside unless they are genuine "drop everything else" emergencies.

Little and often...
Driving hard on a big task or project all at once goes contrary to how most of our brains work. When we do this, we quickly get tired, frustrated, and cranky. Our brains typically need times of rest to assimilate information, make connections, and gain new insights as we go. I need to focus more to break up tasks and projects into much smaller tasks and work through them a little at a time every day.

Define your limits...
When I say "yes" to everything without any qualifications, I feel that I end up performing rather haphazardly and half-hearted toward those commitments. My creativity and sense of satisfaction also seems to suffer much. Our creativity expresses itself best when we have limits defined. Limits keep us from getting scatter-brained. We can also focus on doing our best work when we have a narrowly defined set of commitments.

Closed lists...
This is the most significant principle that I've ever heard in my almost-20 years of studying time management methodologies. It's so simple, yet so profound: I get so much more satisfaction by getting through a pre-set list of tasks each day vs. getting through a relatively small set of tasks when compared to an ever-growing endless list of to-do items. The concept of the traditional open-ended to-do list must be abolished! Draw a line, take back your life! (More about this in a future post.)

Do It Tomorrow: Reactive vs. Rational Sides of the Brain

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:12:00 GMT

I'm reading through the Do It Tomorrow book by Mark Forster...

From Chapter 1, "What This Book Is About"...

There are two parts to the brain: the reactive (stimulus -> reaction) and the rational (thought -> decision -> action). Resistance to completing a task is often because the reactive part of the brain sees a task as a "threat" (even if that threat is nothing more than awakening itself out of just being lazy and comfortable doing nothing!). The rational part of the brain can help here by persuading the reactive part of the brain that you're not going to do the task. For example, "I'm not really going to write that report now, but I'll just get the file out."

I tried to apply this to getting out for some fresh air at lunch time yesterday. I didn't want to get out of my office chair and take a brief walk, but I convinced my reactive part of the brain by simply saying "I'm going to put my jacket on and go check my mail slot downstairs" which was next to the door outside. Then I said "I'm going to just walk a block." Then I said "I'm going to just walk to the first stoplight." By then, the rest of the walk was a breeze.

I'm going to try this with some of my backlogged tasks and projects today. Hopefully I can get them unblocked and moving.

Do It Tomorrow: Getting Started

Paul Cornell [MSFT] — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:26:00 GMT

I just picked up a copy of a book by Mark Forster titled Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management. I plan to blog tidbits from it each day as I read through it.

You can track my posts on this book by going to my home page and clicking the Do It Tomorrow tag.