Autofocus

01 Mar 2009

For the last few months, I've been using David Allen's GTD system to organise my projects & work, using Tudumo.

Today I read Mark Forster's Autofocus System and I'm trying that now, using just two A5 notebooks (one for work and one for home).

It's too early to tell which I will use long-term, but so far I like the way Autofocus is unstructured - I've never used GTD contexts properly (they're almost all @computer) and I've become aware that I spend too long grouping and ordering my tasks sometimes. With Autofocus, all I can do is enter them in the order they come in, and cross them off when they're done.

This also has the advantage that it will become obvious which tasks are getting old, and I need to either work on them or "dismiss" them. While copying my GTD list to my Autofocus list, I became aware how many tasks have been lurking at the bottom of the list for too long (I often add the more urgent/important action items at the top). You could say this is a result of me not doing the GTD weekly review properly, but I think Autofocus will solve the problem in a better way.

The one adjustment I will probably make is that where Mark recommends highlighting dismissed items, I will probably also copy them to one of my many Someday/Maybe lists in The Journal. I think this will make them easier to manage in the long-term.

The one disadvantage I've found so far is that Tudumo is very good for tracking tasks that require me to talk to someone else - I can add a tag with their name, and quickly find them all next time that person is available (or filter them out when I know they're not). Options I'm currently considering for this are (1) writing their name in red next to the task, (2) using the back of the notebook, (3) using Tudumo to track these tasks, and (4) writing them on a page in The Journal.