Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Back in November, Mark Forster announced the “Super Autofocus”. The modifications were meant to sit on top of the standard Autofocus. The modifications took care of what I thought was the weak point of the system: working on urgent tasks.

Autofocus

In the “regular” Autofocus, you list your backlog of tasks out, then you draw a line. If you think of anything new, it goes after the line, into the “current” task location. You then proceed to work through the backlog (before the line), working through pages until things could be dismissed.

So if you thought of something that needed to be done now, it wouldn’t get worked on until you got to that page. And once you were done working on something in your backlog, even if it wasn’t complete, it would get added to the end of the list, only to be worked on when you got there.

Why not go work on that page if it was nagging at you? Because the rules of Autofocus say that if you pass through a page without doing anything on it, everything on that page was deleted (“dismissed”). As a result, I wouldn’t get to the pages, knowing I had to work on what was in front of me, or it would go away.

So while Autofocus is great for clearing out a large list of tasks, it made things that were urgent wait until you got to the page it was on.

Enter Super Autofocus

Mark Forster modified his own system by adding to it, calling the new Super Autofocus. (Rules can be found at http://www.markforster.net/forum/post/1303467).

The difference is that for each page of tasks, you can have a second column, and choose to add either to the end of the list or to the second column. That way urgent tasks come up more often, and pages are not at risk for dismissal because you have a nagging urge to work on something that is at the end of the list.

Applying Super Autofocus

To me, this takes away my resistance to using Autofocus. By having urgent tasks at hand, I can choose to work on them rather than having to wait. This allows me to select things and keep going, while still powering through the backlog.

Autofocus is definitely not a planning tool, nor is it a scheduler. What it is is a high-powered method for getting through a lot of tasks in a short period of time. Or in other words, a kick-it-into-high-productivity-mode tool.

If you are looking for a way to make significant headway on a big list, check out Super Autofocus. I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

Photo by levork

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Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

On June 27, 2009, Mark Forster release Autofocus 2 (see Autofocus 2 Time Management System (AF2) for complete instructions). One of my major problems with Autofocus (the original) was that I was constantly losing tasks that needed to be done either that day, or sooner than the older tasks. To solve this, I started making a daily list (see “Adding A Daily List to Autofocus v.1“).

Autofocus 2 seems to conquer these things. By working from the bottom of the list, you end up dealing with things much quicker. Also, by putting items “on notice” for dismissal, you can really evaluate if they need to be done at all, or not.

During my dabbling with the daily list, I would write out things that needed to be done that day. If I had any time or energy left over, I could then move to my AF list. Unfortunately, I was not pushing myself to actually do things on the AF list. “Review will” has been on my autofocus list for weeks now. Under AF2, I am going to have to do something about it within approximately 3 days of it hitting the list, or it’s going to be dismissed.

When I started working with AF2, I started with a clean list. (I still have the old list available electronically). The only things that went on the list were things that would have gone on my daily list. The first day I completed almost everything. The next day, I was spurred on to finish those things from the first day, otherwise they would be dismissed.

I noticed that my daily tasks consisted of two types of things: things that had to be done that day or not at all, or things that could slide a bit. My solution was to pull the only-today items onto a sticky note that sits on my AF2 list. These are what David Allen would refer to as “hard landscape” items. The rest of the list gets processed as instructed.

I’m pleased with the modifications to the AF system, and I think hard before adding items to the list; I am also less likely to let things slide if they don’t “stand out”, knowing that they could be dismissed. I will continue to use the system as Mark has given it out because I think it will prove to be what I need to stay focused and productive.

Photo by Lincolnian (Brian)

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