Mark Forster’s New System

Posted on January 22, 2009 by
Categories: Productivity

Early in January, Mark Forster, author of Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, asked for beta testers for his new Autofocus time management system. I signed up, because I needed a way to get through my stuff every day without procrastinating.

And when the instructions came, all in one page, my initial reaction was, “you’ve got to be kidding! This can’t possibly be it! It’s too simple!” But I decided to give it a try.

I had a bit of a rough time, trying to figure out how to put my daily “house” tasks in. After all, do I really want to put “scoop cat boxes” on my list? I will procrastinate as long as possible on that one.

What I found is that I blasted through tasks that had been sitting on my radar for weeks in a few days. I cleared out the backlog to the point where I can now focus on my number one project: finishing my book.

I do have to confess that I don’t like the paper and pen idea, so I have modified my PDA to serve the same function.

Overall, if you are looking for a way to get kickstarted, give the system a look. You might be very surprised.

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Comments (7)

 

  1. Edward Bear says:
    January 22, 2009 at 11:26 am

    Is there a link to the “one page” instructions?

  2. Philipp says:
    January 23, 2009 at 6:38 am

    I would be interested in how you have “modified your pda” to use it with autofocus. I still hope to find an easy way to use autofocus digitally.

  3. Anthony says:
    January 23, 2009 at 11:21 pm

    Yes, a description of how you’ve setup your pda would be great – are you using a PIM app, or have you got this setup in Bonsai? One of the main reasons I have not yet implemented Forster’s new system is that I haven’t yet found a simple way to do it electronically that doesn’t feel clunky.

  4. LJ says:
    January 24, 2009 at 7:26 am

    Look for an article next week on how I use my PDA to do the system. Since Mark is keeping the instructions of the system to himself during beta testing, I will have to be specific without being specific, if you know what I mean. :)

  5. How I Use My PDA With Autofocus | SimpleProductivityBlog.com says:
    January 24, 2009 at 7:38 am

    [...] on how I use my PDA with Mark Forster’s new system, Autofocus. (see the previous article, Mark Forster’s New System) I am going to give you my current set-up, but please bear in mind that this is a work in progress, [...]

  6. Why I Went Back to Basic Autofocus | SimpleProductivityBlog.com says:
    March 11, 2009 at 5:02 am

    [...] with the limitations of the systems I have tried before. So when Autofocus was announced, I decided to give it a try. It was only a few days before the paper really got to me, and I made an attempt to put Autofocus [...]