Paring Down the List: Dismissing Projects

Posted on March 8, 2010 by LJ

Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Photo by eva101

One of my main barriers to being productive is I consistently take on too much. And as with any juggler with too many things in the air, something is going to drop eventually.

Autofocus and Dismissing Items

When I was looking at Autofocus (see Autofocus 2…An Initial Report), there was a notion of “dismissing projects.” The oldest block of tasks you hadn’t worked on were put “on notice”, and anything not actioned on by the next day are just dismissed. Gone.

Changing My Mind

What a concept! To give myself the freedom to change my mind after I had committed to it.

I find that it gives me a great relief to know that I can give up on things.

No Autofocus, but Applying Dismissal

I don’t follow Autofocus anymore, because I find it doesn’t help me move forward on the big picture items. But who’s to say that I can’t apply parts of it?

Applying Dismissal to my List

My list is out of control again. I have several projects on there that are not making progress. It’s not that there are things on the list that I really don’t want to do. It’s a matter of not having enough time.

Tonight I sat down and looked at my list. Everything I looked at, I asked myself if I was truly going to move forward on them. There are things that simply have to wait. Not indefinitely, but for the time being.

Leave a comment if you like or dislike this method of paring down projects…

Photo by eva101

Related posts:

  1. 5 Steps to Slimming Your Projects List
  2. Update on Finishing Projects
  3. Using Bonsai And My Closed List Forms
  4. Adding A Daily List to Autofocus v.1
  5. How To Thin Out Your Next Action List

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Comments (1)

 

  1. Dad is in the House says:
    March 9, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    You know, I got into this after reading GTD and associated stuff. I have pared and pared. It’s been great, but I can’t quite shake the feeling I’m being flaky and letting people down sometimes when I do this. I’ve concluded the corollary to this is that you’ve got to be careful when making commitments in the first place. I’m gonna think some more on the Autofocus bit.