This is an electronic implementation of Mark Forster's Final Version time management system. See his site for details of how this system. As a foretaste, I will summarize how it works here.
- First, all tasks entered one after another on a never-ending list.
- Determining what to action in a session preselects of chain of actions based on the question "What do I want to do before I do x?"
- The chain always starts with the first unactioned task on the never-ending list.
- This task then becomes the benchmark from which the next task is selected. The question becomes "What do I want to do before I do that task?"
- You iteratively proceed through the list, picking tasks you would rather do, and making that task the benchmark for the next iteration.
- Continue until you reach the end of the list.
- This preselected list becomes a locked todo list to be done in reverse order.
- If you don't finish a particular task, re-enter the task at the end of the list.
- Once you have taken action on all the preselected tasks, preselect another chain of tasks starting again from the first unactioned task on the list.
- If the first task on the list can't be done now for some valid reason (e.g. wrong time of day, precondition not met, bad weather), then cross it out and re-enter it at the end of the list. Use the next task as your starting benchmark.
- If at any stage you find that a task on the list is no longer relevant, then delete it.
- If you find that your preselected list is no longer relevant (e.g. if you have had a long break away from the list), then scrap the preselection and reselect from the beginning.
- If one or more very urgent things come up, write them at the end of the list and mark them with a dot so that they are done next. If something already on the list becomes very urgent, then move it to the end of the list and mark it with a dot in the same way.
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How to run projects -- consider letting there be subdivisions included in the list or not, that are associated as steps of another step.
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Someday/Maybe
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How will I collect data to determine how one is proceeding, some items that have crossed my mind:
- list growth to processing (biting off more than one can chew)
- Time spent on given tasks/projects
- Number of times a task is re-visited.
- Statistics on when preselections get abandoned (daily biting off more than one can chew).
- Offline option, using HTML5 storage.
- Detailed notes to be associated with each task
- Export to xml and json