Mark Forster's Blog

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02/01/12--15:08: Monitoring all your work - follow up (chan 1846356)

I succeeded in doing all 17 tasks that I set myself yesterday, though it took me longer than I expected and it was late and I was tired by the time I finished. Instead of learning the lesson, I went mad today and set myself 38 points - and of course failed ignominiously. So 17 points yesterday and 0 today.

The moral of this is that the game should be used only for those things which you want to give priority to getting done - certainly the total shouldn’t be in double figures. You can and will of course do many things which aren’t on the list.




02/02/12--11:05: Beeminder Goals Report (chan 1846356)

The more I use Beeminder the more I like it - though of course it’s early days yet.

So how am I getting on with the two goals I set myself originally now that I have five days worth of data?

First the walking goal is going very nicely. I am slightly on the wrong side of the “yellow brick road”, but this will solve itself the next time I do a long walk. Having the goal has certainly encouraged me to keep walking and has also encouraged me to do a good length every day. I took a day off yesterday. Days off are necessary but sometimes it’s difficult to get going again the next day. Because I needed a good result for Beeminder, I didn’t have any trouble at all.

The actual data points are the unjoined dots, while all the other lines and lanes are various types of average. As long as I stay in the broad yellow path I’m all right.

The weight goal is even better. I have lost 3.5 lbs already! Actually quick loss of this type is not uncommon when one starts a weight loss program. The real battle comes further down the line when the initial rate of gain slows down.

Because this type of goal gives a week’s level start to get acclimatized I am well ahead of the game.

It remains to be seen whether the slice of delicious chocolate cake I had in Dorking to reward myself after my walk this afternoon will effect my weight tomorrow morning.




02/03/12--11:34: Bethany explains it all (chan 1846356)

For those of you who are having trouble understanding Beeminder, here’s Bethany to explain it all. It’s worth also reading the written explanation given on Youtube.




02/06/12--06:45: Distraction Blocker (chan 1846356)

Jon at Distraction Blocker has just drawn our attention in the Forum to his useful little program. It basically does one of two things for those of us who are constantly getting distracted by our computers. It either blocks specified programs and websites or it blocks all programs and websites except ones specified by you. You can decide exactly how long and when the blocking applies.

It can also remind you to take a break and can even lock your keyboad and mouse so you have no choice but to take one.

One of the ideas I particularly like is that you can override the blocks if you really need to, but only by typing a long and tedious string of random characters like 6FzA-Ms8[Bt_GD}*?”DQ”e#V|zgSa~!%. You decide the number of characters you need to keep your lack of self-will at bay.

I haven’t tried this out myself yet, but it sounds as if it has the potentional to be really useful - and I’ve got a few sites in mind to try it on. No using it to block this website, mind!

See more by clicking here.




02/07/12--05:09: The Final Version - first look (chan 1846356)

Here are some never-before-seen photos of the first and last pages of an actual FV list, or to be more exact the only actual FV list in existence.

The loose-leaf format is not essential. Any sort of notebook, paper or electronic will do just fine.




02/08/12--09:22: A good question (chan 1846356)

In the comments to my previous post Mauricio asks:

“I am excited about the Final Version. However, I have to ask, how is the Final Version superior / more conducive to productivity than Superfocus?”

The main difference is that both SuperFocus and AutoFocus tend to result initially in the minor/easy tasks being processed first, while the “squeeze” is only put on the more difficult tasks gradually. In the Final Version this is not the case.

An associated problem with SuperFocus/AutoFocus is that there is a tendency for the list to get packed with easy tasks which give an illusion of progress. What is actually happening though is that the easy tasks on a page get dealt with quickly, while the more difficult tasks only get dealt with a few at a time. So typically a new page will have 30-40 per cent of its tasks dealt with on the first couple of passes, but in later passes the proportion of tasks will fall dramatically. This results in a large number of active pages.

In the Final Version  there is no pay-off for packing the list with easy tasks, so the length of the list is dramatically reduced. The processing of tasks is much more even throughout the list, with the result that the list tends to be concentrated on a few pages (my current list has 4 pages, but there are only 2 tasks each on the first and last pages).

Also unlike SuperFocus/AutoFocus, the Final Version list is dealt with as one list. The page divisions are not significant (and in electronic versions are not needed at all).




02/09/12--11:57: Many thanks (chan 1846356)

A big thank you to the 21 people who have made donations on the website since I wrote about it last month. A total of £370 so far!




02/10/12--09:51: Pushups with Beeminder (chan 1846356)

Some time ago I tried the 100 Push-Up Challenge, but found it a bit too much like hard work pretty early on!

I’m trying a new pushup challenge now: how many pushups can I do in a minute? And I’m doing it with the help of Beeminder and the Final Version.

Here’s the progress so far. From 8 to 12 in 8 days (including a missed day), a 50% increase. I haven’t set myself a target yet, as the idea is to find out the rate that fits you and then set the yellow brick road to keep yourself on track.



 You can follow my progress live by clicking here.




02/12/12--12:51: Oops! (chan 1846356)

I’ll have run off the yellow-brick road with my walking goal by the end of today. That means that I’ll have to take out a contract with Beeminder to continue the goal.

I could easily have stayed on track because to do so would only have required me to walk 5 miles or so, which I would have no problem doing. But I have two excuses (they don’t qualify as reasons):

1) The temperature has been below freezing with snow on the ground. This has encouraged me to sit at home in my nice centrally-heated house - at least it did until the heating broke down on Thurday night!

2) I want to see what happens when there is a contract, i.e. I pledge real money in order to stop myself from going off-track. Is this a good motivating method which might have other applications?




02/18/12--11:10: Taking My Own Advice? (chan 1846356)

Several of my past articles have been reproduced with my permission on the new Pitstop for Business website. They are:

Urgency: The Natural Way to Prioritize

Expand Your Ideas the Easy Way

Whole Hearted Living

Dealing With Projects That Don’t Have a Deadline

Looking at these articles again, outside the context of my own website, caused me to wonder how much of my own advice I was currently following. Of course with the hundreds of articles on my site it would be physically impossible for one person to put into effect every suggestion or piece of advice. But these particular articles are ones that have been selected by someone else as being particularly relevant. So how do I measure up myself?

Urgency? Yes, that’s fine. I am building urgency into my Final Version time management system as part of the way that it prioritizes. It’s not “pure” urgency as such because other factors are taken into account, but it’s probably more urgency-friendly than any other system I have come across.

Expanding my ideas by repeated drafting is something that I don’t use as often as I ought to. It is a method that works, and works very well - especially with article-length passages. I do still however have a tendency to write the article in one draft and use later revisions only for tidying it up. In fact that’s the way that I’m writing this article. I’m conscious though that quite a lot is missed out by doing it that way. Working gradually up from one or two short phrases gives a more rounded end product. Memo to self: start using this again.

Whole-hearted living? Of course being retired is the ideal time for whole-hearted living. Free of the constraints of bosses and clients, I’ve now got the time to do the things I really want to do. So am I doing them? I’ve written before that my idea of retirement was that I would spend my time walking, reading books and maybe take up something like learning a musical instrument. Is life like that? No! Memo to self: ask myself how much of what I’m doing at the moment I am doing whole heartedly.

Projects that don’t have a deadline? This is advice that I’ve been neglecting, especially the bit about doing them one at a time. I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that running several of these projects at once is faster. The number of languishing unfinished projects I have is ample evidence that it’s not! Memo to self: follow the four-stage process in the article.