How to Get Organized and Not Lose Your Mind
Mark Forster, the author of three books about time management and personal organization, has developed a new system called AutoFocus. I’ve been using it for a few days and have to say…so far, so good. Getting more done with less stress. Beautiful.
Here’s what his system promises:
- A greatly increased volume of work
- A lack of stress
- Focus on what is important
- Very fast processing of routine actions
- Thorough processing of major tasks and projects
He explains his system with these Quick Start Steps:
The system consists of one long list of everything that you have to do, written in a ruled notebook (25-35 lines to a page ideal). As you think of new items, add them to the end of the list. You work through the list one page at a time in the following manner:
- Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them.
- Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you.
- Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so
- Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it
- Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out
- Move onto the next page and repeat the process
- If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items.
- Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.
Interested? Try it out and see what kind of results you get. You can find the AutoFocus System at http://www.markforster.net/autofocus-system/
Photo Credit by Marc Lacoste