I have been following the precepts laid down in this book for the last three weeks. By adopting Forster's methods, I have seen my productivity soar 30-40%. By accomplishing more, I am experiencing a qualitative improvement in feelings of well-being and contentment.
There is no magic to improved productivity. You have to do the work. No system will do the work for you. But there are experimentally validated, proven tricks for getting oneself motivated to do things instead of procrastinate. Forster is a master of these tricks and he lays them out in clear, simple language in his book.
The key insights are almost laughably simple. So simple, it's all too easy to reject them as childishly simplistic. But they work if you give them a try. And if you have substantial, difficult, and complex goals that still remain to be accomplished, you owe it to yourself to give Forster's method a test.
The fundamental fact of human nature that underlies Forster's system is that we crave completion. Forster criticizes conventional to-do lists because we can add new items to them throughout the day, impeding us from ever completing them. Forster's solution is to create a list of items to do tomorrow, and then draw a line under those items. If you complete everything above the line, you've succeeded.
Of course you never know exactly what will come up tomorrow. Things are going to demand your immediate attention and you will have to do them as well. But those new things are things you add below the line of the list you made up yesterday. As much as possible, you try to avoid doing today incoming new tasks that came in today. Your goal is to complete today all the items that you wrote down yesterday for today.
You can't imagine how powerful a motivator it is to complete today's list until you try it. The mind does crave completion. If it's getting near the end of the day and I still have a few items remaining on my list, I will move heaven and earth to get them completed. If there are still two hours left in the day and I am almost done with my list, I will complete those items. Then I will spend those two hours doing whatever I want. Maybe I'll do some more work. Or maybe I'll goof off. If I choose to goof off I will do so totally guilt-free. I know that I've done what I've set out to do and I know that I deserve the time off.
I've been following David Allen's Getting Things Done system for more than five years. I have found that adding Mark Forster's list-making system to Getting Things Done has been a boon to my productivity.
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Glenda Marie
My All-time Favourite Time Management Book - Now in Kindle Format!
Reviewed in Canada on June 25, 2016