Could it be that our productivity is being decimated because we take the expression, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” too much to heart? Could it be that we can get away with putting stuff off until tomorrow… and come out on the other end so much more productive for it?
A shout-out to a WorkFlowy user, George Reschke, who put me onto Mark Forster’s “DIT” (Do It Tomorrow) method.
In November’s module at the WorkFlowy Academy, I’ve been working on a library of screencasts that detail productivity and prioritization methods in WorkFlowy. Here’s the DIT video:
- For list background colors, refer to this WorkFlowy blog post I came out with a short while ago.
- For a “+” sign at the bottom of each list, here’s a Stylish style.
Frank. Thanks for the attention to DIT. Workflowy and DIT are the only tools I’ve stuck with in time managment. And spend much more time working versus planning / priortizing / fiddling with better ways.
Honoring the “closed list” as much as possible is important. That’s what differentiates it from a normal task or to-do list. Also important is to understand that you don’t have to finish a task…just work on it. If unfinished, it goes to tomorrow. If your tomorrow list becomes more than you can handle there are 3 problems – you either have too many (or no) commitments, you are inefficient, or you aren’t allowing enough time. Decide what the problem is and make it a priority to fix.
I have adopted the habit of scanning my closed list in the morning and moving the most urgent items to the top. Other than that, I’m just working. I accomplish more than ever becase I know I will work on the whole list by definition.
Thank you for this post. Learnt some things on how to better use Workflowy. Will certainly check out the work of Mark Forster.
You’re welcome Jason :-). The screencast was really just a superficial glance at Mark Forster’s wider system.
It’s great to see Mark Forster get referenced- a great writer on time management (and mindfulness now I think about it).
He further developed his ideas into a process called ‘autofocus’ which is well worth looking at. He had a paper based approach for it in mind, but it could work really well in WorkFlowy
Yep, I find the whole philosophy (beyond the simple dynamic of putting stuff off until tomorrow) quite down-to-earth. Getting rid of your backlogged lists and engaging with your projects “little and often” 🙂
Thank you for this helpful video!
I’m really interested in the bit at the end where you can add a new item to an unexpanded list w/o expanding it. I don’t see the “plus sign” at the bottom of my list below the last unexpanded bullet, and when I add a new item after an unexpanded bullet and try to do the drag and drop thing like in the video it’s not working. Not sure what I’m doing wrong? I’m using workflowy on the web, on Firefox (latest firefox, 57.0). Thanks again!
Hi Christina,
the “+” sign is a CSS hack. You can install the Stylish Browser extension… and then this user style that I put together for you:
https://userstyles.org/styles/151650/workflowy-plus-list-bottom
With the drag-and-drop feature… I’m not sure why it might not be working. It should be for everyone on the web. Take a look at this post:
https://blog.workflowy.com/2017/09/28/moving-bullets-is-now-easier-than-ever/
I think you need to have at least one child list in a collapsed list for this feature to work… otherwise you’re just indenting your first child list. I hope you get it working.
Does the desktop app support the dark theme?
In your support wiki, it says you offer 250 items in the free version. I only got 100.