正文
describes the practice of a Grass Catcher List. It's where you put new ideas---big and small---that you might want to do in the future. Ths list is not prioritized and it's not limited. Once a week you review the Grass Catcher List. This is called Weeding. You drop all tasks except maximum five. These five become your new Grass Catcher List.
Some ideas need time to be evaluated. They might seem terrific when we discover them, but after a week we're pretty sure they'll never reach our Short List anyway. Then it's good that we have the recurring Weeding event to get them off our backlog.
About the items on the list: They should be small and actionable. A rough estimate say 10 minutes to 2 hours. Bigger tasks than that need to be broken down in smaller tasks.
For example, write synopsis for new article, contact potential customer, write business letter. For a software developer, fix a bug.
I heard that your new book Monotasking has been inspired by
your trip to China
. What did you find in China has inspired you to create such a book? And can we say that Monotasking is especailly designed for Chinese people?
It was a great trip to China in October 2015. For one month, I toured big cities, explaining time management techniques. During this trip, I visited offices and met many clever persons. They told me about their everyday problems of focusing and prioritizing. It surely inspired me to take the time to write
the Monotasking book
. And I'm happy that this book will be published in Chinese before any other language.
However, in my experience, office workers and students around the world struggle with that same type of prioritizing and focusing problems. So, I hope Monotasking will help many people in different countries.
Do you have some suggestions on customizing Monotasking to different people's special circumstances? Are there any successful cases?
All people are unique and we also have our unique context. No process fits everybody like a hand in a glove. My advice, though, is to start with Monotasking as it is described in the book. After some weeks you know best if you want to tweak it. Don't be afraid to make small experiments and then evaluate after two weeks if you want to standardize the new way of working.
Monotasking seems to work in many ways. But what if you are required to multitask by your boss, clients, etc.? Does monotasking a little bit oversimplify the real-world challenges?
You might have many customer's or a manager that wants you to do many things. However, it's not possible for our brain to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. It's our duty then to prioritize what's most important right now and start with that one.
However, we shouldn't focus too long one a task. At least once an hour, we must ask ourselves: "What's the best use of my time right now?"
So, even if create more than one result. You can't create them simultaneously. Our brains is the limit.
So，you mean we should have a rest every one hour?
Not necessary. We can choose between to continue with the current task, change to another task or take a break (rest). The moment of choosing is called Panorama.
Do you have any suggestions on how to alert oneself about the one hour cycle, we often get lost when things keep us busy
