So it seems like there’s a bunch of great things about this technique, including avoiding overwhelm and thinking abougt prioritization. At least partially it seems like part of the benefit of the system forces you to look at and confront things that you’ve been trying to avoid.
In my own life and also in my work as a procrastination coach, I’ve found these sorts of methods that through brute force cause you to have to look at things you’re avoiding often have a shelf-life. Eventually, it seems like people’s avoidance mechanisms reassert themselves through meta-avoidance like avoiding using the technique, or avoiding adding certain items to your list.
I’m curious how long you’ve been using this algorithm, and if you’ve encountered any of this meta-avoidance.
At least partially it seems like part of the benefit of the system forces you to look at and confront things that you’ve been trying to avoid.
Definitely agree with this.
In my own life and also in my work as a procrastination coach, I’ve found these sorts of methods that through brute force cause you to have to look at things you’re avoiding often have a shelf-life. Eventually, it seems like people’s avoidance mechanisms reassert themselves through meta-avoidance like avoiding using the technique, or avoiding adding certain items to your list.
I’m curious how long you’ve been using this algorithm, and if you’ve encountered any of this meta-avoidance.
My usage of FVP has fluctuated a fair amount over time; I used it a lot in the last year of my PhD, then not much in the year after that, then have since started using it regularly again. I think this is at least partly due to my life in the intervening time being very unstable, which disrupted a lot of my systems.
I don’t think I’ve started avoiding adding items to the list. I do think my usage of FVP may have become gradually less effective at having me do difficult tasks. As using the technique becomes more routine, I become less agent-y while doing it, which leads to that aspect of the technique becoming less effective. In particular, if the same item is on the list day after day, it becomes increasingly easy to skip over it until the rest of the list is empty (which never happens).
I don’t think this decay effect is all that strong so far: I think I’m still substantially better at doing important-but-aversive tasks with FVP than I’d be without it. But I wouldn’t be too surprised if the decay was stronger than I thought, or gets substantially stronger in the future. I do think I could probably “refresh” this aspect of the technique’s effectiveness if I put some effort into it, e.g. by forcing myself to use an explicit verbal question to choose between tasks, or mixing up the phrasing of that question.
Sometimes I have to let a to-do item sit for a while before I can be more real with myself about why it’s important. FVP still seems like the best way of tackling such things because the structure lends itself to creating mental leverage in easy, but noticeable, ways.
Maybe a small change like writing a number next to each item list representing the number of days it’s been on the list would help draw your focus to items that have been lingering a long time. Just start by writing 0 next to a new list item, and adding 1 to the number next to any list item that gets substantially repeated from the previous day. You don’t necessarily have to feel bad about list items that have large numbers next to them, but a larger number can create extra weight for prioritizing it.
Another reason this might work is that, much like Space Repetition Systems (SRS) used in reviewing e.g. information on flashcards, there is some logic to dropping cards that you have difficulty incorporating into memory after a certain number of times failing to incorporate it. The logic is that that particular piece of information is either not as relevant to the rest of the set (hard to form associations with “nearby” information), not as relevant to your own interests, or simply too difficult for you at that moment in time. Programs for doing SRS flashcard reviews include code to stop showing those cards again, and you have to manually specify to put them back into the review stack. Basically, it’s a sideloop to identify things that actually do require more conscious processing without clogging the rest of the process, which seems to be the main point of FVP.
Combining the two prior points, if you track the number of days on the list, you could have a hard cutoff, like 14, where you take that item off the list altogether. Not sure how to reincorporate it in a streamlined way, though. Having a separate list and maintaining two of them seems onerous.
Apropos SRS and needing a second list: I’m currently experimenting with using Anki as a to-do tool. (Every task becomes a card, I “learn” the deck, and for each task get the choice of Again/Hard/Good/Easy with listed intervals, e.g. <15min, 1d, 6d, 27d. If I want to see the task again quickly (Again/Hard), I have to spend at least 5 minutes on it before clicking the button. Otherwise, it’s ok to bury it by clicking ‘Easy’ on it.)
This deals nicely with “nice-to-haves” that I don’t want to kill yet. Whenever they come up, I just send them away to next month/quarter/year/… - that way, I don’t ever have to make the hard decision to kill the idea, I could always change my mind about this later, because I know that I will be reminded eventually. These “non-tasks” are also eating a fraction of the mental capacity that they’d otherwise require, because (a) I don’t get a growing list of “things that would be nice to do eventually” that I’d have to manually comb through (instead every couple of days there will be 1 or 2 of them mixed in with the review), and (b) I know that they’ll pop back up eventually, so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of them or finding them again if I ever change my mind. (To a lesser degree, it also forces me to start early on tasks due in several months, to keep the interval growth in check.)
The only problem I had so far was tasks that are inactionable right now (e.g. taking out the trash at 5am, because noisy) needed to be ‘skipped’ and reviewed later, leading to “ugh not in the mood right now” skips of actually actionable tasks, leading to less stuff getting done.
FVP looks like it might fix this. So for the month of December I’ll be running the following modified algorithm:
Go through the list of tasks in Anki, for each either do it right away or put it on the (paper) list, or delegate it to future-me (i.e. pick the long interval Good/Easy option).
Do FVP on the paper list.
3-strikes rule for “list leftovers”: If I say I do it but don’t get around to it, the counter increases. Once it hits three, I must “delegate to future me”. (Counter resets whenever I explicitly declare not to work on it, not sure yet if it should also reduce for streaks… For the experiment, I’ll go with yes and 3-days streaks for removing one mark.)
So it seems like there’s a bunch of great things about this technique, including avoiding overwhelm and thinking abougt prioritization. At least partially it seems like part of the benefit of the system forces you to look at and confront things that you’ve been trying to avoid.
In my own life and also in my work as a procrastination coach, I’ve found these sorts of methods that through brute force cause you to have to look at things you’re avoiding often have a shelf-life. Eventually, it seems like people’s avoidance mechanisms reassert themselves through meta-avoidance like avoiding using the technique, or avoiding adding certain items to your list.
I’m curious how long you’ve been using this algorithm, and if you’ve encountered any of this meta-avoidance.
Definitely agree with this.
My usage of FVP has fluctuated a fair amount over time; I used it a lot in the last year of my PhD, then not much in the year after that, then have since started using it regularly again. I think this is at least partly due to my life in the intervening time being very unstable, which disrupted a lot of my systems.
I don’t think I’ve started avoiding adding items to the list. I do think my usage of FVP may have become gradually less effective at having me do difficult tasks. As using the technique becomes more routine, I become less agent-y while doing it, which leads to that aspect of the technique becoming less effective. In particular, if the same item is on the list day after day, it becomes increasingly easy to skip over it until the rest of the list is empty (which never happens).
I don’t think this decay effect is all that strong so far: I think I’m still substantially better at doing important-but-aversive tasks with FVP than I’d be without it. But I wouldn’t be too surprised if the decay was stronger than I thought, or gets substantially stronger in the future. I do think I could probably “refresh” this aspect of the technique’s effectiveness if I put some effort into it, e.g. by forcing myself to use an explicit verbal question to choose between tasks, or mixing up the phrasing of that question.
Sometimes I have to let a to-do item sit for a while before I can be more real with myself about why it’s important. FVP still seems like the best way of tackling such things because the structure lends itself to creating mental leverage in easy, but noticeable, ways.
Maybe a small change like writing a number next to each item list representing the number of days it’s been on the list would help draw your focus to items that have been lingering a long time. Just start by writing 0 next to a new list item, and adding 1 to the number next to any list item that gets substantially repeated from the previous day. You don’t necessarily have to feel bad about list items that have large numbers next to them, but a larger number can create extra weight for prioritizing it.
Another reason this might work is that, much like Space Repetition Systems (SRS) used in reviewing e.g. information on flashcards, there is some logic to dropping cards that you have difficulty incorporating into memory after a certain number of times failing to incorporate it. The logic is that that particular piece of information is either not as relevant to the rest of the set (hard to form associations with “nearby” information), not as relevant to your own interests, or simply too difficult for you at that moment in time. Programs for doing SRS flashcard reviews include code to stop showing those cards again, and you have to manually specify to put them back into the review stack. Basically, it’s a sideloop to identify things that actually do require more conscious processing without clogging the rest of the process, which seems to be the main point of FVP.
Combining the two prior points, if you track the number of days on the list, you could have a hard cutoff, like 14, where you take that item off the list altogether. Not sure how to reincorporate it in a streamlined way, though. Having a separate list and maintaining two of them seems onerous.
Apropos SRS and needing a second list: I’m currently experimenting with using Anki as a to-do tool. (Every task becomes a card, I “learn” the deck, and for each task get the choice of Again/Hard/Good/Easy with listed intervals, e.g. <15min, 1d, 6d, 27d. If I want to see the task again quickly (Again/Hard), I have to spend at least 5 minutes on it before clicking the button. Otherwise, it’s ok to bury it by clicking ‘Easy’ on it.)
This deals nicely with “nice-to-haves” that I don’t want to kill yet. Whenever they come up, I just send them away to next month/quarter/year/… - that way, I don’t ever have to make the hard decision to kill the idea, I could always change my mind about this later, because I know that I will be reminded eventually. These “non-tasks” are also eating a fraction of the mental capacity that they’d otherwise require, because (a) I don’t get a growing list of “things that would be nice to do eventually” that I’d have to manually comb through (instead every couple of days there will be 1 or 2 of them mixed in with the review), and (b) I know that they’ll pop back up eventually, so I don’t have to worry about keeping track of them or finding them again if I ever change my mind. (To a lesser degree, it also forces me to start early on tasks due in several months, to keep the interval growth in check.)
The only problem I had so far was tasks that are inactionable right now (e.g. taking out the trash at 5am, because noisy) needed to be ‘skipped’ and reviewed later, leading to “ugh not in the mood right now” skips of actually actionable tasks, leading to less stuff getting done.
FVP looks like it might fix this. So for the month of December I’ll be running the following modified algorithm:
Go through the list of tasks in Anki, for each either do it right away or put it on the (paper) list, or delegate it to future-me (i.e. pick the long interval Good/Easy option).
Do FVP on the paper list.
3-strikes rule for “list leftovers”: If I say I do it but don’t get around to it, the counter increases. Once it hits three, I must “delegate to future me”. (Counter resets whenever I explicitly declare not to work on it, not sure yet if it should also reduce for streaks… For the experiment, I’ll go with yes and 3-days streaks for removing one mark.)
Let’s see how long I’ll stick to this.
This sounds like it could work. I might well try this. Thanks!