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Suggest Questions for our interview w/ Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow Author)

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mouser:
I really liked Forster's ideas about getting around the resistance of the reactive primitive part of our brains, and the interpretation of this part of the brain as reacting to a task as a "threat" or as an obstacle to be avoided.

I like the idea of "tricking" this part of your mind in various ways to get the momentum going, since I find that his description fits some of the problems I have in working on bigger projects - once you get started it's ok, but sometimes just getting started can be incredibly hard.

I'd like to hear more about his thoughts on these techniques, and any other tricks he has tried or is thinking about, which ones work, which ones don't.

mouser:
I'd also really like to hear Mark's thoughts on "games" one might play to break through resistance, whether it might be giving yourself "points" for doing things, or figuring out other approaches.  Ideas for possible software tools that could be used for such purposes.

brownstudy:
I agree that Mark's ideas have developed over the years. If I happen to have a ton of small tasks to do, I might pull out some of his tricks from the first book. Lately, I've very much liked using DIT as a way to structure my workday and to handle tasks that come at me throughout the day but that are not urgent. I find that his notion of urgency works very well for me.

I would disagree about DIT negating HTMYDCT. I view DIT as the "runway "doing" level whereas HTMYDCT would be the 50,000 foot "thinking, goal-setting" level, if I may mix GTD/DIT metaphors. I still use the techniques in DREAMS to coach myself at my job, generate ideas, and do "longer thinking", whereas DIT helps me navigate the short and medium term.  It's the difference between using a microscope (DIT) and using a telescope (DREAMS), it seems to me.

I find great value in his latter two books, but don't refer to the first book as much.

I too would be interested in how he tracks his self-experiments, how he uses the DREAMS technique nowadays, and his thoughts on how thinking and doing require two different frames of mind to be effective.

tomos:
I really liked Forster's ideas about getting around the resistance of the reactive primitive part of our brains, and the interpretation of this part of the brain as reacting to a task as a "threat" or as an obstacle to be avoided.

I like the idea of "tricking" this part of your mind in various ways to get the momentum going, since I find that his description fits some of the problems I have in working on bigger projects - once you get started it's ok, but sometimes just getting started can be incredibly hard.-mouser (September 14, 2006, 08:12 AM)
--- End quote ---

I've only started his book (DIT) & gotten as far as this idea.
I suppose the "Next action" idea in GTD makes a project less daunting/big and reduces it to the First or Next Step.

I'd like to hear more about his thoughts on these techniques, and any other tricks he has tried or is thinking about, which ones work, which ones don't.
--- End quote ---
I'm a slow reader so I'll be very happy to hear what he says these days :)
I wonder does he still think of the mind in this way.

urlwolf:
Here is one thing that troubles me about GED.
In GED, Forster recommends to do small time slots for different tasks, and rotate them. E.g., 5 min task X, 5 min task Y, 5 min task Z...

For writing, programming, etc (all tasks where you need to use your brain a bit) there is a huge cost for stopping/ressumming the task (at least 15 min in some cases to get in 'the zone' again). Breaking and ressuming tasks like these would not work for me (I haven't tried).

What do you think?
Anything else you want to ask related to this?
How can this be ellaborated into a good question?

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