Every once in a while I think about how to better organize, plan, and prioritize things. I know I was not a normal teenager, especially if you take note that I was drawn to books about how to be more productive, how to get more things done in the day, how to find balance. Why yes, I did enjoy reading "Cheaper by the Dozen," how did you know?
One of the things I remember best is the idea of big rocks and little rocks and trying to fit them in a jar. The concept is that a jar represents the amount of time you have or space in one day, the little rocks are small tasks that don't take up a lot of minutes and the big rocks are those time-consuming and hopefully either necessary or rewarding endeavors. First, fill the jar with the little rocks, then pile in the big rocks on top of them. Notice how many big rocks are left over. Empty the jar and refill it, but this time with the big rocks first then the littler ones. The idea is that by inserting the big, important time-consuming tasks first you will have more room to fit in more of the smaller tasks.
Another connected concept that I like is the idea of the big three. I'm not sure what it is technically called but it doesn't matter because it works anyway. I decide "what are the three big things I will get done today?" It helps me focus on working towards completing tasks that will take more than one day to finish. They usually take an hour or two each. Then, combining this idea with the big and small rocks idea, I space out the big three (usually the big rocks) throughout the day and keep in mind what little rocks I have that I can do in between each. I rarely actually schedule things down to the minute or even the hour. Instead, I keep a list and if there's something that makes sense to do at one time than another or an actual appointment, I'll keep that in mind. My days are quite unstructured but this helps me focus on the tasks rather than the time.
Periodically, I've searched again and again for pearls of wisdoms and magic formulas to maximize time and productivity that I seem to believe do exist. It's not relentless. In fact, it's how I do most things in life. I have lots of interests and hobbies and passions but I'll maybe be actually doing something about one or two of them any given month and that's about it. They'll fade to the background and neglected ones will rise to the surface. This is certainly not the case for everything in life but for many things.
Yesterday, I browsed the web and looked for what else is new out there in terms of software and ideas. I've tried Remember the Milk in the past but like any other electronic organization set-up, it fell to the wayside. I always feel like I'm spending so much time plugging things in when I could be doing some of them. With paper, I enjoy the flexibility and it feels like a faster system. I like the way I can get a good feel for the week or month or being able to just pencil things in. Often when I try to stick with purely electronic methods I get an itch to just grab some paper and a pen. But I don't carry a paper planner and I always have my phone with me. I don't like seeing empty days or weeks when things were just too simple for the need of a planner.
The biggest reason for an electronic planner is so that I can share things like grocery list with Colin. But for some reason, the cloud lists program hasn't updated and synced our shared lists in weeks. It was buggy before then which means it caused more headaches than it should have. "Oh I didn't see (foo item) was needed." "I put it on the list two days ago." "Well, it's not on mine. See?"
So since I'm used to it and it works just fine without sharing, I've changed the focus of my lists. Along with things like shopping lists and movies to see, I've simply got four to do lists: @ home, @ out and about, @ people, and @ online. It's pretty new but it helps because I get annoyed when I realize something on my list can't get checked off because I didn't remember to do it where I could get it done. It's not perfect but it's simple and fits for now. (Side note: @ people are things I need other people to do some part of the tasks or have them with me in order to get it done.) For timed things, I just use Google Calendar which sends alerts to my phone.
My most used and biggest list is the books I want to read, usually with what library I visit that holds them and where it can be found. I'm not exactly gung-ho about social sites for book reading since I find myself wanting to read rather than spend time on them, but I do have a goodreads account. It gets updated! Whenever I'm reminded of it by an email notification of someone else posting something.
I'm not some super efficient do-it-all, not even close. I seemed to need those deadlines in school to push me to get them done. I only pulled one real all-nighter but I did stay up late and spit out papers that would juuuust slide in under the deadline. I don't exactly thrive under that kind of pressure but sometimes nothing else would give me the focus and energy to get something done. Not the best way to do things, but it obviously worked well enough.
So you might remember from earlier this month that I dedicated this as a Getting Things Done month (yes, loosely related to the GTD philosophy which I don't completely understand). How am I doing? Well, I'm optimistic and think I'm doing just fine. Okay, so dentist appointment hasn't been made yet ... and tickets to Europe haven't been reserved ... and my website hasn't really been worked on ... these all depend on Colin's participation to some extent. I'm not putting the blame on him because that's not fair (he's got the website all set up) but it's hard to remember to ask what his dental insurance company is and to have him remind me how to get to the web pages to edit them. He's especially busy this month since his company's annual conference is this weekend where they roll out a new release of their software. Also, we keep mentioning Europe but never can seem to make any actual decisions and the decisions involve more people and their plans. At this point, we just need to decide and make plans ourselves. But I've accomplished quite a few things (many that weren't on the original lists but were propelled forth by its momentum). I'm well on my way to completing everything by Halloween, especially since I'm treating it like a hard deadline. I can't start nanowrimo until I finish the list! I know I wouldn't be able to stand it if I had to delay nanowrimo even for a day ...
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