A place for brain dumps.
I’m one of the lucky ones who has gotten an invite to see the OmniFocus pre-alpha-don’t-hurt-us-if-this-breaks builds. There it is on my dock, taunting me. Do I dare fire it up and end up down a rathole of tinkering with the system rather than Getting Things Done?
I think, yes.
So I took Merlin Mann’s advice to simplify my contexts and killed off a bunch of my useless ones today. I had over 20. Even subtracting a few that just weren’t ever used because they only existed because I was trying out some ideas that didn’t fly, that’s way too many. It turns out rather than separting them by what I could do I was separating them by what I wanted to do. This is exteremely bad, of course and no where near the point of having contexts.
I got so caught up in wanting to be sure I never saw a task I couldn’t or didn’t want to do that I became very skilled at hiding the things I really should be doing. Plus I could hide all the stale tasks I wasn’t working on, and wasn’t going to anytime soon. Stuff that really belonged in Someday/Maybe, or needed to get culled… really it was more like I had a half dozen Someday/Maybe contexts that weren’t serving any purpose.
I’m down to a 11, with a few more that will go away. I’ve split into three major ones Work (stuff I do for money), Hacking (stuff I do for fun), Chores (stuff I have to do at home) and Errands (stuff I need to do out and about). There’s a few other miscellaneous ones, like the one that depends on a specific computer with my music library before I can do work, but really this is much more managable.
My original thought was to schedule blocks of time to work in specific context. It was well-meaning, but wrong-headed. I don’t need to pick what context to work in, I need to know what context I’m already in and let my system filter it. I may need to ignore some tasks that I can’t do (say, “talk to so-and-so” and he’s out of the office) but that’s the price to pay to keep the whole list fresh. Also I’ve found that I end up scheduling project-specific time, rather than context-specific. It’s been working much better, the past few weeks I’ve been doing that.
FlyLady.net: Routine Examples:
“… then the guilt monster starts to eat away at you. I want you to feel productive and that doesn’t happen if you put things off.”
(Via lifehack.org.)
Maybe a little OCD, but we all need a little OCD in our lives.
This sounds like a well-oiled system for handling paper stuff.
Ishbadiddle: The Anxiety of Getting Things Done:
“As this is a largely-paper based system, I end up using a lot of paper — printing things out to put in the tickler, file, put in coverslips, the ‘To Read’ pile, and so on. I’m constantly recycling paper — there’s a box under my desk full of scrap paper.
Why paper instead of bits? Primarily because the computer is a great multi-tasking tool. And that’s the problem — because multi-tasking is so easy, I multitask. And when I multitask, I tend to divide my attention, wander through projects, look up something on the Internet, etc etc etc. My next project is to figure out how to create a ‘Desk Kanban’ on screen — perhaps with multiple desktops? As it stands, I’ve found that one of the most useful time management tools I have at my disposal is the ‘off’ button on my monitor.”
(Via lifehacks.org.)
And that right there is the kernel of the problem I’m wrestling with. I can’t just abandon the computer, since I have to do things that require a computer (i.e., programming). I’m better off finding a system that will mesh with the computer. Maybe something as straight-forward as an analogue of the project coverslip he talks about. With spotlight that could live pretty much anywhere and still be findable. I’ll have to think on that.