Getting Things Done, sorta
Wow. Once again, it's been over a month.
I've been reading and working my way through Getting Things Done, which has helped me crystallize my thinking on how to plan things out and accomplish some larger goals. I've already implemented a lot of it at work, but work is easy by comparison to implementing it at home -- at home, I'm struggling.
How do you Get Things Done when your todo list consists entirely of unappealing tasks you'd rather put off?
Also, IMO there are no good tools available for managing projects and breaking them down into smaller steps. OmniFocus comes close, but it has a few deficiencies that make it awkward to work with, particularly for hierarchical tasks. (Also, why the hell would anyone ever focus on projects? Focusing on contexts seems more useful, but OF can't do that...)
I've been slowly working to put together my own tool, but ... getting it right requires a lot of time and energy I don't really have. It'll get done, eventually, but in the meantime I'm stuck with pencil and paper -- or at least, OmniOutliner.
So in short, rather than doing the planning I should be doing, I'm fucking around with tools. Hooray for being an engineer. ;P
On the plus side, the whole collection and filing process is getting me a lot more organized at home. I'm 95% of the way through the piles of paper crap that accumulated in my college years, and the rest of it shouldn't require too much effort.
My goal is to have a todo list that is empty of mundane, "maintenance tasks", so I can spend as much time as possible on creative and social activities.
I doubt that'll happen anytime soon, but one can always hope.
-- Des
I've been reading and working my way through Getting Things Done, which has helped me crystallize my thinking on how to plan things out and accomplish some larger goals. I've already implemented a lot of it at work, but work is easy by comparison to implementing it at home -- at home, I'm struggling.
How do you Get Things Done when your todo list consists entirely of unappealing tasks you'd rather put off?
Also, IMO there are no good tools available for managing projects and breaking them down into smaller steps. OmniFocus comes close, but it has a few deficiencies that make it awkward to work with, particularly for hierarchical tasks. (Also, why the hell would anyone ever focus on projects? Focusing on contexts seems more useful, but OF can't do that...)
I've been slowly working to put together my own tool, but ... getting it right requires a lot of time and energy I don't really have. It'll get done, eventually, but in the meantime I'm stuck with pencil and paper -- or at least, OmniOutliner.
So in short, rather than doing the planning I should be doing, I'm fucking around with tools. Hooray for being an engineer. ;P
On the plus side, the whole collection and filing process is getting me a lot more organized at home. I'm 95% of the way through the piles of paper crap that accumulated in my college years, and the rest of it shouldn't require too much effort.
My goal is to have a todo list that is empty of mundane, "maintenance tasks", so I can spend as much time as possible on creative and social activities.
I doubt that'll happen anytime soon, but one can always hope.
-- Des