Years ago I could brag about my interrupt driven approach to work. There was no problem at all for colleagues to ask me to solve a problem while I was in the middle of a totally different task. I could easily set aside the work, find a solution to their problem, often chatting to my room mate about another problem in the mean time, and get back to where I was without even thinking.
My desk was filled with papers and although I could usually find what I was looking for I sometimes missed an important appointment or event because I had forgotten about it.
The turning point came when I realised I had faithfully promised a colleague to solve a problem and half an hour later I didn’t remember who it was let alone what it was. I wanted to mark it off as an incident, but the incident kept recurring. Time to find other methods.
I’ve always been interested in time management methods and techniques and so I dug out the course material I had once bought but never used. This referred to Stephen Covey, so I bought his books. The steps looked easy enough, so I did all the extercises, but it left me with a few questions: is my mission statement a true mission statement? If I define roles and goals and subsequent actions, what should I do with the stuff I’m paid to do?
I didn’t feel comfortable with my mission statement. It looked more than a copy and paste of others than something I could live my life by. And I had no clue what to change. Of course you can argue that if my goals and every day stuff don’t match up, it’s time to find a different job, but I liked my job and I liked the things I had to do.
On my quest for a solution, I came across Getting Things Done (GTD). There was no talk of mission statements and it made a lot more sense to clear the runway before you could rise to 10,000 and 20,000 feet. This was the down to earth stuff I could work with. At first I read articles here and there and I was convinced that doing the tricks and getting the tools was sufficient. And at first it was. The landfill of papers on my desk quickly disappeared when I realised my filing cabinet could also hold “current” projects. I already had an inbox, but now I could put it to use. The tickler file was easy to implement and fun to use.
Up to this day, some 6 years later, my desk is still empty and the inbox and tickler file are still in use.
However, that’s it. Ever since, I’ve been struggling to find the “best” system for my projects, project support material and next actions lists. I went from my beloved Palm PDA to a classic planner from DIYPlanner to my shiny new PowerBook to a hipster PDA and back to my PDA. What bugs me most is the procrastination streak. I’m easily distracted, and no, I don’t think I’m an ADD candidate. If my lists are too long, I get overwhelmed and stop looking at them. If my system is too complicated I don’t use it because it requires updates in several different places.
Simplifying the system has not yet resulted in a coherent system that works overall. Oh yes, I do have all time winners. I’m using HandyShopper for the groceries and other lists from the day I found it. It still works fine and I haven’t found anything better. Yet, without a desktop companion on my PowerBook, it’s hard to rearrange the lists or build new ones. So it pretty much stops after the groceries and two or three other lists. Another winner is DateBk5. I probably use only 20% of it’s features but that’s enough. I never want to go back to a paper-based calendar.
And that’s about it. Up till now I’ve never been able to define good contexts. So I either had too many of them and I didn’t know which one was more appropriate at a given time or I had too few of them resulting in huge lists of next actions that were so overwhelming I stopped looking at them. I tried lists as memos, paper-based lists, Palm Tasks, Outlook tasks, Life Balance and lists in ordinary text files. I have not yet found the thing that works for me. I do know now that I love crossing things off and having them disappear automatically. So changing memos and modifying lists in text files are out. Same goes for the paper-based lists: after crossing off a few I lost track of what had to be done and what should still be done and I hated rewriting half the undone stuff onto a new list.
I also like to carry my lists with me and, believe it or not, sometimes I’m away from my computer and even from my laptop. This leaves the Palm as the only remaining device. But I hate the small screen when I’m scrolling along to find something to be done. I love the big screen on my laptop or the dual monitor setup on the PC. So I went back to Life Balance because of it’s desktop companion. Believe it or not, I still haven’t started entering anything in it.
I’m not sure what’s holding me back. The fact that it would be my umpteenth attempt in Life Balance? The fact that I know that I hardly look at my Palm during the day? Or is there a little voice in my head that whispers that this is still not yet MY system?
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