Polyphasic sleep journal #4 - disruption & deep thoughts

We interrupt this Everyman 2 sleep project to bring you unavoidable business travel and mistimed discussions.

Business travel jacks up Everyman 2

I just did a 2 day trip to San Diego.  In making it a low cost trip of 2 days duration versus higher cost and longer duration, the schedule included awkward hours.  My shuttle trip to the Portland airport began at 2am.  Waking was relatively easy given that 4am was kinda normal, and I exercised the good discipline to NOT have coffee until much later so help me sleep on the shuttle and on the first flight.  However, my 11am nap and 4pm nap were wrecked and my trip home included a delated flight (...and missed shuttle, and unplanned overnight in Portland).  Basically my sleep was wrecked for a few days.
Lesson: pay more and travel during normal human hours, and make the semi-uncomfortable declarations (where you can), that you're simply unavailable during nap times.  I wouldn't do this with clients but could do it with my business partner.
Your rest pattern, and the inertia of maintaining it, is an asset.  Don't squander it by conforming when you don't truly have to.

Deep thoughts interrupt sleep

See the arrow?  That's where my wife and I started discussion Thanksgiving and Christmas, raising our children and other heady, heavy issues.  In the context of sleep time, this is also known as 'not sleeping'.
Lesson: Plan time for this so it doesn't land at bedtime.
Protect bedtime.  This often looks like making explicit time for other things.

Polyphasic sleep journal #4 - sleep discipline

Lessons for the day:

Go to bed on time.  This concept - polyphasic sleeping - does not come without costs, and one cost is basic discipline.  That's not really a downside, and its the commonest required discipline among the worthy rewards in the world, but it's unforgiving.  Sorry, that's a little dramatic.  Here's the data.

I went to bed (sleep anyway) at 12:24 (accuracy courtesy Sleep Cycle app on my iPhone), normally this has been 10:00pm.  I pushed my wake time from 4:00 am to 5:00 to partially compensate.  I was thinking this was within the reasonable latitude afforded by the relatively less aggressive Everyman 2 method.  Bzzz.  I pushed it too far and blew past my 5am alarm and woke at 7:10, in a start.  Not an auspicious start to the day.

Weekends.  By the way, my normal sleep in on Saturday protocol (as much as you can with eager kids) is no more.  Same schedule every day.  That means the days that start with S are still early days.

Observe.  Looking at my chart, my body was ready to wake at 3am.  I noticed that the other day I awoke naturally at 2:30am but chose to return to sleep until my scheduled 4am time.  So, while I biffed it last night going to bed late, perhaps I'm planning too much regular sleep.  Not sure about this yet.

Communicate.  I stayed up late last night because my sons had a sleepover at a friends house and had a date with my wife.  We stayed up late for kicks but now I pay the price.  I should have more clearly communicated my need to go to sleep with  my wife early on, instead of waiting until 10:00pm last night and making up reasons why it was ok to stay up later.  I could have shared the discipline burden a bit without making her my sleep police.

Coffee shop WiFi review - WEBbeams

Annoying.  The problem with WEBbeams, to be fair, is only secondarily the fair gripes about undefined speed and a timer that distracts.  (Really, a timer?  Every computer has a clock in the corner.)

No communication

The problem is that there's no communication to the user to let me know what kind of system I am walking into.  Why isn't there a countertop card that says: "Using WiFi?  We use WEBBeams - 2 hours free and premium speed available."  That way I know.  Instead, I turn on my trusty mac that connects easily 99% of the time and I think my web is failing.  Yeah, I know it's a tiny bit of a cheap shot to go after WEBbeams for this but hey, impressions count and it doesn't look like they've addressed this.  Maybe no one has, but my regular shop has a better option for handling WiFi.

Low tech

What is it?  People and culture.  I mean handle it with people, with human interaction.  My regular shop is so friendly and personal, does not have a rotating door for teenage employees that spend their time texting.  Instead, it's open and inviting IMO, everyone wants to contribute back (buy coffee and stuff) when they are there using the WiFi, because they are there for the ambiance and people, not just the coffee and wifi.  I've never sat there and not paid for anything long enough to find out how long they'd let me, but I also don't think anyone has.

WiFi squatting happens differently in different places and my shop might essentially just not have this problem due to its location, but I stand by my argument for a non-technological solution (people).

Scale

One way to nail it is the simple Because Barnes and Noble/Starbucks model, which shows it can be done by big companies.  In Thousand Oaks CA recently, I was working at the Barnes and Noble there in the Starbucks cafe.  Busy place.  When I'd been there a while, the man who worked there (who has for years) asked me politely if he could get me something from the cafe.  When I said no thanks, he politely reminded me that the cafe tables were for customers only to let me know if there was anything he could get me later.  I don't remember his words exactly, but he nailed it.  Polite, efficient.  I bought something asap, happily, and remarked at his method.  I'm not sure if it was his method or if it was Barnes and Noble or Starbucks standard operating procedure (never had this experience at another Starbucks) , but it was good.

So, sorry WEBBeams - requiring me to go through the annoying (but commonish) terms of service page and reminding me (right away, before going online) that there's a 2 hour limit... annoying.

Coffee Bean has the 2 hour limit also, but it worked more easily and didn't get in my face with a paid option.  Hey - I paid for the coffee and stuff, why pitch me on faster web.  Just give it to me and you'll see me come back, a lot.

Polyphasic Sleep Journal #3 - What You'll Need

Polyphasic Sleep Journal #3

Things that you will need for polyphasic sleep (that you didn't think of):

While these observations may not apply to everyone, they are things I found useful and they also point to the practice of thinking broadly about a change. This is meant to be both practically useful and thought-provoking.

Have your clothes out the night before – when you take your showers at night or in the morning, have your clothes ready in advance. I know this may be easier for some than others, but even if the clothes that you have ready are only for your "extra" morning phase, and you put your real clothes on later save yourself the time of rifling through your closet in a dark fog. To extend Ben Franklins famous statement, I'll add that a minute saved is a minute created.  Granted, this is only true when saving a minute can be done without haste, but that applies here. I have found that having my clothes out the night before not only saves me time in the morning but it is a signal and reminder to myself and the world that I'm doing things in advance (moving the action upstream) and those are vitally important to me. 

Have a flashlight handy – I use a yellow Eveready model, because it has a broad top and is easy to balance on a table surface without rolling away. Also, the fact that it sits up vertically makes it seem more like something that is waiting for me on purpose like a tool, as opposed to just yet another thing laying on the table. 

Have slip on shoes available – in my polyphasic sleep scenario, I have chosen to go to bed at a regular time and to wake up exceptionally early. This means that I'm walking around the house in the wee hours when my wife and kids are asleep. I'm a "shoe person" that wears shoes pretty much always, even in the house. This is mostly personal preference but as a 40-year-old (is that the reason?) I find that standing barefoot or in sock feet on hard surfaces or for extended periods (I work standing up)... hurts.   so, walking around the house wearing shoes on hardwood floors, and up and down steps is fairly obnoxious. I wear slip on shoes with soles. So when I walk around the house are up and downstairs I slip them off and walk in my socks but when I stand to make my breakfast or work, they are on. 

Have a book ready – I'm currently reading the Monk who sold his Ferrari. A gift from a friend that is very focused on self-improvement. I'm not a very fast reader, and typically make virtually zero time for books other than nonfiction business books, but having time to read alone in the morning has been awesome. Guilt free, because I'm working within time that I literally "made" for myself with my foray into the Everyman 2 sleep project. 

Dirty Dishes – As business owners and parents, and with my wife homeschooling our kids, we don't get a lot of time together and my wife has been tired and frustrated on some days that are particularly trying (you know what I mean, parents). So last night we got pizza and watched a show on TV as a family indulgence and together time. Everybody was tired so we went to bed without cleaning up the kitchen. As it turns I don't mind doing the dishes so much when I'm in the morning zone and I can do it alone and peacefully.  While I didn't plan this in advance, I know that as I type this at 5:24am, that my wife will be very pleasantly surprised when she awakens to a clean kitchen.  Win.

To make this one clearer, the way that I'm actually making this happen is that I'm simply going to be aware that I have this time and I will leverage it, sometimes, to facilitate being spontaneous the prior our next day, or to do something nice for somebody else. Or maybe to write a blog post when I haven't for a long time. 

If you're not sure what polyphasic sleep or Every man 2 is, check out my page on trying Everyman 2.

How do you change when you've tried it all?

Audacious goals, I'm thinking.  

I have the same goal types that everyone does:

Fitness

Finance

House

Relationship

Personal

(The rest are really only subtypes of the above... yes?)

So here I am in lateish November with a few abandoned projects on this blog.  My 30 day plan to get organized with Toodledo crashed.  I've since started using another tool, but abandoned it also, tentatively, if you can abandon tentatively.

So, now what?

I set some bigass goals.

Now what?  All I have to do is keep them.  What that really means is somehow avoiding the seemingly inevitable pitfalls that have beset progress in the past.  How do you really make it different this time?

October GTD and Toodledo #??

Blamo.  Total crash.  For me, at least in my current state in life, this was unsustainable.

Sorry if I crashed on expectations.  I started with the honest intent of doing this for 30 days, the idea being that most plans have problems and 30 days would be enough to overcome some, find solutions and prove it all out to be worthy.  No can do.

This isn't a condemnation of Toodledo or GTD, just a flat out statement that it didn't work for me.

I'm using a different tool now I'm I'm hesitating to make this all about the tool, because it's probably about the person.  Most things are.

I'm going to go back and put a spoiler alert on the posts and start something new.

Building a life strategy

This isn't a manual for how to do it because I don't have one.  It is a personal conversation (or brain dump) about the process and how I get things together.

I've always believed that goals are important.  I've been taught this and once you understand the idea it seems obvious - how can you be happy if you don't know what you want?  Maybe it's right, maybe not.  Do you have to know the answer to this question to move forward?  I typically think there are few things that you really must have 100% nailed down before you can do other useful things, but maybe this is one of them.

In my attempts to find my happy, I usually think in a diagram and I start on the right with HAPPY.

Inevitably, this leads upstream really really far.  Each of the 'happy with' bubbles does this:

You can see that if these are drawn together, it quickly becomes an unmanageable level of bubbles.  I already didn't draw all of them.  How to make sense of so much stuff and boil it down into simple actions?

April - GTD and Toodledo #13: Just Get Things Done

Ironically, when I need GTD the most, it's the easiest to fall off the wagon.

David Allen says one of the best things about GTD is that it's easy to get back on the wagon - which is good, because it's also easy to fall off, and even as the originator of this particular wagon, he falls off and gets back on all the time.  I learned this in a great intro-level video of a talk David gave at google.  Here's the video of David Allen at Google.

So, I fell off and got back on, a few times, in recent days.  As I have noticed, I learn the most when I iterate through problems, and this 30 day project has forced me to remain continuous in my resolve to find a way when I am in the gap between iterations of 'on'.  So, I tried something new.  I was working on some content for a client that does Iceland Excursions and I thought that maybe I could do the right thing at a client level and continue to refine my process without the mass of my entire workload to deal with.  It seems to be working.

Here's a tiny version of what it my 'working' screen looks like:

Key observations:
- More projects, fewer actions.  When I scan, I realized that my mind attempts to comprehend the top level items, so 5 items is as distracting as 5 projects - even though 5 projects might mean 25 actions.  Hmmmm.

- Most things actually ARE projects, so this is natural when you do it.

- Sorting by Tag puts all the 'super projects,' or in my case, clients, together.

- Because I can sort subtasks, I can reorder things as I see fit

- I have projects that never end, like doing web promotion for things like Iceland Excursions where tasks flow through, but the project never ends.  Truly, this is like exercise and eating, where I could have discreet projects that DO end, but I like this method.  It allows me to tick things off and feel advancement, add things to the end of the list and keep an eye on overall workload.

- I can put PROJECT-LEVEL waiting, someday/maybe, and reference items in this system.  In the tiny graphic above, I have a project at the top with several waiting items and reference items.  They are neatly sequestered where I need them, not taking up me-level overhead.

I think it's starting to come together.  If you just found this post, please visit the whole series; 30 days of Getting things done and Toodledo.com.

April - GTD and Toodledo #12: Breaking the system

Try as I might, I haven't been able to overcome a problem, I haven't fundamentally stayed in the styem; rather, I've relied on a notepad file that I can open with a few keystrokes and the superfast entry of a few lines of text.

When I have something new, I simply insert it where it goes in the priority list.  There are some clear positives to this method, namely speed and... okay, there's one positive.  Speed.  Tools whose only virtue is speed are pandering to laziness, however, which brings me to the downside.

The downside is that the notepad only contains the things I put in it right at the moment, and when I did a minor desktop icon cleanup the other day, this happened:

I know it's small.  I didn't want to show my desktop icons, but here's the gist of what you see.  I had a desktop with lots of icons.  I drug them around into groups before moving them to where they go, and the group in the lower left shows 5 notepad files - notepad files of the same kind that I'm talking about as my 'emergency' files.  This means that not only do I have a 'current' notepad file which isn't one of these, but there are 5 other files, containing what one could only assume were the most important activities I could be working on at the time - relegated to the status of ignored desktop crap.

Want to know the scary thing?  I actually put it as a line item in my current notepad to review those old notepad files to make sure there's nothing forgotten.  It would be a safe bet to assume there ARE forgotten items that will elicit a loud "D'oh!" from me when I read them.

So - I'm NOT getting the GTD benefits when I do this.

Not that we've looked at the ugly sympton, what's the root cause?

I was using a system proffered by a Toodledo power user in the forum, with folders indicating the GTD elements of inbox, action, waiting, etc. and Stars indicating next actions, applied only to actions.  The original scenario I sought to emulate used custom searches for next actions.  I did this but found that there were too many next actions for me to comprehend consciously, the very problem which GTD seems to avoid,  and occasionally there were clients, etc. for which I had NO next actions for certain time periods.

I added tags and made lots of custom searches but this meant I had to look at all the searches.

Hmmm.. both scenarios still had me using notepad and receiving no benefits.  So, I culled the next actions back from the things I could to next to the things I WOULD do next.  This reduced the number, but at this time, remember I had custom searches for many areas.  When I ditched the custom searches (AFTER having culled the next actions), I found a manageable list.  WHOOOOOOOO!!!!!

So, if I had followed instructions, ostensibly, I would have saved time.  This isn't the case however - it was a matter of needing to try it in earnest to really understand the shortcomings personally to be able to make the plan work.  I had to feel the pain of the personal evolution.  This is indeed something that Toodledo tell you, essentially in the deceptively simple advice to 'try it out and experiment'.  But maybe I'm thick and just had to experience it myself.

So now, the next key was using tags as the sort priority and getting intimate with the collapse function.  This, miraculously, gives me a project list.  Who knew?  Probably lots of people.  But again, I had to do it to really 'get it' and I've found this to be a common thread running through the GTD story of many successful users.






Lessons:
(again) must avoid temptation to stay in system
Project list is attainable when sorting by tags and collapsing.
Collapsing is a great way to keep everything visible but not overwhelming
I'm aware that with all this I haven't actually talked about doing work, and I'm still concerned that this process, though definitely progressing in effectiveness, will be something that I effectively move from the development phase of into the doing phase.  I get secretly worried that I'll work out the perfect system and still just not feel like working, but I really don't think this will be the case.  I enjoy working, I just don't enjoy the fear of forgetting something or being overwhelmed in minutiae.

30 days with GTD and Toodledo

This is what its all base on, BTW, David Allen's Getting Things Done.  I listen to the audio instead of turning pages - it's a great way to make useful time of my commute, and unlike novels, I enjoy listening to these kinds of books more than once - making the purchase worthwhile for me.  Borrow a copy if you can and talk to that person for tips!

April - GTD and Toodledo #11: Inbox Zero tip

We're getting somewhere now.  I've had a few days of overwhelming workload - things that didn't get done over the past few weeks are screaming for attention and getting it.  Yikes!  I am whittling down my out of system work; meaning, more and more of my task management is actually happening in process.

Inbox Zero tip:
As I am reading my email, I want to erase or file the contents of many of these. Following the general GTD idea that every email is either an action, project, something I wait for, reference or trash... I have two new tricks.

5 minute rule enforcement.  

This concept isn't invented by me, but perhaps my hyper literal approach is.  I am using an online timer called Apimac, an awesome Mac Timer App. So, there is no accidentally stretching 5 minutes into a hour.  I have the timer running with a 5:00 countdown in giant numbers and running on top.  I glance at it periodically and it helps me keep the pace.  As I was clearing my inbox, I was tempted to spend more time on things, but killed them when the timer had a few seconds left.

The key here is that 5 minutes becomes a (wasted) hour when we aren't rationally, explicitly making the choice to spend that hour on that task. When it stretches a minute at a time we aren't seeing the hour, just the tantalizing promise of some fun or knowledge that would justify the jaunt.  Usually doesn't happen.  The timer has power.

Forced accountability.

Before I archive an email that I plan to act on ( I use gmail, so archiving isn't deleting ), I put the item into Toodledo first.  I literally draft the response to the person who sent me the note but don't send it, then I put it in Toodledo, then I send it.

1.
Bill, thanks for the content for your atomic horseradish site.  I can't process it right now but wanted to let you know I have received it and I'll have the new site up in a week or so.

2.
I put the item into Toodledo, using a convention of 'subject line' and (date) for capturing the email subject and date.

3.
I go back and hit send; then archive the email.

This way... the inbox in clear, the task is accounted for, and I couldn't get screwed up if I'm interrupted!

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #10: for Business and/or Personal life?

Yesterday I spend a good deal of time tuning up my GTD and Toodledo systems, with some fairly significant discoveries, primarily:

- Keep my Next Actions realistic - cull it down
- Realize that this 'objective' system has gray areas and accept it
- I can leave "finish to start" triggers for myself inside a task to emulate project management

It's not the system, it's me
As I'm going along, I'm realizing that the learnings that have the most value are usually about my perspective on things and not about the GTD system or Toodledo's functionality.  Both of these are powerful and flexible.  What a newsflash - it's ME that must adapt.  (Just like every area of life.)

What's a project?
Today's lesson so far has been regarding where the boundaries of a task-management system really are.  I think most people consider project management for work only.  And 'work' projects can tend to be larger than home projects... or are they?  Depends.

If you're comparing the construction of a building to a home project like remodeling a room, yeah it's bigger in an absolute sense.  But, bigger in an absolute sense has no bearing on what actually matters to a person - the room remodel might be much more significant to how you feel on a moment to moment basis.

Getting GTD.  No, I mean getting it
.The point of this is that the criteria for what constitutes a project might be pretty darn small.  Yes, this is not a new element to GTD, GTD acknowledges this and promotes the idea fully.   However, getting into GTD requires (at least for me) the quantum jump of understanding of these minor 'A-Ha' moments into major 'Oh, Wow....' moments only through personal experience.  Academically I understood it right away, but I didn't really get it until much later.  Then I got it.  You'll know.

Business or Personal
Here on Sunday morning, my day started with my 3 year old crawling on me at 6:15 telling me about a bug he found and asking for pancakes and a story.  I wasn't really ready for the day yet but my day was jolted into being without my involvement.

The point is that GTD is all about staying in a defined process and this was no defined process.  Even though I could wake up and ostensibly work through whatever Sunday's priorities were, it didn't happen that way.  Between me, my 3 and my 5 year old, there were many different agendas for the morning, including when to eat, when to dress etc.  There was schedule-free, complete randomness for a few hours.  Frankly, it spun me out.

Why?  I have a lot on my plate, and it's sometimes hard to just be.  I hadn't planned this time out and it was hard for me to go from structured, production time (or at least time that intends to be structured and productive) to time that's profoundly random and unstructured.  I got into a tailspin and changed my mind about 10 times regarding the actions of the day.

By the time mid-morning rolled around, I had to get on to some firm obligations and I was not in the right frame of mind to work productively.  I decided to take some time to chill and relax before working. So, where's the GTD connection?  The first part of my day, the few hours I spend with my boys while their mom sleeps in, didn't even have so much as a backdrop of clear intention associated with it.  Not even a decision to accept the randomness or commit to leisure time!  My GTD system, with projects, actions, next actions, someday maybe items and all the related structure gives me a consistent context that my mind can sync to and get rolling.  I'm thinking this is one of the major unarticulated functions of GTD - a context to sync to that becomes familiar, easy and automatic.

Even though I've had as many weekends as weekdays in my life and they make up the lion's share of my uncommitted time, they receive MUCH less forethought.  This is bass-ackwards.  Railing against the knee-jerk reaction to keep my free time unstructured is actually quite smart; it is, in fact, the time that I should have the most structure on because that's the most fun part, the part that I really want to enjoy.

Lesson:
Apply the same GTD principles to my free time as my work time.

By way of example, some of the options for Sunday were to work in the garage (cleaning), do yard work (weeding, planting), play at the park, or go for a bike ride.  With a committee of 3, there was anything but consensus and we waffled.  I waffled.  I'm the grown up so it's my job.  Waffling extolls a high price of the waffler and the waffled.  Suckola energy drain.

I'll have a plan for next weekend.

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #9 (postscript): GTD Cheating

After I posted the last bit, I was about to close up the computer for the day and spend the rest of the time with my family.  As I'm getting ready to unplug the trusty MacBook, I started dragging the open, unsaved instances of notepad from the 2nd monitor... these are various to-dos that I didn't put into TD.

Hmmm..

I did this GTD cheating on purpose with full knowledge and guilt of my GTD sin.  However, I told myself that this self-awareness made it ok; it would curtail itself in due time as the related habits are strengthening. I believe this too...

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #8: Culling Next Actions & Gray areas

I had a massive distraction to look at another organization tool.  I temptation to which I temporarily succumbed.  After a quick review, I found that the seductive surface simplicity was a promise of simplicity but that doesn't appear to fit my needs.  My to do's aren't so very simple to organize.

The real GTD with Toodledo work today was culling my next actions.

Even though there are many things that I can do, say for my client that sells vertical blinds (shout out), there is really only 1 of those that I'm going to actually do next.  Sounds simple, but as any online-tool-embracing-productivity-geek would tell you, it ain't simple.  "Next Action" sounds like a simple principle, but does it mean:

Something that I actually can do next if I choose to, i.e., there are no predecessors or other tasks that must be completed first, no barriers at all?  This is, to my understanding, the proper GTD definition.

However...

Among say 5 pre-emininent projects for a client, and 10 more behind that, there is only ONE next action that I actually will do next.

The difference is the difference between a task I can do next and a task I will do next.  (Alternatively, it could be a task I should do next vs. will, but I'll ignore that complexity and assume I do what I should.)

The difference in play is that one list is much (much) bigger than the other.  The former list is indigestibly long, and the latter is very digestible.  Result?  Culling from the former to the latter produced a huge increase in the peace of mind associated with the classic GTD clean sweep.

New Problem:
So the obvious downside is that culling the Next Actions, identified by stars, effectively loses some of the intelligence associated with the tast data.  Now, when I finish a task for a client, I need to figure out another one.  This either prompts the need for another review or promotes working on the wrong thing somehow.  Like many things in GTD, despite the formulaic, process oriented approach, there are still many subjective gray shades to adapt to, and this is one that I'm now brought to.  So, I did two things:

- Leave a few starred actions, or at least break from the rule of one that I implied earlier
- In some cases I left a trigger in one task to another, like a soft-link successor.  In project management parlance, this is like establishing a finish to start relationship, but without a hard link of any kind.  We'll see how this goes.

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #7: Progress

I might be at a tipping point for using TD with GTD today.  I created a few rules for myself.

My new Waiting Rule:
If I am waiting on something, I must enter the amount of time which I'm willing to wait.  Meaning, if I ask someone a question that I need an answer on, I must define when I'm going to follow up if I don't get an answer so that the item doesn't get lost (also known as dropping the ball).  I don't want to drop the ball.

I realized that if I am waiting without a deadline, then I'm not really waiting, I'm wishing/dreaming/hoping and that's the realm of someday/maybe.

Other practices I picked up:
* Relying on the next time I touch a task to turn it into the next task in a sequence vs. making everything a project.  Partially this is because creating a project and its tasks takes me going to several screens and tying it all together.  To adhere strictly to GTD, this would be the action, but I'm going to say that:

'Review draft text >> Publish/return' will naturally lead me to publish the text or return it to the author instead of making it a two part project. 

* Since I'm using searches to define Next Actions at the client (same as large project) level, I don't have a solid way to track items that are DUE.  I don't want to use an external calendar (2 systems...), so I enabled reminders and tested them.  They work well and I can even set when the reminder comes so I'll get them in a time and place where I can act on them.  Nifty.  We'll see how it pans out.

GTD with Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #3: Official start of the 30 day challenge

So I'm going to do this - commit to using Toodledo for my task management - and I have a big initial problem.  I have a bunch of current and semi-current tasks already in Toodledo that I have to contend with, none of the things I was planning to do TODAY are in there and I want to change the WAY I use it to a new simpler, Getting Things Done method.

Hmmm.  These are the same challenges I always have and the very reasons that prompted doing a 30 day challenge in the first place, so I gotta deal with it.

GTD and Toodledo 30 Day Project

April - GTD and Toodledo #6: Dammit's and other frustrations

The last week has included a lot of thinking about Toodledo and GTD, but not so much adherence to the plan.  I think this helped.  The awareness of the goal made me able to discern what was breaking:

- Things were added to my queue superfast; faster than I could open TD and add them properly
- I had so many things starred as next actions that the list was not something I could digest at a glance - when this happened, the tool lost its greatest asset, the ability to reduce mental overhead.  If I really had to read this list over and over - where's the advantage?

Then, as I worked away from the list, I was actually completing things without ticking them off, creating deadwood in the list.

Also, despite the idealistic idea that I could put tasks of any category together, I lost the 'project list' effect from GTD - the ability to quickly get a reminder at the project level.  I was literally forgetting entire projects for weeks because of mental overhead overload.  The Proximo plan for GTD had no differentiation between categories of work - by client/type of work/etc.

So, while I have many different projects, and in some cases I'm committed to work for Client A on Monday (regardless of other projects), I wasn't able to see the Client A subset.

***

Learning #1:
I need to be able to separate work by clients.  (YMMV, your 'client' might be something else)

> Given the TD framework, I decided to use tags to separate work by clients/sites/etc.

I need a way to also look across clients at type of work (meaning - if I'm a contractor, I need to see all the work at the smith house and all the painting work.)

> I'll create separate searches...

So to put this into effect, I started tagging actions and projects with "client-type of work" tags, where some are just "client" and some are just "type of work".  As I'm doing this, I'm thinking these should not be hyphenated, just separate tags and it would be cooler (by far) if I had multiple tag fields (or, for that matter, multiple folder fields - as these are essentially exclusive tags) so I could sort this way instead of just use searches.

This led me to:

*****

Learning #2:
I was being too liberal with stars.  Using stars at 'next action' items (and as a subset of Actions, identified by a folder) I had too many to comprehend.

While I was still fixing up the tags, I also realized:

*****

Learning #3:
The minute I break out of the system, it's broke and I'll have to do catch up administration to get back in.

This means that breaking the flow or the planned GTD/TD workflow, how ever you set it up, should only be done on purpose in the most extreme cases.  Like if the President of the United States calls and asks for you to help out with something.  If that happens, I'll shove everything off my desk but a clean piece of paper and a pen.  Short of that - I'd better stay in the system.

>So, I'm on maybe my 10th lifetime restart of GTD, but obviously I have faith in the potential or I wouldn't come back to it.  That, or I'm a fool.  I'm not a fool.

Stay tuned.

GTD and Toodledo 30 Day Project

April - GTD and Toodledo #5: Initial challenges

So far, the summary of this project is that I've put all my current stuff in, worked off the list briefly and then worked on fires and interruptions.  At the time, it all seemed like very rational decisions to focus on the items at hand, but really, I acknowledged that each time was a tiny little cop out.  I did know better and did it anyway - this isn't so much learning a new tool as it is changing personal habits.

Also noticed:
Some things popped up that weren't caught in the big sweep, or initial capture.  These hit me like grenades of unhandled obligation and caused mini-panic.

So, after skipping 6 days of proper entries, I'm going to hit the reset button again, the only difference between this time and many times before is that I'm logging it now.  This makes it harder to ignore the realities and forces 20-20 hindsight.  That hindsight is currently aware that there was no real, hard outside barrier to making this change, and all the reasons for doing it remain, standing patiently.

Round two...

GTD and Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #4: Setting up the GTD system of a fellow TD user

I'm going to model my system after Toodledo User Proximo.  Here's his thread on how:
Getting things done with Toodledo.

My steps:
Since I have existing folders, I simply added all the new folders with a period in front.  When I migrate my stuff over, I'll delete the old ones.  This is a big deal to just delete the old stuff - I'm a little nervous.

Following the guide from above, I:
1. Printed guide
2. Added folders
3. Added contexts (with periods)

Immediately I see tasks that are overdue and I panic a little bit.  (This is the anxiety David Allen talks about in  Getting Things Done when you don't have your system in place.  It's true.)

This is tedious.
I started by just going through tasks and updating everything and the mountain was too high psychologically so I did context first, using search and multi edit.

Now I'm going through a folder at a time and in proper GTD style, I'm applying a modified 2 minute rule, more like the 2 second rule, and deleting old tasks when they're clearly old.

As I move things to Someday/Maybe, I sense relief because I know these are being pushed off my mind but not forgotten...

Wow.  This is tedious & difficult but I am getting it done and it 'feels' like it's going to work.

Ok - They're all in and I am now using a custom search to show only Next Actions.  even this wasn't enough for me to truly narrow things down, so I populated length of time for each task and sorted by easiest!  Trying that now.

This worked. I have spend a few hours working very effectively.  For me, a few hours without interruption is great, and I got things done that had been lingering a while.  The structure is awesome.


GTD and Toodledo 30 day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #2: Laying the groundwork

As this is more about personal growth than anything else, I'll admit that I've loosely used Toodledo and GTD for over a year, however never reliably.  It was reliable, my use of it wasn't.  Toodledo is robust, and unless you're broke and your time isn't worth much, the price of a PRO membership shouldn't be a barrier to anyone.

The program uses several things to help you keep track of the info about the info on your list.  If you're a geek, you'd call it task meta data.  For example, instead of 'buy milk' I'd have a task that said 'buy milk' and I'd have a context of home (because it's not work or hobby related), a status of next action (meaning I can really do it next - it's not waiting on anything), a folder of purchase (because that how I think of things).  These are some of the info around the items that help you categorize and track stuff.  The thing of it is that there are *many* ways that you can arrange it, this is a secretary, not just a list of things, and its appropriate role in your life could be huge.

That said, I am a process geek and I kept working on the system versus working in the system.  Most people have the opposite problem, where they just do (in the system) and never improve the way they do (on the system).  I constantly think about how to improve the way I do and spend too little time doing.

Anyhow.  I just watched a fellow ToodleDo user's video about how they implemented the GTD system.  (Props to Proximo - if you're a subscriber, look up his threads).  He used it in a way that is much simpler than mine - the kind of simple that is usually followed with the word beauty.  I'm going to try it his way for my 30 day experiment so today I'm going to review all my stuff and migrate it into that system.  This is still part of my prep work.

Wish me luck.

GTD and Toodledo 30-day project

April - GTD and Toodledo #1: Setting up the project

Setting up the project is both required for success and dangerous.  It's required for success for obvious reasons - it's dangerous because of my tendency to focus too much on the process and technical elements than simply 'doing the work'.  So I'll need to monitor myself and not spend too much time on setup.

Here's how I'm taking on the project:
I'm already familiar with Getting Things Done (GTD): The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.
I'm already a pro subscriber at Toodledo.com

Knowing the GTD system, and knowing my affinity for technology and habits of spontaneous ideas, I need the mobile capture mechanism to work and it's not set up.  This is a system that lets me add an item to my to do queue via SMS.  This will help me keep track of things without multiple pieces of paper, which get lost anyway.  Off to set it up....Done.  Not too hard.

GTD and Toodledo project home page