Open Loops 2/10/2009: Articles I Want To Pass On
Posted on February 10, 2009 by LJ
Tuesdays are open loop at SimpleProductivity blog.
Leo Babuta wrote a great article for Dumb Little Man (“7 Simple Time Management Rules For the Super Busy“) where he talks about the basic rules of simple time management. I have implemented all of these in one form or another in the past year, with excellent results. It was great to see them laid out in one place.
In “Clearing the Mind of the Clutter of Unfulfilled Desires“, it talks about getting rid of the outstanding stuff before deciding to do more. That doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to do it all, but you do need to reassess if something needs to be done. Setting out to do something with a clean slate is much easier than if you have a backlog of work hanging over your head. This article talks about the concept of backlogs in terms of an ordering system.
In “Resolve to Spend 5 Minutes a Day“, they talk about a concept of little and often. And it’s true that spending a small amount of time consistently on something is generally going to get you further than if you wait and spend a bunch of time on something “when you have time”.
My problem with this concept is that I then end up with lots of little fragmented tasks. I currently have on my list six things I want to make more time for in my life. I rarely get any of them done, for if I did, that would be over an hour every day that I was working on these “nice-to-do-but-not-essential” items.
Sometimes little chunks of time are not enough. For example, I may want to spend time playing music so that I do it more consistently and maintain my skills. 5 minutes or even 15 minutes is barely enough time to warm up, much less work on new pieces. Other tasks that require setup time are also not candidates for this method: it takes me longer than 5 minutes to get my scrapbooking stuff set up, much less do anything.
Once again, rather than piling up little tasks, I think we need to look at what we want to accomplish, and why.
In “Sometimes it’s Better When You’re a Giant Mess“, it looks at setting goals from both sides. This article hit home with me, because for a long time I had goals that I felt I “should” pursue, rather than the ones I want to pursue. Since my hiatus, I have been considering what I want, and I finally decided that I don’t want to be on top of the programming game anymore. My dream is to be a writer. So I took all the programming certification and new technology tasks off of my list, and felt instantly lighter.
Photo by boyghost
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Comments (1)
Like it, all good reads.