Quicker Life Reboots

Posted on September 15, 2010 by
Categories: Productivity,Simplification,Techniques

I am taking a week off to recharge my batteries. Enjoy some updated posts from the archives!

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Photo by wwarby

We all know that there are times when we have to restart our computers. We may add or remove software. Or we may reboot because performance has degraded due to memory fragmentation or overload.

This can also apply in life. Adding or changing software that requires a reboot is analogous to adding a project to my projects list. I have to sit down, rearrange the rest of my life, see if there is anything that can be dropped as a result of this project.

Sometimes my new projects are expansions on old ones, or follow from an “investigative” type of project. For example, I had a project where I was going paint my office. This completed, I realized I needed to do more work in there, namely getting something on the windows. So the new project became “Make window treatment for office.”

Another example is the project of deciding what to do about a broken piece of household equipment. The possible results: repair, replace, or do without. Both of the first two options will require a new project. In order to “reboot” this, I close out the old project, and add a new one.

In the case where things are not performing as well as they could be: bad performance on my part is usually caused by either becoming fixated on one projected (software hanging) or too much going on at once (memory overload/fragmentation). A reboot is analogous to sitting down and getting my tracking system back in order.

Fragmentation is usually caused by me putting the things I think I should be able to accomplish at the moment on the list; experience proves that I am not a good judge of how much I can actually accomplish, and I also get paralyzed if I don’t think I’m accomplishing enough.

When I do have to reboot my projects, these are the things that I do to make it go quicker:

  • I make sure I am doing as few things as I can at once. Like a computer, the less my brain has to shut down in memory, the faster this is going to go.
  • I have a complete list of the “threads” in my memory. I make sure I capture everything and get it into my system. This saves me the time of having to do an emergency mind sweep. I still do a mind sweep once or twice a week, but I find I am less likely to forget things if I’m not under pressure to get it down and get moving on my projects again.
  • I try to make sure my life is defragmented as possible. This means stuff is where I can find it; my desk is orderly and neat; I know where my project list and next actions are.

I have found that if I do the things above in both my computer and my life, I have much better performance.

Photo by wwarby

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