Harnessing my Momentum
Posted by Qrystal on October 2, 2007 at 11:02.
Category: Tools. Tags: productivity, task-management.
I did something yesterday I’ve been gearing myself towards for quite some time: I went to campus to do work. I’ve known that working from home doesn’t always work, but trying to drag myself out of the house doesn’t always work either. So yesterday, I actually hitched a ride with my husband and got to campus before 07:00.
I also managed to have a very productive day. Coincidence? Unlikely. But I still can’t convince myself that I have to go to campus every day. In fact, I’m home right now, and it’s almost 10:30, and I haven’t done any “work” work yet. But I’m on my second load of laundry, I’ve tackled a few household chores that have been bugging me in their undone state, and I’ve found a rye bread recipe that puts an end to my search (for now). Currently, I’ve got a timer ticking away the 15 minutes that I set for myself to write this blog entry, and I keep finding myself inspired by the title I chose. Looking good!
I’ve had some thoughts today about my task management system, and how to get my tasks organized in ThinkingRock (v 2.0?) in such a way that I might actually start using the program to its full advantage. The stumbling block for me has been three criteria that excited me to the point of dumbfoundedness: Energy, Time, and Priority. I don’t know how many hours I spent looking up various Priority systems, and I didn’t like anything that I found. This morning, before turning on the computer, I found myself scribbling some actually-good ideas on paper. AAAHHHH!! WHERE IS IT?! No, no no no …. Did I dream it?! Oh, Oops, I’ve already typed them into ThinkingRock, and then threw out the paper. Good deal (and whew!) Here’s the scheme:
PRIORITY (4 choices, or blank):
it’s DUE > it’s EXPECTED > it’s USEFUL > I WANT it done.
The advantage to this is that there are so few choices, that it should be easy to classify. DUE dates are much stricter than EXPECTED stuff. Expectations can come from professors at school, immediate family, society as a whole, or even just myself wanting to be a responsible person, BUT if the task is something that is motivational in itself, I would classify it as WANTing it done… or if I can justify it as useful, but is neither expected nor motivational, it’s simply categorized as USEFUL. I am trying not to leave any of these blank, and it seems to be working quite well.
TIME (5 choices, or blank):
Eventually < Perpetually < Soon < TODAY < YESTERDAY.
These time choices go hand-in-hand with the priority system. The most interesting use of the two will be in classifying some things as DUE “Perpetually”, which means I am getting constant reminders of them, with very high priority. An example of this Priority/Time combo is my dissertation.. or any other ongoing project that has a very vague deadline. If stuff doesn’t necessarily need to be done even “Eventually”, it can go into the Future Projects section, no big deal. Stuff classified as DUE or EXPECTED or WANT it done Yesterday, is simply so needing to be done that it really should’ve been tackled already. This doesn’t mean I’m going to do it TODAY, but if I can find room for it, I should. Soon means just that: one of these days, I will add it to my TODAY list, and from there it either gets done, or eventually upgraded to “do it Yesterday” status. I am trying not to leave any of these blank.
ENERGY: I may add more to this criterion, but here’s my current idea:
Easy < blank < Complex
There’s a few important points here… Firstly, it’s worth remembering that some tasks are Easy, and can be gotten out of the way quickly. On the other hand, some tasks are making me cringe, because they really should be broken up into smaller bits instead of being overwhelmingly complex. Yet others are marked Complex because they simply shouldn’t be tackled when there’s other stuff (easier, and/or more important) that I should be doing. However, most tasks are fine just hovering in the middleground, and so for now, their status is left blank.
The best part of ThinkingRock is that I can set it up so that I can flip between several different views, organized and filtered in any way I can imagine. This power was lost on me though, when I didn’t have all the criteria figured out for myself!! But now that I’ve got my idea worked out, I’m gonna go ahead and implement it, and see how it helps me figure out what I should be working on next.
EDIT: I’ve now gone through most of my task list, and it does seem like all the above classifications are easy to decide, and I’m comfortable with the choices!! I only had to add ONE category: the USEFUL Priority. All the others were part of the original scribble I made this morning.
Alrighty, let’s turn this momentum into potential energy, and let the potential progress turn into actual progress!
EDIT 2: As of mid-October, I gave up on ThinkingRock. As of mid-December ’07, I’m thinking of going back to it for some things. Aaarrrggghhhh….. :)
EDIT 3: I reconsidered ThinkingRock in February of ’08, and redecided that I really wanted an online system. I kept it installed though, in case I couldn’t find an online system I liked…