It is easy to fall into a “consumption” mode of life, where most if not all free time is spent taking in news and information about things, but not producing anything with that news/information, or not producing anything at all. Similarly, it is easier to comment on the current state of affairs in the world than it is to take action to make something happen. It is easier to complain about your job, or neighbors, or other people or events, than to make some change (get a different job, find new friends, move).
To me it comes down to three things: (1) what do you want?, (2) what do you need to do to get what you want?, and (3) what are you doing about it? I have problems with the first one, for sure. Trying to make a decision about what to do with my free time, or what thing I want to change in my life, can be a difficult process – there are so many choices, and only so much time. If I do not decide what I want, I can’t move on to items 2 and 3.
Here is an excerpt from a post by Gary North (paywalled), writing on “What Do You Really Want to Achieve?”:
Here are the three inescapable questions: (1)What do I want to achieve? (2) How soon do I want to achieve it? (3) What am I willing to pay (do without)?
When you have this on paper, you are ready to develop a plan to achieve this. This plan must have time markers: quarterly, yearly, five years. It must have specific intermediate goals that will let you measure your progress.
This is psychologically difficult to do. Most people will not do it. Those few who do will not follow through with self-evaluations on time, which involve plan revisions. So, time dribbles away. Progress is catch-as-catch-can.
Finally, this post breaks down this method of making progress (even though it focuses on screenwriting, the advice is sound for any endeavor):
“A dream written down with a date becomes a GOAL. A goal broken down into steps becomes a PLAN. A plan backed by ACTION makes your dreams come true.”
In “The Art Of War”, author Steven Pressfield talks about the concept of “resistance” as it relates to creative work, that writers/creators struggle to create and have to overcome obstacles (mostly self-induced) to create. I had the experience recently to have to learn how to use a tool for work, and to figure out some tool feature for personal use. In the work instance, I delayed installing the tool, because I knew it was take a significant effort to get up to speed. When I did try to install it, the installation failed, so I had to find an open source alternative. Then, I had to learn the quirks of the open source tool before I could use it effectively, which was a significant effort.
In the personal tool issue, I had three browser tabs with tutorials/examples waiting for weeks for me to look at it, but I didn’t. I just knew that reviewing those was not going to be enough, and that it would take several hours to get the understanding of the tool feature. I finally had some free time to invest in this tool over the weekend, and – sure enough – it took several hours of reading, searching, and running examples to get a basic understanding of the tool feature – ugh!
In these examples, I resisted getting started because I felt I would have to make a significant investment of time and effort. That feeling was proved out both times. For work, I eventually had to get that task done, so I had to work on understanding the tool. For personal use, I waited until I had the time and motivation to press forward with figuring out the tool feature. I guess I should have looked back at one of my previous posts to see that a way to make progress is to figure out a first step and then take it. I hope writing this down will help me in the future, and will help my readers as well.
I have done a lot of reading on incorporating the “Getting Things Done” workflow/system (GTD) into my life using Org Mode in Emacs as the tool of choice. However, I have had some resistance in trying to follow the method. I don’t know if it is stubbornness, or laziness, or unwillingness to get started, or a combination of all three. However, I have been using Org Mode as a tool to replace my kanban board that I was using before the pandemic, and the system I have put together has been helping me to get things done, so I think it is worth passing on to others.
For people not familiar with Org Mode within the Emacs text editor, one of its features is an outliner. It supports having multiple levels of outlines and ability to easily move outline elements. Another feature is support for managing to-do lists, including color-coded keywords for TODO and DONE. With these two features of Org Mode, I have been able to keep an electronic worklog since March 2020 (I was using a spiral notebook before for this task), and manage my task list electronically instead of using a kanban board with sticky notes.
To better describe the system, here is a screenshot of part of my day log outline and my task list:
There are two outlines shown here, which I call Log and Tasks. This is my personal file, but my work file is similar. The Log outline is organized by year, then month, then day. In the above view, I am showing the full outline of entries for December 2021, but have the entries for the previous months collapsed. Different levels of the outline are displayed in different colors, which helps make sub-outline entries more visible. Typically, my day log entries are for individual tasks that I completed. However, there are times when I want to add some additional information, so I add this as a sub-heading of the entry in the log. In this example, I included a link to a YouTube video for one outline item, and also described a next step for the item I completed on another outline item. These additional sub-headings can be collapsed so that they are hidden from view. In Org Mode, if a heading in an outline has three dots/periods at the end of the line, that indicates there are additional sub-headings below that heading.
The second outline is the Tasks outline. When I add a task, I use the TODO keyword, which is displayed in red. When I complete a task, I change the keyword to DONE (displayed in green) using a keystroke. My typical workflow is to begin the day by reviewing DONE items, making sure I added notes for them in the daylog, then deleting the DONE headlines in the outline. Next, I re-order the items based on priority. This represents a combination of the ToDo column and the In Process column of my previous 3-column kanban board (To-Do, In Process, Done). In ordering the items, I try to focus on the top two items in the list (my In-Process items). If something comes up that changes the priority of tasks, I move items in the outline. During the day, I move the DONE items to the top of the list. At the end of the day, I review the items in the Tasks outline to see if I made progress or completed anything else, and add that to the Log outline. In addition, I review the Log outline to see if I captured all of the items I completed during the day, or conversations with co-workers, or anything else of note. Finally, during the day, if I get an email or IM request for some information or to do some task for someone, I try to add it to my Tasks outline as soon as possible and manage it there. In this way, I keep it in one place, and avoid using my email inbox as another place to manage tasks.
The advantages of this method are that it is simple and quick. The disadvantages are that I am not keeping track of tasks within a “project” as defined in GTD. Maybe in 2022 I can make more progress on implementing “all” of GTD….
If you are interested in learning more about Org Mode, I have created a series of screencasts which shows how to install Emacs on Windows, and learning about working with outlines. You can check it out at Org Mode for Beginners (https://orgmodeforbeginners.com/).
This is a good thread if you want to finish things…
We’ve all been here:
1. Get amazing idea
2. Buy sweet new domain
3. Tweet about awesome new project
4. `git init`
5. Um…uh…do some planning?
6. You know what, I’m really busy right now.
8. (Secretly abandons dreams)
TL/DR version: make a short list, break tasks down, prioritize, be gentle with yourself
Full version:
My company has a holiday shutdown at the end of the year, and I usually take enough vacation so I get a two week break – nice! In the past, I have tried to take advantage of this time to do lots of things, but ended up not completing a lot. This year, I decided to change how I approached this opportunity:
Step 1: Make a short list of projects to accomplish
After reviewing the things I might want to do, I settled on two large tasks that I had not made any progress on in the last month. One was a writing project to document the tools and processes I used to create and publish the Portland Protest News website. I had an outline that was several months old, but had not made time to get this done. The second task was starting to read How to Engineer Software by Steve Tockey. I had watched some videos of him talking about the use of semantic modeling, and was intrigued enough to buy his 1100-page book. However, it has been sitting on my desk for almost a month, and I had only opened it once.
Step 2: Break tasks down
For the writing task, I decided to go for a daily word count of 500 words per day, following Jeff Goins’ Three Bucket System for starting a writing habit. For the reading task, I set a goal of one chapter a day. With these constraints, I hoped that I could fit these in around holiday activities and still feel a sense of accomplishment.
Step 3: Prioritize
I worked to try to do these as soon as possible each day. That did not always work, but knowing that these were my most important items to get done helped me to maintain focus.
Step 4: Be gentle with yourself
If there was a day where I did not get both tasks done (or maybe none!), I decided that was going to be ok. After all, this was a vacation, not a job!
Results:
I have completed my first week of vacation, and managed to write at least 500 words each day. I completed 5 chapters in the book, so there were two days I did not complete my reading task. But that’s ok! I feel good about what I have gotten done, and managed to fit in a few more things (like this blog post).
I hope this is helpful – let me know what you think about my method!
I read Josh Bernoff’s post this morning (Simple Motivational Hack), and found it very practical. Step 1 (figure out a worthwhile career goal) can be generalized to be “decide on a goal” (it doesn’t have to be a career goal), which is the start of anything productive. His next steps (create some intermediate steps, set up reminders, think about your goal often, do a reset if needed) are also excellent, but Step 1 has to happen before you can move on the other steps.
I am also finishing reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, and have used two of the concepts from the book this week on starting a new habit. The first concept I used is “make it easy as possible to start”. I chose to write 100 words per day, and decided to do it in the form of blog posts. The second concept is to set up a reward after achieving the goal. Usually, there is a website or two that I read at lunchtime. I decided to make sure to accomplish my goal before I look at the websites. So far, I have been successful (today is day 3)!
