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These last few weeks have been nutty as I implement my workship plans (see
Testing The Classics: A Time Management Experiment: Time Blocking), so I'm going to cheat and share some quick bits I've been collecting on Twitter. Comments?
- Should every performance be an experiment? It depends. If you are beta-testing new ideas, then yes, experimentation is important. It's also risky. However, for mature performances, less experimentation makes sense. But with minimal experimentation comes complacency.
- Want more time, more money, & less stress? Cancel Netflix. Why less stress? Mostly it's the burden of "I've bought it I have to use it." (Question: What's the economic term for this?) I also found myself frequently searching for instant selections that looked appealing. I ended up lowering my standards a lot to match what I found.
- Time management tips from 2nd grade girls softball: a) 2x2: Swings hard vs. Connects. Depends on success rate. Either wasteful or amazing. b) Waits until last minute then swings fast: No planning, pure reaction. OK if intentional and tactical. Terrible if strategic and avoidable.
- Twitter navel-gazing: More than anything else, Twitter's value is as an excuse to make conversations.
- Good Enough is hard to swallow. Good Enough is medicine for perfectionism. It's a reverse application of Parkinson's law. But man it's tough to let go of wanting it just right.
- Uncertainty is a function of experience.
- The unknowns always happen at the end of projects, not at the start. To protect against this, constantly test, and keep your iterations tight. (Credit to my TTL collaborator Liza.)
- Honest but bad: Actual response from submitting a request to a city library: "Our response may be fairly rapid or it may take us many weeks or months to respond." While they're trying to help, this isn't specific enough to matter. Basically it means "Don't depend on anything from us," i.e., they might be a black hole. I'll phone them instead.
- Divergent and convergent phases have their own energy. Continuing the diverge/converge cycles idea, divergence courts discovery, while convergence witnesses birth. Where are you in your projects now?
- Every warning sign has an interesting story. Don't feed the animals. Bridges freeze before roads. Patient loading and unloading zone.
- Before jumping into a response, ask yourself, "How big a deal do I want to make of this?" Some things simply aren't worth it.
- Did you work two days straight on one project? Why was that necessary?
- Amount of time I spend in my outliner: 45%? In browser: 45%? You?
- How do you know what you did actually WORKED? Or didn't. Did you measure it?
- Certainty is dangerous. (Ask Robert Burton). However, does faith = certainty?
- The more audacious your goal, the more painful the process. You buy it?
- Resist the urge to start over completely from scratch (2nd system syndrome). Most often it's better to evolve current version. Agree?
- A reader asks if it's possible to eliminate keeping a master projects list. Well, yes, but it's essentially cheating: Keep a single actions list, but group them under projects (or "None"). This is merging the two, but it's a list trick - you're still maintaining two levels. (See Extreme GTD: How low can you go).
- Don't be discouraged if you wind up at the same place again. You are not the same person as before; you know something new.
- Relationships are projects. Not all, though.
- Relationships are experiments. ""
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