Handling worries: keep a list, schedule them, and have a worry place

I'm always delighted when multiple inputs in my life converge on a single idea, book, or solution. Yesterday this happened with two books I'm reading, which both talked about the problem of incessant worrying (something I'm susceptible to). The books are The Worrywart's Companion: Twenty-One Ways to Soothe Yourself and Worry Smart and Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. They both recommend managing worry using three ideas:

• keep a worry list,
  
• schedule worry time, and
  
• have a worry place

(The last idea comes just from the first book.) Here's how Learned Optimism describes keeping the list:

[...]write the troublesome thoughts down the moment they occur. The combination of jotting them down - which acts to ventilate them and dispose of them - and setting a later time to think about them works well; it takes advantage of the reason ruminations exist - to remind you of themselves - and so undercuts them. If you write them down and set a time to think about them, they no longer have any purpose, and purposelessness lessens their strength.

(Rumination is the process of obsessive analysis - contemplating a problem, mulling it over and over, trying to analyze it, determine its source, etc.) Learned Optimism also describes why a list works, and why it's a good idea to explicitly schedule dealing with the worry:

You can undercut ruminations by taking advantage of their very nature. Their nature is to circle around in your mind, so that you will not forget them, so that you will act on them. When adversity strikes, schedule some time - later - for thinking things over ... say, this evening at six P.M. Now, when something disturbing happens and you find the thoughts hard to stop, you can say to yourself, "Stop. I'll think this over later ... at [such and such a time'."

The final idea of having a special worry place comes from The Worrywart's Companion. Here are the author's points in setting up a time and place to worry:

• set a time
  
• do nothing else
  
• reduce disturbance
  
• be a little uncomfortable
  
• make it accessible
  
• always worry when in your worry place
  
• keep a worry list
  
• go to your worry place when a worry comes on
  
• instruct yourself - "This is a nonproductive worry. I'll write this on my list for worry time. Right now I will use my time to get something else done."
  
• pat yourself on the back often
  
• do something pleasant after worry time

The ideas of keeping a list of worries and dealing with them appropriately tie in nicely to the ideas and mechanics of David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology (the discipline I use to keep my life sane). Here's the summary from Matt Vance's book notes:

1. keep everything out of your head
   
2. decide actions and outcomes when things first emerge on your radar, instead of later
   
3. regularly review and update the complete inventory of open loops of your life and work

Specifically, writing down worries as soon as they appear gets them out of my head, and helps keep them from reacquiring my attention until the time/energy/place is more appropriate. Second, Allen's tools help me deal with the worries - asking what each one is (is it valid?), if it's actionable, etc. Finally, I look at managing the worry list as a kind of continuous on-demand mind sweep.

Blog subscribers, Bloglines, and geographical locations

I use Bloglines for my feed reading for the usual server-based reasons (multi-platform, no need to sync, etc.) and for a lark I thought I'd check out Ideamatt subscribers. One aspect of the results that was interesting was that some people include their weather in their subscriptions. (Bloglines provides this as a special feed.) Here are those that had a Bloglines weather subscription, and the place:

• Cambridge, England
  
• Pasco, WA
  
• Milton Keynes, England
  
• Eindhoven, Netherlands
  
• London, England
  
• Amherst, MA

I thought this was pretty cool because it provides some personalization (in addition to the feeds they subscribe to, of course). What I'd like to see from sites like Blogger and Bloglines is a push-pin map showing locations (e.g., who's blogging from where). The visualizations could be ala Tufte (e.g., scale states based on number of bloggers), and could include a zoom feature like the ultra cool zipcode applet. Of course after a little digging I found some sites that combine blogging and geographical location (listed below), but I'd love to hear from someone actively thinking this.

Related:

• Geominder
  
• Geobloggers
  
• Where's George?
  
• Buzztracker

Dealing with multiple/dependent next actions in GTD

Over at Notes from a messy desk, Graeme Mathieson brings up some good issues with dependent next actions in David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology. He says

... I can't really show dependencies effectively. ... So obviously it makes sense to write down all the tasks you can think of associated with a particular project. And to me, it makes sense to write them out on a todo list.

Here are a few of my thoughts about this:

• List your action plan in the project's folder, if necessary. Allen says many projects need only basic "napkin" planning, but some (like a wedding) need more detailed thinking to be successful.
  
• Add one or more concrete actions to your next actions list(s). If your project has multiple next actions that can be done in parallel, and you have the energy for them, put as many as you want on your lists. However, the minimum is one, in order to move the project forward.
  
• Don't worry too much about dependencies. Oftentimes it's best to only write next actions that you can do now, instead of planning out too far; you'll deal with the dependent ones when the time comes. Also, your plans may change by the time you get to the dependent actions (you might have new information, you might have changed the definition of the successful outcome, etc.)
  
• You will be thinking about your project a minimum of once per week during your weekly review, so you'll have a chance to think about dependent tasks then.
  
• Checking off precursors to dependent tasks may well trigger you to add a new one at that time.
  
• You can use a system such as Pig Pod to indicate next next action. It's also talked about at the davidco forums: Pocket PC - any tips for applying GTD?.

I'd love to hear other ideas about this.

Update: I certainly should have also mentioned
the excellent post Cascading Next Actions by Mark Wieczorek.

Surprise: David Allen's folders look just like the rest of ours

Earlier this month I attended David Allen's GTD | RoadMap seminar (in Boston) and I wanted to pass on a minor observation that was surprisingly pleasing. As Allen was talking about filing, he waved around some of his own folders, and I have to say I got a small thrill when I noticed that mine look just like his. Same generic manila folders, a few somewhat worn (I was sitting in the front), and the same black-on-white labeler-produced labels. I don't know, but I guess I had thought he was using something like gold-embossed labels on custom silk folders. In addition, it looked like he uses colored ones for "special" (non-project) folders, such as Read/Review. (I had identified a similar need, but was highlighting the labels to identify them.)

These are minor points, but it really was nice to get some reinforcement, esp. for those of us tackling the methodology on our own. Ha!

12 Wild Things people are visualizing, in addition to "Success"

As a follow-up to my article Top 10 things people are Getting, in addition to "Things Done", I present for your (somewhat bawdry) entertainment: 12 wild things people are visualizing, in addition to success (according to google):

1. type and mutant hemoglobin proteins
   
2. success (OK, I included anyway, despite the title)
   
3. shapes
   
4. Saracenic tribes adorned in flowing colored togas
   
5. bastards
   
6. sexual fantasies
   
7. gesticulations
   
8. geometry of invariant sets
   
9. urban adventure
   
10. rush of kayaking off a 100-foot waterfall
    
11. beaver
    
12. sensations of the rainforest
    
13. beauty of the rainforest

Again, apologies to The Onion, Timothy McSweeney, and David Allen.