run through the sequence

Keeping myself organised

To run through the sequence, will help put my thoughts in context.

I’ve always worked from to-do lists, but found writing a fresh list each day tiresome, as often it was entirely a carry forward of a previous list, but just with new stuff.

On reading Getting Things Done - I worked out a rough list of a dozen projects to record against. These were a mixed bag, from Garden, to Professional Development, and also including my Birthday wishlist. I allocated these projects a page each, and used film tags to provide a usable indexing.

I used a similar system at work.

For both I also used a daily A4 sheet as a shorter term to-do list. Lately I have split this into two columns,
quick stuff and prioritising
longer stuff

Anything not done within a day or two, can be transferred as a task into the proper GTD jotter. The GTD jotter is reviewed each week.

I have been running this system for about a month - does it work?

Well it does work upto a point. The daily to do list works more effectively. The longer term GTD jotter is starting to seem a little old. Stuff is initially entered when it seems like a good idea, obviously a month later, the precise idea might have evolved a bit, so it will be useful to revisit some of the pages. Maybe there is a need for something a step up from a weekly review, where tasks are reviewed more critically, and amended as necessary.

However the main impetus for change is that I am increasingly using Voodoopad on my computer. It is like some Borgesian concept of the ultimate jotter. It allows you to apply a sense of organisation, but also allows freedom and anarchy. I have gradually been putting more and more stuff into Voodoopad.

At present the index on the home page is

. AllAboutMe
. BirthdayWishlist
. BlogS
. BooksRead
. EmergencySurvival
. GTDSoftware
. LifeHack
. MacFormatArticles
. PersonalProductivity
. RandomStuff
. RegistrationCodes
. SelfSortBlog
. Trivia
. Voodoopad
. WebPosts

It is quite sweet that it assumes that you know an html home page is best named index.htm

I always find following a set format restrictive, that is why I prefer working to a more freeform style. A filofax is better than a diary. Voodoopad encourages this.

The ability to store everything to my ipod, also means that I can carry all this stuff about quite easily anyway.

It is easy enough to amend stuff on a computer, simply amend, it is easy to find, no need to rely on film tags, it is always legible.

My preference for using a jotter initially was based on the fact that software did not seem to offer substantial benefits that I could not obtain from using a jotter. A jotter was always physically accessible.

The use of Voodoopad changes this slightly. The software does appear to offer significant benefits, you can easily paste in text, images, links, even put in your own sketches.

The material is accessible from my ipod anytime, albeit not in an editable format.

The major problem is that I need to share a single computer with the rest of my family. Therefore I cannot simply noodle away on the computer entering stuff into voodoopad whenever I want to.

Increasingly the solution would appear to be buying another computer.

I always feel that keeping parallel records going that do exactly the same thing is a recipe for trouble. They always end up out of sync, and then what do you do, waste time trying to figure out which one is right. Much effort, to no useful end. Far easier to develop proper processes, such that you capture all the information in the same place.

I quite like the fact that I am evolving processes that work for me. Once I get things just right, I’ll doubtless lose interest, and it will just slip into the background as one of those things that I do without thinking.