Arise, NecroThread ...
(What DOES Cthulhu's Action List look like?
"11am. Devour soul. 12 noon. Support a politician hehe.)
uh ...
"And now for your monthly meta-humor..."
It's been a weird chunk of time for me, and surprisingly for me, the start of this thread heralds better days I plan to get back to!
The early comments have some nice discussions about whether you have to be quite as brutally detailed, or if sometimes a little flex is more.
But this whole theme just crossed my mind again! And then look at the time passing!
Coincidences to note:
- Anyone else's life changed dramatically in a year and a half?
- Mouser is now beginning his long-pondered overhaul of DC!
As a nod to a later book David Allen did, he talks about "Altitudes of Vision". Mouser is in one of the higher ones this month ...
Uh oh... Hehe - We just got a Task Item: "Making It All Work" and ask him whether the 30k feet, 40k feet up, or 50k feet up descriptions in the book feel like the mood he is in this month!)
Meanwhile down at the "when you're exhausted, just do something that takes about thirteen seconds to do" level, I just realized a colossal Homer D'oh moment:
Problem: The usual scattered stickies of the first part of my three part system. The problem was, the second part was missing. So they just sit there. Near mistake - making the 99-cent version of the second stage on printer paper ... and realized ...
"You Twerp! You already had this part planned. It's those Staples grid calendars, *and* you even bought a couple to use as the *calendar* half of the system (with two choices to play with to avoid the "bah I hate my first choice so I quit effect!). But you never saw that, because you they got jammed under your files and became Inefficient. (Said in 7-of-9's voice from Star Trek Voyager!)."
So then my big wall clock broke (a little) so I moved it for a while ... and BOOM! They are heavy enough to stand up against the wall of my main desk.
Exhausted-Task time: 13 seconds.
Saved disastrously Inefficient time: ... cumulatively, weeks!?
The original inspiration - On the big one, the boxes are very close to a 4x4 sticky. That you can't lose! (Or get crushed at level 2 when you need any more than four pieces of info.)
But the "Trick" behind it is ...You can go Vertically / Horozontally / (pick one, not both), like a mini spreadsheet, to group the small categories together.
And for those Projects, you use an entire whole page, now giving you some 4-7 subcategories, then you make your detail notes in the column or row.
My best results are definitely mid-way. I don't plan on doing his full power system to the letter. But for a long time my desk has been in a state of "Make sticky note. Make another note, stacked on top of the first one, canted at odd angles so you can almost tell which note is which."
So stay tuned for a few updates!