Tag Archives: Organization

Carving Out What Is Not Needed

  By Travis |
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Here is the prompt from December 11th in the fabulous #reverb10 challenge.  This one comes from Sam Davidson:

11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

Okay, here’s my list -

  1. Shelves full of unread books
  2. Clutter
  3. Illness
  4. Regret
  5. T-shirts I never wear
  6. A broken A/C fan in my car
  7. Stagnant items on my to do list
  8. Yet another draft of my book (Hah!)
  9. An antiquated tracking system for the students at my dojo
  10. Frequent migraines
  11. Mindless Spite

Whew!  That was a tough list to come up with.  Looking at it I get very excited about having those things out of my life.  How would I go about eliminating them?

For the books I would like to spend more time actually reading them.  There are a whole lot though on my shelves that fall into the broad, “would be good to read someday” category.  Those I should put onto a list (I already have an app on my iPhone for doing just that) and getting rid of them in the meantime.  I can always visit the library…

Clutter is a constant battle for me.  I am a pack-rat by nature.  Luckily for me I am also mostly an organized mess type of person.  I know what piles contain what scraps of information.  Still, after having read a book or two, and a few dozen blog posts on the subject I recognize the drain on my energy these piles cause.  I need to carve out time to carry through with the plan I have had for a while: drag out all the piles and sort through them, filing actually important information and trashing the rest.  I could also scan in any old documents I might need some day and shred and recycle the paper.

For the last few years I have been caught in a cycle of persistent illness.  I suspect that the cause is systemic and I have an appointment with my doctor to explore some possibilities.  I need to keep my eye on the prize and keep up with testing until the question is resolved.

Regret.  That is a big one.  I don’t tend to have many major regrets, but the few big ones and the plethora of small ones really stick in my craw.  The truth is that the past is no more.  In my opinion being rid of regret is a dual process of both accepting, and moving on from past miss-steps as well as developing a watchful eye on myself and my actions to lower the chance of the formation of future regrets.  Reportedly one of Miyomoto Musahsi’s epiphanies was when he wrote the admonition in his journal to do nothing he would then regret.  He knew that the level of vigilance needed to live such a life was nearly superhuman, but that such a life would be well worth living.  I happen to agree.

T-Shirts!!! I have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many.  Here’s an idea: Keep a separate shelf of the ones that come back from the laundry for two weeks and then dump the rest.  That would leave me with a maximum of 14 t-shirts.  More than enough!

A broken A/C fan in my car.  For the past year the fan settings on my car have steadily stopped working.  It now only works on 4, the maximum setting.  I drive in a wind tunnel.  The solution here is simple – take it to the shop!

Stagnant to do items. Another biggie for me!  The solution is simple enough; I need to drill in and actually get the existing items done and be better about saying no when my plate is full.

Yet another draft of my book. I’m up to 3 so far…. Aieee!  The easy answer is – finish it.  I have recently re-acquired a friend who is very enthusiastic about the work and has volunteered to be a proof-reader, editor and transcriptionist.  So cool!  I hope that will do the trick!

An antiquated tracking system for the students at my dojo. I manage the dojo I attend, Suginami Aikikai SF.  It’s a great place to train!  One of the issues we have been grappling with is the old system we have cobbled together to track our students.  It works, but it produces a lot of work that could be automated.  This year we have begun the process of transferring to a new system that our sister dojo in Seattle uses.  Exciting stuff.  All that needs doing is the doing.  That is going along fairly well, with some lag due to the season.  Still, it’s coming together!

Frequent migraines. I have been afflicted with migraines since I was 6. I am told that I am very lucky that they only recently gotten much worse and much more frequent.  I used to get them once or twice a year.  Now it’s about four times a month.  I am running through various treatments, so far not much has helped except for Migra-profen, an herbal remedy which abates a good chunk of the pain.

Mindless Spite.  ‘Nuff said.  ;)

Hmmm, how would getting rid of those 11 things effect my life?

Well, in a nuthsell it would be -

Frickin’ Awesome!!!!

Hiveminder – A Great Oranizational Tool

  By Travis |
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Lately I have re-dug into my (seemingly) eternal quest to be more organized, and keep myself on track for my various personal projects and goals.  Years ago I came across David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and had some level of success incorporating the principle of the GTD system into my life.  My “devotion” to the system (read: consistent use) waked and waned fairly chaotically.  The issue was finding a good online solution that answered my needs.  One of the core principles of GTD is keeping your next-actions and ticklers (GTDese for to-dos and reminders) in a place you can trust.

A couple of months back I came across Hiveminder.  It seems to be doing the trick quite nicely.

First, it’s free.  Hard to beat that.  There is a pro account upgrade for $30 a year, but the features offered are more geared to group management endeavors.  That’s something I do not currently need.  If in the future I get a group blog running, or something like that, I may explore the pro account as a task/project management system.  For now though, the freebie level is more than enough.

Second, along with functionality to support the GTD system, it also has some of the points I love about the Bit Literacy school of thought by Mark Hurst. Namely, Hiveminder incorporates the idea of hiding tasks from view until a later date so that you get the task out of your head until it’s time to take action on it.

Hiveminder also incorporates a very painless review process.  Clicking the “task review” button takes you to a cheery page which reads:

Buckle up, because you’re about to head into the “Review” process.

We’re going to show you every task in this list. All 15 of them. We’ll start with the newest stuff – things you haven’t even looked at yet – then we’ll go through everything that’s due soon or that you haven’t looked at in a while. To make sure things get done, we’re going to give you very few options:

  • Comment on the task
  • Say you’re already done
  • Say you want somebody else to do it (and pick [on] them).
  • Say you’ll do it today
  • Ask not to see it until Saturday, until Monday, or for a month.

Once you start the review, it’s a bit like a broken VCR – you can’t stop, fast-forward, or rewind. You have to work through the review, one task at a time, until you’re done. When you’re done though, the pain stops, and you’re that much closer to being an effective human bee-ing.

This process goes fairly quickly, and painlessly.  Like it says, there’s no turning back.   Once done you will have a much shorter list of just the things you would like to do today.

Hiveminder also handles projects and next actions brilliantly.  In GTD the idea is to take a look at any outstanding to-do item, or project, and see what the next possible action you could do is to advance the item.  In the case of a single to-do the next action may be the completion.  In the case of a project the next action will likely lead to another next action.

For me this was one of the sticking points when I originally learned the GTD methodology.  It was simple enough to determine what the next action for something might be, but I sort of felt that I had to know what all the “next” actions were going to be before diving in.  Hiveminder handles that silly assumption for me.  I can create a task which is a project completion, like “Publish book X.”  Then I open up the edit screen for that item and at the bottom is a handy “but first…” section.  I pop the next action in there (say, “Write an outline”) and the dependent item (“Publish book X”) is hidden from view until I complete the next action.  When the project action (“Publish book X”) reappears I can go back in and add another dependent next action.  I can also start in the middle of a project with an action.  Then I can add a “but first..” item and a “and then…” item to start creating an easy to manage logical thread of steps.  This particular aspect is pretty much the single reason for me take a look back at GTD.

Hiveminder also has all the bells and whistles of current hot to-do managers out there.  You can email in tasks, and you can prep a variety of different email addresses with filters for incoming actions.  You can set tags for project specific (or for GTD context specific) tasks.  You can also set “hide until” dates, as well as a host of other functions.

Hiveminder’s primary thrust though is managing groups engaged jointly in a project.  As I mentioned previously I don’t have much use for that at the moment.  But, if anyone reading this has given that side of Hiveminder a try I would love to hear about it in the comment section.

To wrap up: I heartedly recommend Hiveminder as a task/project management tool.

Cheers!

(And, now I can mark that to do off. ;) )