Raw

Not for the first time, recently I've been having trouble Getting Stuff Done. In the past I've tried various strategies along with lots of little bits of software that are meant to help. It's never been particularly successful. But pretty much all those techniques have involved starting with the strategy and applying it to your own needs. This time around I thought I'd try going the other way. Start with what I want to do, try and identify the problems I have, develop a strategy from there.

The stuff I want to do generally falls into three categories: what I call work-work, i.e. the stuff that pays the bills; personal projects, which includes things like coding, woodcarving and doing music stuff; chores - a wide range of things from washing up to gardening. I am still in the process of renovating a house, and jobs that need doing there are mostly good fun once I get into them. But I've put them in the chores category because they are things I feel I must do (unlike personal projects), but without any great urgency (unlike work-work).

I can sum up the problem I have with each category pretty easily:

• work-work : procrastination
• chores : laziness
• personal projects : distraction

47 years of assorted neuroses mean whatever psychology is behind these is anyone's guess, but I'm pretty sure each of them them can be in either a vicious or virtuous cycle. If I can bump a little from the former to the latter then winning (as Charlie Sheen would say). So how can I deal with this strategically? Here's what I came up with.

work-work : the one thing I can't let slip (although still manage to), so that has to be my default activity before I think about anything else. But if I've got other stuff to look forward to (and off my mind) and am making reasonable progress with things, it should be easier to get down to it. Just have to make sure I get started in the morning...

chores : I reckon a lot of the problem I have with these is that there's always so much to do, so I feel swamped and stressed about them, only finding relief by putting my feet up in front of the tv, ideally with a bottle of wine. So for this category I've decided to take a leaf out the GTD book - write stuff down and forget it until scheduled. I've got two whiteboards, the one on the left with a list of things I need to get done in the next week or so, the one on the right things to do today. I would guess the tasks probably average to a couple of hours each, some much shorter (e.g. bins, ~10mins) some much longer (e.g. making windows, ~20hrs). With these kinds of things it tends to be the case that once started, there's a tendency to keep going until next meal time. Whatever, if I can do at least half an hour done of each, I'll call that a success for the day. To give me a sense of progress I'll just cross things off as I get them done, only wiping them from the board when space is needed.

personal projects : this is a tricky category, for an unlikely reason. I reckon I probably spend about the right amount of time on these things. Problem is that it's very unfocused and I'm always ready to go off on a tangent on a whim. As well as hopping from project to project I'm always coming up with new ones, long before existing ones get finished. Big trail behind me. With things like woodcarving I don't think I'm too far from where I want to be (I may try the following strategy there as well). But with programming and the like, it's pathological. Fortunately there is usually a lot of common ground to software projects I play with, typically the Web and RDF-related stuff. Often work on one thing will help with another. So I've picked the 6 main projects I've got on the go and numbered them on a sheet of paper. Actually 'project areas' would be more accurate, with most of them there's loads of wiggle room within the same umbrella (not sure if that's mixing metaphors, certainly sounds kinky :)

Now when I feel it's time for a session on a coding project I'll roll the dice, consult the list and concentrate on that project until the next big natural break. Chances are there'll be a change at the next roll of the dice, I'm hoping that'll be enough to stop me project-hopping.

Anyhow, I'll give this a few weeks, see how it goes.

Incidentally I've had a Semantic Web-oriented project management tool on my todo list for years now. I've pushed that back on the big hidden stack for now, with a Personal Knowledgebase being the first goal. Given a decent one of those, personal project management stuff should be a smooth extension. If by then I still need it...

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