Tag Archives: life management

The Chandler project, Getting things done (GTD), efficient code in the PC and in your life

I started using the Chandler Project a while back and I really liked it. It gives you tickler alarms for things you need to do plus a space for notes. So instead of a calendar where once the date is past, the event is gone, it’s a recurring reminder. It’s like a Jack Russel Terrrier, always jumping around and wanting attention. And every little thing can get recorded in its entries so when the reminder goes off, the appropriate info is at your fingertips. It’s based around the GTD model, which sounded interesting.

Alas, the software is still too slow for me. It’s open source and free, so I can’t complain. And the design is slick, so I hope they continue to refine it. But I can’t wait 8 seconds between when I click and when it responds. I could rifle through a paper cabinet in that amount of time. If you have a fast machine, it’s worth checking out.
But it did get me interested in the GTD mentality. That seemed interesting. I have not read the books yet, but they seem to me to be pretty common sense. There’s a lot there about how to ‘climb the ladder’ efficiently, but I’m not sure it goes as deeply into making sure that the ladder is against the right wall .
Here are a couple of the take-home usefuls from my experience with chandler:
1. Make a home for all tasks and make it a habit to put stuff in there. Be it an inbox, a moleskine notebook, a hipster or a PDA, there needs to be a central trusted place where tasks go. If you are spending mental cycles keeping track of what is going on tomorrow, next week, and this year, you can’t be fully involved in the task at hand. Call this the “bucket”.
2. Weekly, but not much more frequently than weekly, go through and decide what the priorities and goals of the next little while should be about. Don’t waste time on thing that are just urgent, make sure that they are also important. Consider the big picture. Go through the incubator.
3. Make a routine of de-cluttering your bucket. Whenever you hit a lull, (i.e. after a meeting, after a class, whatever) go through the bucket. Delegate those you can delegate. Perform the 2-min tasks that are important. Delete things that are not important. Schedule the important things that have a particular day/time into some device that will beep at you when it’s time. Finally, collapse all projects (open loops) into one, immediate, manageable task (plus a note to determine the next one after that). If there are other things concerning that project that are not next but need to be noted, file them with the rest of the notes on that task. If there’s something long-term that is not a task, file it in an incubator file. Everything that is not a next task on some open loop (project) should be gone. That’s brainspace you don’t need to be taking up.
4. Go to the top of the bucket again. Do that thing.

5. Repeat
Sometimes you won’t feel like doing that thing. We’ll address that tomorrow.
-Peter

jerks, leadership, and the consequences of living, or relationships and trust – Part 2

Continued from Personal interactions, management, relationships and trust – Part 1

“Do you know what makes people decent?Fear.”It’s a line from a speech in Dogma, that Kevin Smith movie that inspired protests from lots of religious people who didn’t watch it.The point of the speech is that people only behave well when they are afraid of the consequences of behaving poorly.I wrote a post a while back on the ways that people can motivate other people, and fear underlies all of them.

I had an experience today that made me think that some people have been privileged in their interactions with other people.They have always been given the benefit of the doubt.They have always been treated fairly.So when something annoys them, they have no fear of the consequences of speaking up.Because they don’t know that there could be consequences.

I am absolutely aware that any request I make, no matter how innocuous, has an impact on the relationship.If I am annoyed at something and I ask for it to stop, I have implied that I find someone annoying.That will have consequences.Maybe they will be consequences that I will see, or maybe they won’t be visible, but they are out there. No way around it.

Take this example.The neighbor comes up to the door and says, ‘would you turn your music down?’

The normal person gets a little annoyed.It’s his own radio his own apartment, he should be able to do what he wants… and it is embarrassing to realize that he has intruded on someone else’s space.He wants to keep the peace, though, so he mutters something about not realizing it was so loud or something and he turns it down.

What does the jerk do in the same circumstance?He pitches a fit like a whiny child.And many a time, he will get what he wants.What he wants is to live uninterrupted.And the neighbor goes home, fumes, but doesn’t want to get in a fight, so he puts up with the loud music.And the jerk’s life is uninterrupted without any visual consequences. But this relationship is going downhill.This is not going to become a friendship.

I’ll admit that I find myself really tempted to give the jerk something to fear: a visible consequence.The only reason he acts this way is because it has never blown up in his face. He wants to live life uninterrupted, but he doesn’t deserve it.He’s not entitled to it.Maybe a painful interruption would be good for him.But that’s not high level interaction.Sure, maybe his behavior would improve if he ran into someone who was as big a jerk as he was.Maybe if someone really hurt him for not being polite, he would think twice about being impolite from then on.But probably not, and I don’t want to be the jerk whose job it is to find out.

-Peter

Personal interactions, management, relationships and trust – Part 1

On personal leverage:

Low-level personal interactions come down to leverage. We can get into high-level personal interactions some other time; suffice it to say that they are a function of trust.Frankly, most inter-personal relations that I see are low-trust affairs. These are not bad people, and they don’t (apparently) have a dysfunctional relationship.But there is very little trust being exhibited.So they fall back on leverage.

Leverage 1: Money.This one is widely used in the workplace, home-life and most everywhere else.It can be generalized to other commodities, like sex or a place to live.The whole idea is this:”you want something that I have, and you will only get that thing if your behavior conforms to my expectations.”

Leverage 2: Being a Jerk: Another widely used leverage point at work and at home, people will motivate other people to change their behavior by treating them poorly.”If your behavior is not what I want, I will behave toward you in a threatening and cruel way.”

Leverage 3: Violence: Although not so common in functional relationships, perhaps the oldest way to get people to do what you want is to hurt them physically. It’s what people use when there is very limited communication or extremely low trust, as between warring clans of cavemen or with small children with limited understanding.”If you don’t stop that, I will spank you,” or between so-called adults, “If you don’t think this song is the greatest song ever, I will fight you.” (Ron Burgundy)

Whole books have been written about how to avoid people who use the “Being a Jerk” mode of leverage, like The No Asshole Rule. But avoidance is not the best strategy.Violence is right out.Money is the common denominator, but it’s still a weak way to deal with people.The big upshot: there is a better way.It’s about investing in relationships, not about other peoples’ behavior.

-Peter