Sandcurves

[Ref:  Image by Windell H. Oskay www.evilmadscientist.com]

I love being organized.  I love little lists that tell me what to do and I guess I get somewhat of a kick out of doing stuff on my little lists.  But, like most people, I guess, I tend to get off track from time to time. 

There are two main ways that I get off track, the first is obvious - when things aren't happening and I'm not inspired I can get lazy and leave my careful organizing behind.  But there is the other side as well.  I easily get tunnel vision when I am working on something exiting. 

My favorite way of going about organizing myself is to read a bunch of books and sort of half do what they say, and concoct my own new system.  So, I thought, just in case you are so board that you are pulling fibers out of your computer speakers with tweezers, you could read what I am doing now. 

When I moved into this house in July I was madly rushing to get see-namibia.com properly off the ground and running enough to start getting a little traffic.  I built this site right along side mainly as a way to just try things out. 

So, for the most part, I did the stuff I needed to to move into the new house, spent time with my wife and kids, and built website/traffic for hours each day.  But I have other things to take care of, and I have the fantastic situation in life that I can do all sorts of things that interest me, as long as I can squeeze them into a bit of my time.

Before moving to this new house I had read Getting Things Done by David Allen.  I could relate to his way of organizing really well. 

I had come across this work because of trying to learn to use Org Mode for Emacs. When you start reading about Org Mode you run across a lot of reference to Getting Things Done (lets call it GTD), and so I thought I would pick up the book. 

Just to bore you a little further, the way that GTD works is that you try to capture all your "Actions" - everything - work, putting out the rubbish, sharpening pencils, buying batteries, getting married - everything.  Once you have captured it, you keep a list of context appropriate lists of next actions, and decided on the fly what is most important.

The idea of "context appropriate" means that when you are in the shop, you should have the list with all the shopping 'actions' - i.e. your shopping list. You want to make sure that you are reminded of what you need to do at the most appropriate place.

The other massive part of the system is a lot of review.  He suggests, and I go with it, to have a Friday review.  I like that because on Friday you have the weeks events fresh in your mind and can organize forward really well. 

Anyway, I planned to have a really big review today, and have sort of been planning it all week.  I wanted to totally re-build my system, and I have already planned how I was going to do it before hand.  Throughout today I have been implementing a lot of this stuff on my computer.  So, this is how I organize myself:

Being on Linux, you can really make your file system do what you want, and so my whole file system is organized according to how I get things done.

I have the normal unix/linux files starting from "/" as the root folder, with "/home/vernon/" as my home folder.  Nothing funny about that.  My computer is called "seena" for See Namibia, of course, and so my command line prompt is: vernon@seena:~$

So, this was my starting point for re-organizing everything.  I basically divide the "vernon" folder into four main areas:

1. res - standing for 'resources' is the file that has PDF files like bird-club newsletters and programming tutorials, all my image files, music files, and anything else like that.  It is my storage area, if you would. 
2. aor - This is the biggest and most important, and it is really this that I have been, and still am, creating.  "aor" stands for "area of responsibility" and I have made zero effort to prioritize it at all.  Anything that I spend time doing, whether for business, for fun or for any other reason.  If I either do, or want to, spend time in some area, it is included.  For me it totals just over 50 things. 
   How I organize that file varies very much, but there is one thing that is consistent all the way through - I have a file within the file called "pr" for "projects" and so I can write a script to sweep through the lot and check things through later. 
   In each of the "pr" folders I have .org files for any project.  A project is basically anything that is going to take more than one step to do.  In each of those .org files I have three sections - 1.  A section describing what has to happen for me to consider this project to be done, 2.  The next action needed to move this thing forward towards completion (this can be as simple as brainstorm the plan) and 3.  A blueprint for what I think the course of action to complete the project is going to be like.  Each of these files is then reviewed each Friday. 
3. A back-up section - for backing up anything including the entire file system.
4. A 'do' file, for my action files.  In the past I had all my 'aor' files mixed in with the 'do' files, but that was too confusing.  Now I have stripped down the do files, and really only have two important ones.  The most important is the 'do.org' file. 
   The do.org file has three sections
   • All my "Actions". These include all the next actions from each project file and any one off things I need to do.  For the one offs, I don't record them anywhere else (well, except for on back-ups).  That way, I only need to look in this one place to know what I need to do at any time. 
   • A Habits section - this isn't really part of the GTD system, but for me it is really important - what do I want to be doing daily, weekly, etc.  I set up reminders of these so that I can make sure that I develop a workflow that becomes more and more effective. 
   • A "When" section, which is basically my calander.  With org mode, I can do really neat things with the calender.  I have two main sections - the actual 'reminders' part - what needs to be done when, and a 'tickler' section which is a set of lots of reminders for all sorts of things.  These include early reminders for birthdays (so that I can buy presents on time) and a reminder of some of my 'someday' things - things that I have decided I am going to do nothing about right now, but would like to do later.  For example, this year I am learning Python, Django and Elisp as well as I can, but I want to learn C and so I have a reminder for the new year to start learning C. Another example is a section I want to add on See Namibia once I have a certain amount of traffic for it to be worthwhile. 

The other sections are for stuff my wife has on my computer, a downloads section (which I don't use - I like to download to the /tmp/ folder) and my Ubuntu One folder, which is basically just a duplicate of my 'do' file.

With Ubuntu One I can go online with my cellphone and see what I need to do, but actually I rarely do that.  I am a little bit of a greenie, and so I try to recycle all my paper.  So, every few days I rip my used A4 papers into 8 pieces and put them in a holder on my desk.  Each day I take one piece of paper and write down anything that I may want to do away from my computer that day, such as shopping, stuff for school, seeing people for tours or even going out birding.  If I go birding, I actually take a little list like that to write down anything of interest I see - I always have a few of those little papers with me. 

When I am out and about, anything that I need to add to my "do.org" file gets added to one of those papers and I just put it into my inbox, which is one of those metal frame magazine holders.  When I have time I empty the inbox and add each item to the 'do.org' file.  Of course, if it is a project, I'll go to my new pr files first and create the project. 

The key to the whole system is to keep EVERYTHING in there.  If you do that, despite the extra effort it takes to 'work the system' it means that you mostly touch everything only once and you know that you are dealing with the thing you need to do most at that time.

One of the key areas for me was to create a system where I could take some of it with me when I go out on tour (or later, when I travel anywhere).  It worked out really nicely on this last tour I went on.  I know that I can't do a bunch of things, but I also know that there is going to be some time where I am waiting around.  Waiting is the perfect time for learning stuff.  I have already been doing this for years - it was one of the reasons why I became somewhat of a good guide.  If I would go to the airport and know that I am going to have half an hour or more waiting for guests to arrive, it was a prefect time to have some animal behavior notes to learn. 

I even plan the arbitrary things.  On this last tour I knew before hand that at the one lodge I wasn't included in the game drives, and so I would have to wait around the lodge.  I took a book to read for that time and also various small things to work on, but I also said "spend three or four hours just playing with my camera, and ended up with lots of pictures that may be useful to future blog posts, some pics for Flickr and so on. 

Just because it sounds complicated, don't get me wrong - I try very hard to lead a very simple life.  My plan for Saturday is to buy ice-cream for the boys (actually, I'm going to get some now) and spend the whole day by the pool playing with the boys.  I have some work in the garden - and that is my whole day.  That is the beauty of the system - I can do that knowing full well I haven't forgotten anything. 

Here is the article I think first got me into using text file for organizing my life: How I use Emacs and Org-mode to implement GTD .  I'm just not clever like that dude - my org setup and my whole life is simple.

Here is how David Allen himself does his system:

So, what do you do?  Anything innovative? Do you have a fun, quirky or clever personal management system?

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