You might be interested in the book Getting Things Done. It was written before smartphones and cloud syncing calendars but it can easily be adapted to To-Do lists and managing your life in the modern age.
A basic summary is thus: Every action you need to do but haven’t yet done is an open loop in your mind. You have to keep thinking about it until you do it, and close the loop. However, lots of things can’t be done except at specific times and places. You can maintain seperate to-do lists for things that can be done anywhere (Call a friend to schedule a movie, tie your shoe, etc.), and things that need you to be at your desk, at work, or at a grocery store. Storing all the myriad things that you need to do in life in your head is stressful and difficult to successfully accomplish. If you offload this information to contextual to-do lists, you can forget about the open loop and rely on your general system to remind you if it only if you can actually do something about it. This allows you focus on things you’re doing in the moment, without worrying that you’re forgetting a bunch of things you still need to do.
You might be interested in the book Getting Things Done.
Much appreciated, I’ll take a look!
This allows you focus on things you’re doing in the moment, without worrying that you’re forgetting a bunch of things you still need to do.
I think this is a large part of it, but it seems like a subset of what I’m thinking about. This is a great answer if someone came up to you and asked “how do you get things done?”, and it is a pretty broad planning approach. Even better, those who use a similar system can talk about their approach, ideally sharing ideas and “best practices”. Even when I googled the book, I got thousands of hits that would help me—tools, blogs, reviews. To use corporate speak, this would be a set of policies, processes and guidance… complete with workflows. It fits perfectly (this comment pending me actually reading the book!).
what I struggle with is that there doesn’t seem to be anything above this. Most companies have some sort of management system that would give context to the process.
To give a corporate example applied to real life, most people don’t really evaluate risk in their own life. Here at LW and such we talk about existential risk, but I’d still guess that very few have disaster supplies or plans for much more likely events (this is from recent talks triggered by http://www.shakeout.org/ ). My wife and I talked casually over dinner about earthquakes and realised this is a non-trivial problem that probably should be taken seriously. Getting home, walking long distances, bridges, what to do if our apartment isn’t structurally sound or flooded, where to meet/wait if communication is impossible, what to do in winter with no heat.
The same applies to a lot of other risks—robbery, fire, financial, accidents, sickness...
Each of those can be dealt with tasks that would be governed by the GTD process, so I think it’s a big part (it is either done or not!), but I feel like there is this missing umbrella that binds these things together. There seems to be a lot of social gains to it as well. Talking about disasters with our friends would lead to some pressure on them to prepare, as well as share how we would do it and possibly find shared solutions.
Example above could be replaced with less extreme examples, like how you store your files/pictures/etc or do your household budget.
To give a corporate example applied to real life, most people don’t really evaluate risk in their own life. Here at LW and such we talk about existential risk, but I’d still guess that very few have disaster supplies or plans for much more likely events (this is from recent talks triggered by http://www.shakeout.org/ ). My wife and I talked casually over dinner about earthquakes and realised this is a non-trivial problem that probably should be taken seriously. Getting home, walking long distances, bridges, what to do if our apartment isn’t structurally sound or flooded, where to meet/wait if communication is impossible, what to do in winter with no heat.
Interesting! Did you make any further progress? I personally see a great deal of value in this kind of risk identification. A lot of risks are not easily solved (eg: just buy insurance!) or properly quantified (eg: accident insurance protects me from income loss!).
You might be interested in the book Getting Things Done. It was written before smartphones and cloud syncing calendars but it can easily be adapted to To-Do lists and managing your life in the modern age.
A basic summary is thus: Every action you need to do but haven’t yet done is an open loop in your mind. You have to keep thinking about it until you do it, and close the loop. However, lots of things can’t be done except at specific times and places. You can maintain seperate to-do lists for things that can be done anywhere (Call a friend to schedule a movie, tie your shoe, etc.), and things that need you to be at your desk, at work, or at a grocery store. Storing all the myriad things that you need to do in life in your head is stressful and difficult to successfully accomplish. If you offload this information to contextual to-do lists, you can forget about the open loop and rely on your general system to remind you if it only if you can actually do something about it. This allows you focus on things you’re doing in the moment, without worrying that you’re forgetting a bunch of things you still need to do.
I am working through GTD myself and will post a more extended summary in language different from the book.
Much appreciated, I’ll take a look!
I think this is a large part of it, but it seems like a subset of what I’m thinking about. This is a great answer if someone came up to you and asked “how do you get things done?”, and it is a pretty broad planning approach. Even better, those who use a similar system can talk about their approach, ideally sharing ideas and “best practices”. Even when I googled the book, I got thousands of hits that would help me—tools, blogs, reviews. To use corporate speak, this would be a set of policies, processes and guidance… complete with workflows. It fits perfectly (this comment pending me actually reading the book!).
what I struggle with is that there doesn’t seem to be anything above this. Most companies have some sort of management system that would give context to the process.
To give a corporate example applied to real life, most people don’t really evaluate risk in their own life. Here at LW and such we talk about existential risk, but I’d still guess that very few have disaster supplies or plans for much more likely events (this is from recent talks triggered by http://www.shakeout.org/ ). My wife and I talked casually over dinner about earthquakes and realised this is a non-trivial problem that probably should be taken seriously. Getting home, walking long distances, bridges, what to do if our apartment isn’t structurally sound or flooded, where to meet/wait if communication is impossible, what to do in winter with no heat.
The same applies to a lot of other risks—robbery, fire, financial, accidents, sickness...
Each of those can be dealt with tasks that would be governed by the GTD process, so I think it’s a big part (it is either done or not!), but I feel like there is this missing umbrella that binds these things together. There seems to be a lot of social gains to it as well. Talking about disasters with our friends would lead to some pressure on them to prepare, as well as share how we would do it and possibly find shared solutions.
Example above could be replaced with less extreme examples, like how you store your files/pictures/etc or do your household budget.
I have started working on something like that a while ago.
Interesting! Did you make any further progress? I personally see a great deal of value in this kind of risk identification. A lot of risks are not easily solved (eg: just buy insurance!) or properly quantified (eg: accident insurance protects me from income loss!).
No progress, I dropped the ball because of smooth sailing in my life. Which is exactly why I should prepare for things getting worse.
But seeing as people gave upvotes, there seems to be interest. I might pick the ball up again.