Things, and the Getting of them Done

[chanaleh]

The past several weeks have been much working, much thinking, little writing. A lot of my Rosh Hashanah pondering was about my goals for the year -- not so much spiritually as practically, although even practical goals have spiritual implications in terms of what turns out to matter most, no? I swear I am making incremental progress on many important fronts, but it's hard to see amid the vast chaos. The same could be said of my actual day-job work, of course, too.

In that vein, I've started experimenting with Getting Things Done -- kind of backwards, in that I spent a while reading around it, largely by means of thesimpledollar, then spent lots of time looking for a suitable (and free) online tool*, and only then actually sat down and read the book (borrowed from ablock). I have still not done a proper Collection, which they would probably say explains why my anxiety level around my Stuff [to do] has generally risen of late even while I'm spending more focused time tackling it. But, on the whole, a net gain. Like "how could I, of all people, have done without this system for so long?"

*There are a million task- and project-manager sort of things, half a million of which are free, and I signed up for accounts on fully a dozen of them, but none struck the right combination of ease/elegance of use with functional categorization and project-vs-task manipulation. Finally I ended up at one that's in beta called Nirvana, and I really, really like it. It stays open in the background all day so I can add everything as it comes up -- and check it off as it goes out. There are, however, a few features I can already perceive as still missing; I'll be interested to see what they add in future releases.

I suspect I was going to close this up with something pithy, but I have to go to work. :-}

Oh yeah, but: my friend Lisë from shul (who made my lovely birthday cake for my housewarming last fall -- oh, and DUH, was in the theatreatfirst one-acts this summer!) co-wrote a book with the tea sommelier at the Park Plaza, and the book publication party is tonight. I'm going for the last hour, 6-7pm, if anyone wants to join me! (It's an RSVP event, but I think I could squeeze in one extra person.)

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Hey, I know Lise from the one-acts, but I haven't seen her since then! Alas, I cannot make it tonight, but if you remember and are so inclined, please wish her mazal tov from me. :)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

You know, I was just coming back to edit and say "duh!". :-) I will do so!

[gilana]

She was in T@F's improv class with me, as well! I'm going to the party on the early side, before rehearsal tonight.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I love the tea sommelier!

I will admit being a little put off by the cover--I tried making tea eggs once. After something like three hours of fussing with the most heavenly-smelling ingredients, I ended up with...hard boiled eggs. So subtle they were basically not worth doing.

[c1.livejournal.com]

GTD has been a massive brain saver during grad school. Wow, has it been a brain saver.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

Would you have room for me by any chance? I know Lise from Family Opera.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Oh, Masha! I'm sorry I missed this. I had such a day that I'm just now catching up on my LJ'ing (another part of my productivity push is that I am routing all LJ comments to a folder I don't see unless I look, to try and stop myself obsessively checking for comments all day anytime I post...).

-- But on the plus side, I was also so late getting out of work that I didn't get there myself until 6:45, which would have been a much bigger problem if I were trying to meet you!

GTD

[dhs.livejournal.com]

When I'm on the system, it helps a lot... until I bog down. (I put so much stuff in that the system saturates... Which, come to think of it, describes too much of my life. Must ponder this more. Later.)

When I'm off the system, certain pieces of it are amazing lifesavers. In particular the 43 folders.

I looked at various software GTD tools, but use none of them because I'm not consistently in front of a desk/computer. Perhaps if I had a PDA/smartphone ... Hrm.

[laurion]

I keep returning to tasktoy.com

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

Wow, I wish I had known about the book! Thanks for the heads up and yay for finding a GTD app that works for you -- not easy!

[tallou.livejournal.com]

Are you able to share invitations to Nirvana? I keep thinking a computer system (rather than my 3x5 cards) might be in order for some projects. But I'm always reluctant to pour enough time into a site I know nothing about to figure out whether it would be worth it. But if you like it...

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Oh! I don't think you need an invitation -- it's essentially an open beta. The invite code at signup is "optional"; otherwise, you submit a request and then they activate you when they get around to it, which in my case took 3 days.

I tend to think it's worth taking a look at, but then, I'm not sure how you use your 3x5 cards and whether it will translate as directly as you might wish. :-) Definitely take the Tour; you might also browse the Public Discussion board -- http://help.nirvanahq.com/discussions -- though it might be less enlightening if you haven't already tried out the functionality.

One more caveat: Something currently near the top of their Twitter feed also says something about "yes, we will always have a free basic service!", which suggests they may start charging admission for anything complex enough to be useful (many of the other sites I checked out had free service "up to 5 projects!" or something, which for me was inane). No idea how far away that is for them... but at this point, I think I am likely to actually pony up, when it comes to that.