Noisy Deadlines

100Days

These are some of the things that happened in my life this week:

  • ☔ It was a rainy week around here, so I missed going out for some walks. Maximum temperatures around 12C.
  • ✏️ I used the second edition of Cal Newport's Time Block Planner and I liked it! There's more space to write things in, and I particularly enjoyed the Planning page at the beginning of each week. The paper is super soft, nice to write on.
  • 💪 I started going to the gym again because it's getting a little bit too cold for me to run outside. It's good to get back to some weight training as well.
  • 🏝️ It's been 47 days without using Mastodon. I logged in again this week and unfollowed some accounts. But I didn't stay long. I don't feel I want to be back yet, so I will give it some more time. No rush.
  • 📺 I started watching the One Piece show on Netflix. I only saw the first episode and I thought it was super fun!
  • ⛸️ I started my Intermediate Ice Skating lessons this weekend! It was hard because there were lots of exercises going backwards, and I'm not ready to skate backwards too much, I get tired quickly (and I’m very slow…) It was good practice, tho. My goal is to finally learn how to do cross-overs this time.

—-

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

This is a series of posts with reading notes of the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.

My notes on Chapter 08: Reflecting: Keeping It All Fresh and Functional

The GTD methodology aims to have information organized in a such a way that we see all the actions we NEED to see, WHEN we need to see them.

Recommendations on What to Look at Daily:

  1. Look at the Calendar first: check all the day and time specific commitments

  2. Look at the Action Lists: review the lists so that we feel confident we are not missing anything critical

But these lists can become a nuisance if they are not kept up to date. So this chapter dives deep into the famous “Weekly Review”.

Very simply, the Weekly Review is whatever you need to do to get your head empty again and get oriented for the next couple of weeks. — David Allen

The Weekly Review has 3 parts:

  • Get clear: process all collected stuff
    • Collect loose papers and materials (add all to the Inbox)
    • Get “In” to empty: process all inboxes
    • Empty your head: capture anything that pops up
  • Get Current: review calendars and check if all lists are up-to-date
    • Review Next Actions Lists: mark off any completed tasks, add next actions if needed
    • Review Previous Calendar: look at the past 2 weeks to see if there's anything you still need to act on
    • Review Upcoming Calendar: check for any upcoming travel, meetings, events, reminders, etc. to prepare for them
    • Review the Waiting-For list: check if follow-ups are needed, check off completed items
    • Review Projects List: check status of projects, goals, outcomes.
    • Review any Relevant Checklists
  • Get Creative: add any new ideas
    • Review Someday/Maybe lists: is there anything to activate? is there anything that can be deleted?
    • Be Creative and Courageous: after doing this full review it might be easier to capture any new, crazy, thought-provoking idea into the system.

For reference there is a checklist available here.

When and where to do a Weekly Review

For a typical 5-day work week, David Allen recommends blocking off 2 hours on the last workday for the review.

This is something I realized I have not been doing well in my work routine. Because I have my personal weekly review on the weekend, I kinda neglect the review at work, thinking “Oh, I will do it with my personal one at home”. And that never happens. When I'm doing my personal review I'm in another mode, a different mood, and I don't really want to look into work related stuff.

That being said, I now blocked off my Calendar on Fridays, from 3:30pm to 5pm to dedicate exclusively on my work weekly review. My personal review will continue to be on Sunday mornings.

Until then, do whatever you need to, once a week, to trick yourself into backing away from the daily grind for a couple of hours—not to zone out, but to rise up at least to the horizon of all your projects and their statuses, and to catch up with everything else that relates to what’s pulling on your attention. — David Allen

For people with non-typical 9 to 5 jobs or different lifestyles, the review can be done on long plane or train trips, in a favourite coffee shop, during their children's weekend activity (like choir practice), etc.

At the end of this chapter David Allen mentions that it probably takes 2 years of implementing the GTD methodology to get to a point where we are confident about all our horizons (including visions, values and objectives). This might seem daunting, but it really is a long term practice because GTD has the potential to touch all levels of our lives, if we want to.

The next chapter is about “Engaging” and I'm curious to know what have I missed about it when I read it before. I can say that deciding what to do every day is one of my biggest challenges nowadays.


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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

These are some of the things that happened in my life this week:

  • 📖 I've been reading the book “Babel” by R.F. Kuang for my upcoming local Book Club meetup. It's probably the first Dark Academia genre book I've read and although the theme is indeed dark, I'm enjoying it. It's a mixture of alternate history with fantasy and serious criticism of colonialism. It's very well written, using England's Oxford University in the 1800s as background.
  • ✏️ I got back to my morning free writing session routine. I skipped it several days last week. In one of my sessions I realized how busy September has been and no wonder I was feeling frazzled and tired by the end of the month! Writing in the morning has a positive effect on my mental health, and so I'm definitely adding it to my morning routine ritual. I aim not to skip it for more than 2 consecutive days.
  • 🚘 We now have a second car in the house, which was one of the reasons why I was feeling anxious last week (dealing with all the paperwork, insurance, etc). My partner now works in a site 30+ km away and there is no public transportation service over there. Carpooling would not work anymore: he leaves super early, I would miss my morning routine, and we would spend a lot of time commuting. We wanted a small and economical car, and we were lucky to find a Mitsubishi Mirage available at the dealership. So cute!
  • 📕 I was curious to see the second edition of Cal Newport's Time Blocker, so I got a copy. I will start using it tomorrow. My current time blocker is very compact, and I was missing the extra space to re-plan my time blocks several times a day.
  • ✅ I did a long work Weekly Review on the Friday before the long weekend (Thanksgiving in Canada) to avoid any worries about my work during the weekend. It worked! I could enjoy the weekend more fully: I spent lots of time reading in my favourite armchair, I also read on the couch with my partner as company (while he played “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom”), I did some puzzle, listened to music and relaxed.
  • 🚗 During the long weekend (aka as yesterday) we drove to Montreal to say hello to our best friends over there. The plan was to go for a hike at Parc Mont Royal, but it was a rainy, gloomy day, and we ended up walking around Place des Arts and then visited a retro gaming store that sells old consoles/games.

—-

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

This is a series of posts with reading notes of the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.

Chapter 07 – Organizing: Setting up the Right Buckets

Being organized means that we have the things where we need them to be. We have to clarify what that “thing” means to us, so we can easily put it into the right bucket.

This chapter describes seven primary types of things we will want to keep track of:

  • Projects List
  • Project Support Material
  • Calendar actions and information: for things that are time-specific or day specific. It's a hard landscape for things that MUST get done that time. It's not a place for things we “think we'd like to get done”.
  • Next Action lists: groups all “as soon as possible” type actions. A good way to organize this list is by grouping actions by context (more on this below).
  • Waiting For list
  • Reference Material
  • Someday/Maybe list

The categories must be kept visually, physically, and psychologically separate, to promote clarity. — David Allen

And these categories can be kept in lists and folders, be it on paper or digitally.

Contexts

One of the main characteristics of the GTD system are the contexts list, which basically organized next actions into more manageable buckets according to a particular context required to perform the action. A context can be the tool, the location or the situation needed to complete it. It is very useful for longer next actions lists with more than 25 items. I have all my lists in a digital tool (Nirvana) and I use tags for contexts.

The most common contexts are:

  • Calls: list of phone calls to make
  • At computer: to be done when the computer is up and running
  • Errands: for outside trips, when we are out and about
  • Anywhere: for thinking, making decisions
  • At Office: for things that can only be done when we are physically at the office (if you have one)
  • At Home: for things to be done at home
  • Agendas (for people and meetings)
  • Read/Review: for things you want to read when you have time (articles, magazines, documents...)

Contexts are personal and dynamic. We can add or delete them depending on our needs. I also have these contexts:

  • iPhone: for things I can only do on my phone
  • Outdoors: for hikes/walks I want to try
  • Watch/Listen: for videos, podcast episodes
  • Writing: for grouping writing tasks (usually includes blog writing)
  • Yoga-mat: for any Yoga classes I want to try
Read more...

These are some of the things that happened in my life this week:

  • 💼 I had a really busy and chaotic week at work. Everything was coming at me at the same time, and I struggled to keep my cool. I didn’t sleep well most nights. I had a meeting with my manager to talk about my workload, and we made a plan together on how to tackle everything. It helped a little bit, but things are still on my plate.
  • 🎭 Because of the tiring week, I didn’t journal or read books as much as I wanted. I might have gone off the rails a little bit with my routines. I recalibrated on the weekend, so I hope this week will feel less overwhelming. I will get back to writing my GTDnotes series.
  • 💻 This video explaining Free-Floating anxiety was super clear and gives a quick reset strategy. It seems like a shorter version of my Overwhelm First Aid Kit. The hardest part is to knowledge at the moment what’s going on and remember to go through the steps. And what helps me to recognize these moments is regular mindfulness practice.
  • 🎧 I listened to Cal Newport’s podcast Ep. 265: Big Ideas for Deeper Living where he talks about 8 books about productivity and its main ideas. I think the only one I haven’t read is the “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferris. Great list!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

  1. Small Favor (The Dresden Files #10) by Jim Butcher, 420p: I wasn't as invested in this book as the previous ones. It sure is fun and full of action, but I guess I wasn’t in the mood for so much action all at once. I can see that this book will bring serious repercussions for the plot in the future. Harry Dresden is again pushed to his limits, with overpowering supernatural entities. I was worried about a particular character's future health, something I'll have to discover in the next book.

  2. Finder (Finder Chronicles #1) by Suzanne Palmer, 400p: Space adventures of Fergus Ferguson, a finder. He just wants to find a ship and bring it back to the owner, but he ends up entangled in local affairs. Fun, light space adventure. Excellent to sit back and relax. I continued on the next in the series.

  3. Driving the Deep (Finder Chronicles #2) by Suzanne Palmer, 400p: Nice follow-up! It was cool to know more about the Shipmakers of Pluto. Interesting setting as well, deep into Enceladus thick ice sheet ocean. Fergus becomes an undercover deep ocean hauler pilot to investigate things. I thought the plot was more tidy than the first book, and it has a very satisfying ending.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I've had some interesting days this week at work. Without even realizing it, I tested out 3 scenarios in terms of productivity and organization.

Scenario 1: Crazy Mondays

Monday was Monday. It was a little bit confusing and my brain was not up to speed yet: the usual Monday overwhelm situation. I did my Time Blocking later in the morning. But things changed, meetings got moved around. I tried to update my time blocking, but things were happening too fast, so I let go. I didn't follow any of the blocks I pre-planned. But I also took some time to plan the next month. I used my Outlook Calendar to plot out some deadlines, deliverables and project durations. And I printed it out, so now I have it on my board.

Scenario 2: Out of control

Tuesday was weird. I had some emails to reply, emails with information I needed to process, budgets to review and update and phone calls to make. Those took the whole morning. I didn't do Time Blocking at all! It was an empty page! I had a meeting at 2pm, which I only remembered to attend because my colleague sent me a chat message that it was starting (and they wanted my input). That being said, I realized that I didn't have any awareness of the upcoming meetings because I didn't do my Time Blocking. I had a major headache by the end of the day and I felt totally drained.

Scenario 3: A Balanced Day

Wednesday was a more balanced day. I did my Time Blocking, but I only wrote down the meetings and the goals for the day. I didn't time block for emails or calls. I just went with the flow and used my intuition. I made the phone calls I needed to make and worked on the budgets I needed to update. Things were clearer. It was still a very busy day, but I felt more relaxed among the chaos.

Thoughts

I reflected on these 3 scenarios while I went for a long walk after work:

  1. Minute-by-minute Time Blocking doesn't work for my line of work or my work environment. Things always happen too quickly, I have to handle with back and forth communication all the time, my team relies on real-time interactions ad-hoc. It's just the way it is. Construction is a chaotic world, and I rarely have the privilege of taking 3 hours of deep work to focus on one thing only, by myself.

  2. The act of Time Blocking in the morning is useful when I focus on delineating the big picture of my day. What are the meetings happening today? Are there any deadlines? What are the Top 3 things I'll be working on? Even though I have that information on my digital calendar, writing it down by hand on my planner gives me awareness and I feel more prepared about the day.

  3. Having an Inbox and a Next Action list is crucial for my day-to-day work. I need a trusted space where I can dump things to be processed later and where I can store all my next actions and be certain that list will be there the next day. Just for one of the four big projects I'm working on right now, I have 17 next actions this week. I've already logged 48 actions that I've completed since August 10th. It is a lot to handle, and GTD gives me a way to tackle all of this with less stress.

  4. At the end of the day: taking a look at all the items on my next actions for a specific project I'm focusing on gives me peace of mind. It works as a trigger for me to add tasks that have been rolling in my head throughout the day, making sure my capture is complete. It's a good Shutdown routine ritual. I'll keep doing that.

  5. Mondays will always be Mondays. I’m never at my best form on Mondays, so I’m just acknowledging that, and I’ll be more forgiving of myself. It’s a day to prepare me for the rest of the week, so I know I won’t be super productive on Mondays. And that’s okay.

Final conclusion

I like Scenario 3. It's becoming clear to me that I can't really follow a strict Time Blocking routine. The nature of my work is too fluid most days. But I can use time blocking as a planning tool to guide my day. It gives me direction. There will be days when strict time blocking for focused work will work. But my typical day is not that structured, and I'm learning to live with that. So, I'll be having a more balanced approach to Time Blocking from now on.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

These are some of the things that happened in my life this week:

  • 📖I finished reading Driving the Deep (Finder Chronicles #2) by Suzanne Palmer. This was a page turner, and because of it I didn’t read anything else over the weekend because I had to get to the end (yeah, that kind of book 🙂).
  • 📺I started watching Season 2 of “Wheel of Time”. Just got to the first episode, so far. I’ll probably go one episode a week.
  • 🦷I finally went to the Dentist to get my permanent crown. It is such a relief to go back to chewing normally again! But I still haven’t tried popcorn.
  • 👟I’ve been running 5K every time I go out for a run now. I want to get used to doing it with no pauses, and then build from there.
  • 🐘It’s been almost a month since I stopped logging into Mastodon. I took a quick peek at it this weekend, and I didn’t feel I was ready to go back to using it. I will wait a little bit more, and I might have to do a major overhaul (like unfollowing accounts and hashtags).
  • 💼It’s going to be a busy week at work, it seems that every construction project that was on hold are coming back in full force. October is going to be crazy as well with the rush to get things going before winter hits us. I probably won’t be writing on this blog so frequently because some days I will just be doing nothing for a while to recharge my batteries 🙃.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Chapter 06 – Clarifying: Getting “In” to Empty

This is a series of posts with reading notes of the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen.

The clarifying step (also known as “processing” in the old version of the book) is all about understanding what each captured item is and making a decision:

“Getting “in” to empty doesn't mean actually doing all the actions and projects that you've captured. It just means identifying each item and deciding what it is, what it means, and what you're going to do with it.” — David Allen

So David Allen actually recommends that we read Chapters 6 and 7 before clarifying things because we will need our “buckets” ready to go right after we decide to do with each item.

This chapter presents some useful processing guidelines :

  • Process the top item first: don't start fumbling and picking and choosing which item you will process first, just go top to bottom.
  • Process one item at a time: focus on one item and finish your thinking before moving on to the next.
  • Never put anything back to “in”: handle things only once by deciding what to do with it and move on.

The important question: “Is it actionable?”

This chapter has a diagram showing the decision-making matrix.

We have 2 options for the question: “Is it actionable” => It's either Yes or No.

Sometimes there is NO next action for an item:

  • If there is NO action required, the item will be either: - Trash: no longer needed - Just trash/recycle it - Incubate: no action needed now, but might need to be done later - Someday/Maybe list - Reminder on a calendar or tickler file - Reference: potential useful information for later - Physical file storage - Digital file storage

David mentions the dilemma of whether to keep something for future reference, and his recommendation is to trust our intuition:

When in doubt, throw it out. When in doubt, keep it. — David Allen

And if it is actionable?

If there is something to be done with the item, then we decide what is the Next Action.

“The action step needs to be the absolute next physical thing to do.” — David Allen

Sometimes I don't complete my thinking on an item, and it ends up being not a true next physical action. David gives an example, if we need to set a meeting with someone, we should ask: How do we set a meeting? With an email or a phone call? So “set a meeting” might be too generic, a more clear next action would be: “Call Susan to check her availability and schedule the meeting”.

The idea is to have all the thinking completed so when we see our next action lists, we are ready to engage on those actions. There is no further decision to be made. Having clear next actions avoids procrastination.

Even when we have to decide on something, we should think of what is the next physical action to help with us get to a decision. It could be that, in order to decide, we need to more information on a subject, so the next action does not start with “decide if...” it could be “Search for available options online to help me decide which laptop to purchase” or “Call Susan to get her input on the best laptop to buy”.

If we don't pay attention, we don't stop to really think through what we need to do next. I notice that I usually rush through the clarifying step, and then I end up with a bunch of unclear next actions, which in turn repels me from doing anything. I've only recently started paying more attention to this, and I have to remember to slow down while processing.

After deciding what the next action is...

... we have 3 options:

  • Do it: If it takes less than 2 minute, DO IT NOW!
  • Delegate it: Am I the right person to do this? If not, delegate it. - Options: Send the person an email, write a note to the person, send a text, leave a voice mail or talk to the person. - Tip: always record the date on the items that we hand off to others.
  • Defer it: If it will take more than 2 minutes, and you are the right person to do it, defer it to the “Next Actions' list.

But we might identify that only one next actions will not complete the item objective. In this case, it is a Project:

  • Is it a Project (require multiple steps?) => add it to the Projects List

I didn't process my physical inboxes yet, because I will finish reading the next chapter before moving on. Chapter 07 deals with all the buckets we set up in order to organize everything after we decide what to do with them.


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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I read this blog post by Sylvia this morning and I really liked the idea of having a list of things to remember every day.

I went back to a document I have called “Purpose and Principles” that I wrote as part of my GTD system. In this document, I have a list of my Core Values and a mission statement. Inspired by the blog post above, I updated my list with my:

♥ Things to Remember Every Day

  1. Stay calm and remember to breath.

  2. Wake up with mindfulness (yoga and meditation).

  3. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (— by Michael Pollan)

  4. If overwhelmed, take 3 deep breaths and do a mind sweep!

  5. I won't judge anyone (including me!)

  6. Be curious about the world. Read books.

  7. Sleep is essential.

  8. Move your body a little bit every day.

  9. Say NO! Avoid over commitment.

  10. Celebrate progress 🙌.

I copied this list to the start of my daily physical notebook and I will also put a copy of the list on my whiteboard at home.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.