a million monkeys typing

Problems with Commitment?

Posted March 14th, 2005 at 08:58am

Despite the fears and uncertainties that come with leaving a job, it’s a wonderful opportunity to “clear the slate” in many ways. True, that weekly paycheque isn’t coming in, but this urgency puts a lot more emphasis on creativity, goal-setting, organisation and brainstorming. Now, many of you are probably thinking: hey, this is a perfect opportunity for the effective use of a planning system.

But here there be monsters. What happens if, like me, you’re an organisational geek attracted to every shiny new way of planning and managing information? In the past twelve months, here are just a few of the systems I’ve tried:

• A paper-based planner system (basically, my DIY Planner templates in a nice faux-rustic-leather DayRunner);
• A Palm Tungsten E, decked out with 512Mb SD card, Palm wireless keyboard, Internet connectivity, headphones and plenty of software goodies;
• Apple iCal + Address Book + Missing Sync on my Macs;
• Evolution on Linux;
• KDE Kontact suite on Linux;
• Palm Desktop on Windows;
• MS Outlook;
• MS Entourage (as in, Outlook for the Mac);
• Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird;
• Emacs + planner.el;
• Eclipse IDE/text editor;
• Various UNIX shell scripts (at, cal, cron, etc.);
• PHPGroupWare;
• Various wiki-based solutions, including SiteBar + TWiki;
• Various portal-based solutions, including Plone;

This list doesn’t include all the various other toys like QuickSilver, Beagle, GNOME Launch Box, Konqueror, library management tools, and… uh… vim. So where does that leave my planning information? Well, all over the place, of course. The good news is that I’ve “compartmentalised” most of the information in certain ways. For example, all my contacts are generally stored in my Palm, which syncs out to all the other computer-based contact lists (like in Apple Address Book, Evolution, etc.), and all my memo-style files are generally stored as plain text files in some way, which generally sync well across all the operating systems I use. However, I realise it’s time to start consolidating most of my day-to-day organisational information in some way.

The end of a job is a perfect opportunity for this, as one can generally leave behind a lot of information that’s no longer needed, like previous appointments, expense details, client contact info, hours of operation, report statistics, and so on. This has a bit of a cleansing effect, because you are now free to choose a planning system without worrying about legacy data and how to port or transcribe it over to your new gear.

In a way, it’s a call to action: stop flirting and make a commitment for once. Make a choice and stick by it. I’ve spent so much of my spare time in the past year just trying and tweaking new ways of organising myself that I’ve probably wasted as much time as I’ve saved. I know I’m not alone here: read the 43 Folders Google Group, and you’ll see hundreds of others constantly seeking and extolling new ways of planning their lives. Yes, I do find this incredibly interesting, if not exciting (it’s the project manager and information architect in me), but there comes a time when you have to stop playing the field and settle down, lest the endless one-night-stands of organisational methods start to take their toll on you.

So, which is it going to be? Well, of course everybody is different, but I think I’ve finally settled on a system that makes sense for me and the way I work. Here’s my gear, at least for the foreseeable future:

1. My DayRunner, because it just feels good to write in. Purpose: calendar (hard landscape), next actions, project outlines, brainstorming, general writing, reference lists (to buy, A/V gear, photography info, to read, etc.), important contacts, carrying paper info (things to mail, various forms to fill out, etc.), story ideas, job search details, etc.
2. Palm Tungsten E. Purpose: music, audio books, news on the go (AvantGo, Plucker), pictures of family, ebooks, encrypted files (financial info, passwords, etc.), uber-list of contacts going back to my far-flung past, alarms (”wake up” or “you’re late!”), technical info (usually synced from a computer), and word processing for digital deployment, since I have a keyboard to type quickly and it’s easy to sync the text to my laptop or desktop.
3. TWiki. Purpose: online documents for editing or reading from multiple locations, and collaboration.

Notice that there is no mention of a computer-based planner there, like Evolution, Outlook or Entourage. I considered this long and hard, and came to the conclusion, “So what?” Maybe it’s because I change operating systems or computers so many times in a day, or maybe it’s because I’ve never really found a program that “thought” like me, but each time I use one, it seems like a token effort. I finally decided recently that I might as well skip them altogether, and just learn to use and trust my DayRunner and Palm combo.

[Note that all of the above concerns my personal organisational approach. In a business context, things work differently, and there are plenty of tools available to ensure that project management, workflow, time management, resource allocation, record-keeping and communications are efficient within a particular system. However, what works for a business often doesn’t work well for an individual, and vice-versa.]

Now, the next decision to be made: which methodology to follow? As the result of a few months of experimentation –mainly with the DIY Planner materials– I think I have a very effective process nailed down, and it’s only partially GTD. I’ll cover that in a future post.