No, I'm not taking about Tarot. It's a little hack I'm using to keep myself focused at work.
I keep a small deck of cards, each of them bearing a type of activity (some project at work, blogging, churning through my to-do lists, etc) and a time frame (30 to 45 minutes for work activities, 15 for recreation). Each time I draw a card and random and dedicate myself to the displayed activity for the displayed time. It's a sort of blend between the Unschedule (short bursts of work + allocating time for play) and the Exoself (programming yourself with a deck of cards), but less rigid than these. The cards basically create an artificial context to delimit my choices of next task, not to mention they add some fun and anticipation to see what comes next.
An older version I had just used "Work" and "Play" cards, but then it was too hard to get focused on which work to get done.
So as you may guess, I'm writing this now because the "Blog" card came up.
A variant I may try is adding some special cards, like "Skip the next card for today". Got any suggestions?
3 comments:
I suggest you divide the cards according to the following types: UNWIND,REST, STUDY, WORK, UNIQUE and CONSTRAINT
UNWIND
activities ment to replenish spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual or creative energies
-Examples
read comics, watch tv series, go to a movie, play a board-game, write a 'scene' unrelated to anything
REST
activities ment to expand deepen or provide new knowledge or experiences, who do not return an immediate reword
-Examples
practice ninjitsu, go to gym, read the entry of the day in wikipeadia, do something you think is important but not urgent, read stuff on digg/slashdot, press an "outgoing" hyperlink on a website
STUDY
An upgrade activity, doing something that offers a visible reward when completed(so most of these involve creation of something)
-Examples
bake a cake, blog, go shopping for clothes, markup an article/write a short summery of the article, write a mindmap brainstorm of something you are thinking about, eat something you never tried before
WORK
unavoidable necessary activities in order to progress in your day and get a paycheck
-Examples
follow up on old email requests, don't get up till you finish what your doing or have worked on it for 4 hours straight, email a progress report, make an estimate of what you still need to do and how much time it will take
UNIQUE
something that needs to be done only between very long time periods, or be done once, or you want to try
-Examples
decide on a birthday present for someone, blog, learn to scuba-dive, plan a vacation, rethink your trusted system-expand or diminish it
CONSTRAINT
cards that effect rules of draw and implementation
-Examples
draw enough cards for today and tomorrow-do not draw cards tomorrow, draw one card from each deck-you must avoid doing what these cards say for the rest of the day at all costs, activities may only be worked on for at most 15 minutes at once, draw two more constraint card, you must do the opposite of what the next card you draw says, you must do the activities in the order you draw them, 8 hours sleep minimum, no electronic communication, do the unique activity first, ect.
note that I am a fan of GTD so i don't like this system too much as you have nowhere to put, get milk or arrange photos or write down random thought
I like this. You could colour the back of each card type differently so you can balance your deck easily. UNIQUE needn't be a type in and of itself; you can just write additional instructions about what to do with the card after you finish it (throw, shuffle back into the deck, use again tomorrow, in 3 months...)
I'm a fan of GTD too -- this hack is just a complement to help me keep focused. It's easy to lose impulse and procrastinate when you have huge lists of things you *can* do in the current context. The cards help you impose artificial, delimited contexts where otherwise you'd be overwhelmed by choice.
אני חושבת שזה רעיון טוב הקלפים האלה.
לפי מה שהבנתי זה ממש עוזר לך וזה מה שחשוב :)
אני אוהבת אותך המון!
(השפנפנה המסתורית!)
Post a Comment