I have been absorbing the lessons from my disastrous attempt to spend 30 days actually doing something...well, anything, really.
- Have a plan. Knowing what it is you want to do has to be more successful than thinking "Right. It's Monday. What do I want to do now?", because that sucked big time as a method of achieving stuff.
- Related to the above, spend some time working out where it is you want to improve. Fumbling and bumbling and guessing and hoping it will come to you is probably not going to work. It didn't for me at any rate.
- Failing is okay. Not being able to get it together has shown me the deficiencies in my "plan".
That's it. It took a week to sort out, but that's it. Distilled knowledge, people. Lap it up.
In the short term I'm reacquainting myself with GTD. I had my GTD mojo at the start of the year but it slowly ebbed away as I get a little cocky that I was on top of things. I let my whole system fall apart. Time to rebuild it.
One of the unexpected side-benefits of this process is that my wife has started to get really down with all the clutter we have in our life and our house. We're slowly working on reducing the amount of useless crap we have accumulated. We have both greatly reduced the amount of paperwork we have lying around the house. The shredder has been getting a really good work out. I have also started to be a bit ruthless about what books I will keep and which ones I will get move on. It's been liberating, in a way.
All up, an interesting experience, and one worth trying again after a little bit of preparation.
4 comments:
I'm tempted to take some pictures of our tiny apartment crammed full of things we will never use or need and borrowing a few lines from George Carlin. Clutter = Chaos = Anxiety&Panic Attacks so we have been trying to reduce as well. We haven't been doing as well as you, i don't think.
Letting go is hard. I'm still no good at it, although I am getting better. I haven't really done all that much, to be honest, which is why I consider the experiment a failure (although a success in that I've learnt a thing or two about myself in the process).
I would like to be more ruthless. Baby steps, I guess.
did you stop for a moment to consider that clutter is inherited?
My dad is a keeper, my mother is not. Sucks to have a queensland house up high on posts - look at all that space to store things you will never use!
I am a keeper. Chantelle is not. I have phone bills from 2001. I need to give my shredder a bigger workout :)
On the upside, reading your 30 days has definitely shown me that while i thought I beat myself up occasionally over my own failings.. i definitely don't do it as much as you do.
In the nicest possible way - I hope you take your point number 3: failing is ok, just as seriously as you take the other two...
Clutter can be inherited because I think it is learned behaviour that is imprinted on us by our parents. I'm a pack rat but H. is an even bigger one with some things, which makes for a fun time!
I'm not too down on myself about this. I recognise that I didn't plan this well and I probably achieved as much as I was going to under the circumstances. I also know I'm capable of a lot better so I'm presently searching for the right motivation.
Venting my own frustrations at my inability to do all I would like helps me preventing it from eating me up inside, so it's not quite as harsh as it might appear.
Do your shredding, dude. It feels so good.
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