pn_net

1. Put my goals somewhere visible

I put all of my goals into FacileThings. They can then be linked to whatever tasks I'm working on. The goals page on FacileThings lists every goal, along with their related projects and tasks.

It would be nice if reviewing goals was a part of the built-in weekly review, but it's still possible to do manually.

2. Research half marathon running plans

I went with Hal Higdon's Novice 1 plan. Originally I thought an 18 week plan would be a better idea, but I think training from June to October might be a little much.

3. Publish a new post on this site once a week

I wrote several blog posts on sodaware.sdf.org that I'd been putting off for a while. However, I only managed two for this site, so I'm counting this goal as a failure.

4. Release a project

I did a soft release of MaxCop, a small utility I wrote for finding style issues in BlitzMax source code. It's not something I expect anyone to actually use, but it was nice to get it out in the open.

• It's heavily designed around GTD. The full process of capturing, clarifying, organizing and doing is built right into the software.
• It supports the more high-level parts of organization, such as goals and "areas of responsibility". Tasks can be assigned to a goal and/or area, and can then be filtered appropriately.
• The weekly review tool is a huge time saver. Each step has instructions, along with the tools required to complete them. For example, the "review your projects" step lists all projects, and each one can be checked quickly from the same page.
• There are integrations for Evernote, Twitter and several cloud storage providers. Reference material can also be stored in Evernote and accessed from projects.
• The dashboard lists reminders, calendar items for the day and all appropriate next actions. It can be filtered by tag (e.g. `work` or `personal`), along with time, energy and urgency. It also has a graph of tasks completed for the current week. It will remind you if items have been sat in the inbox for too long without being clarified.
• There are keyboard shortcuts for accessing each part of the app.
• Projects can have sub-projects. Projects can also be put into "waiting for" status, which is very helpful when working on client projects. Projects are highlighted when they are missing a next action.
• Has a tickler file.
• Has an "analytics" section that contains a lot of statistics. Things like how much is being collected, how much is being processed and how much is being done. It's a good way to find stuck projects and things that may be better suited to the "someday/maybe" pile.
• The "Focus On" button in the top right can be used to quickly filter everything to goals and areas of responsiblities. So you can say "I want to work on goal X right now" and it will filter tasks and projects accordingly.
• Can send emails have them go straight into the inbox.
• Can be set up to email daily and weekly reports.
• Shows you estimated time to complete projects and lists. So you can get a rough idea of how much time is needed to clear your entire next actions list (assuming you set estimated times).

• Overall appearance isn't quite as polished as other tools out there.
• Jumping to projects is done via dropdown menu, rather than a dedicated button, which isn't as smooth as I'd like. However, there is a keyboard shortcut to jump to the projects page.
• It's not as keyboard-friendly as other tools. For example, Nirvana has keyboard shortcuts for adding projects and next actions from any page.
• There isn't a way to import data from other platforms or via CSV/Text file
• It's very expensive compared to other platforms. The current price is $84 a year (if paid in one go) and there is no lifetime option. For comparison, Nirvana is $50 for a lifetime subscription.
• It's a little sluggish in places. Closing a task can sometimes take 5-10 seconds.
• There's a Ruby API client, but there's very little documentation. I'd love a more complete API, and would especially like some webhooks for when tasks/projects are completed and weekly reviews are finished.
• Not free/libre. I like to own my data and prefer self-hosted solutions.

Take each item from the capture pile, and ask yourself "is this item actionable?". In GTD, an item is actionable if you need to do something about it.

If the item is actionable

Decide on what action (or actions) are required. Depending on the item this can take some time. Once there's a clear picture on what to do:

• If it will take <= 2 minutes, do it immediately
• If it can be delegated, delegate it to someone and track it on a "waiting" list
• If it will take more than one action to complete, add it to the "projects" list and add the first action to this project
• If it takes a single action, add a single and well-defined item to the "next actions" list and attach an approriate context where the action can be done (e.g. "at store" or "at work")
• Otherwise, defer it:
  • If it HAS to be done on a specific date, put it on the calendar
  • Otherwise put it on a context-appropriate todo list

If the item is NOT actionable

• If it is something to possibly be worked on in the future, add it to the "someday/maybe" list
• If it is reference information, file it
• Otherwise, discard it

Processing an item should take around 30 seconds.

I had so much stuff during my initial processing phase that I decided to do a fast triage to make it a little easier. It's not an approach I recommend, but I didn't want to miss any tasks that due in the next few days.

I ended up with three separate piles:

1. Items I knew were going to be filed. This included things like utility bills, tax forms, insurance documents, receipts older than the current tax year etc
2. Items for current or recent projects went back into the in tray (I know I broke the most important rule)
3. Items that belonged to other projects or didn't really have a set place went to a third pile

Anything that would take under a minute got done during triage. This was mostly small things like "I need to this address in my address book" or "I need to put this receipt in my 2019 my tax folder".

Everything else went straight into the recyle bin.

During normal processing I would not take this approach, but after my initial capture I had over a year's worth of items and it was quite overwhelming. It made sense to batch things up to me, as I'm usually in a creative mood when I'm filing items.

One surprising thing was just how much ended up getting discarded. Around half of the items I processed were either already done, or were things I didn't want any more.

Other things I noticed:

• The two minute rule is a huge help. There were so many things I'd put off that could be done quickly, and getting them all out of the way was a relief.
• It's worth putting time into thoroughly deciding what to do. Sometimes I'll get lazy and add a next action that isn't well-defined. This means I have to spend extra time when going through my actions list because I'm having to process items twice. I always end up procrastinating on tasks that aren't well defined.

I was expecting a huge list of next actions after processing, but ended up with around 50 projects and maybe 200 next items. A good chunk of items also went on my "someday/maybe" list, but I think if I was being realistic I could ditch 50% of them.

1. Run a total of 18 miles

I expected to be a little sort from playing football, but ended up with some heavier injuries that impacted my running.

Important lesson learned - don't play sports for a week or two before race day.

2. Continue bodyweight exercises and track my workouts

I reduced my workout to once a week whilst injured but didn't track anything. To be honest I didn't really know what to track, although that's not a particularly good reason not to do it.

3. Release a playable game

Total failure here.

4. Write every week

I wrote 5 short notes for sodaware.sdf.org, along with a brief post-mortem for Tiny Tactics. A small victory.

1. Run a total of 20 miles

I managed just over 16.5 miles before suffering from some minor knee pain. It wasn't too serious, but I didn't want to chance doing more damage so I took a few days off. The cold weather didn't help either.

Even though I'm calling this a fail, I was pleased with how everything went. My longest run was 3.4 miles (nonstop), which isn't bad considering I could only manage 2 minutes straight in August.

2. Add bodyweight training to my running workouts

I added bodyweight exercises once a week. I didn't track these workouts so I couldn't really measure any improvements. Even the lowest level exercises were quite difficult at first, although things did get easier after a few weeks.

It's definitely something I want to keep doing.

3. Release a prototype of Tiny Tactics

Not even close on this one.

I only worked for around 10 hours over the course of the month. I got a very basic map working along with some gameplay elements (mostly menus), but nothing even remotely playable.

At this point I'm not sure I can turn things around in time to get a demo released. I may end up releasing a tiny game in March just to get something positive done.

4. Write 1,000 words of my book

This one is 50/50. I only wrote around 500 words in February, but I spent some time researching the topic in more depth. I have a pretty good idea of how I want to structure the book and what I want to cover. More importantly, I have a better idea of the stuff I don't want to write about.

5. Finish setting up my GTD system

There's still a small pile of things left to process, but I got a basic system up and running. My inbox was finally emptied after two years, so I can't call this anything but a success.

1. Finish adding items to my "other goals" list

Given how badly February went, I think this list is long enough for now.

2. Release IFTTT version of Garlic Spy

This isn't a project that's particularly important to me, but I wanted to experiment with Ruby on Rails and this seemed like a good start.

I built a few bits and pieces with ActiveJob, set up integration with IFTTT and tidied up the deployment process. There's always more to do, but I'm happy with what I managed to get done.

3. Add new backend to crypto-ticker-mode

I started writing a basic API layer but never got around to finishing or integrating it.

—

That brings February to a 50% success rate. Overall it was a pretty disappointing month. Worse still, it's had a bit of hangover effect into March. Even though I'm a week into the month I haven't really been productive.