I know that sounds simple, but sometimes it really is not. Sometimes there are days where every task feels heavier than it should. Days where getting started feels impossible. Days where you spend more energy convincing yourself to begin than actually doing the thing.
And yet, you started.
Maybe you answered that message. Maybe you did the dishes. Maybe you worked on an assignment. Maybe you made a phone call you had been dreading. Maybe you only got a small part of it done.
But you started.
And that matters more than you think.
I know people often only see the finished result. They do not see the hesitation, the exhaustion, the overthinking, the fear of getting it wrong, or the amount of effort it took just to begin. But you know. You know how hard it was, and I think you deserve credit for that.
So this is your reminder that progress does not have to be dramatic to count. Small steps count. Partial victories count. Trying counts.
I am proud of you for showing up today, especially if it was difficult. I am proud of you for doing what you could with the energy you had. And if nobody else has said it yet, good job.
You are trying. You are making progress. And even if it does not feel like much right now, it is worth being proud of.
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I'm coming to COLORADO! Catch me in DENVER on Jan 22 at The Tattered Cover<, and in COLORADO SPRINGS from Jan 23–25 where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine. Then I'll be in OTTAWA on Jan 28 at Perfect Books and in TORONTO with Tim Wu on Jan 30.
Call it "lifehacking," or just call it, "paying attention to how you stay organized" – I don't care what you call it, I am an ardent practitioner of it.
I like improving my processes because I like what I do, and the more efficient I am at all of it (with apologies to Jenny Odell), the more of that stuff I can get done:
I want to do a lot of stuff. I am one of those people who is ten miles wide and one inch deep (it probably has something to do with imbibing Heinlein's maxim that "specialization is for insects" at an impressionable age). There's a million waterways I want to dip my toe (or my oar) into, and the better organized I am, the more of that stuff I'll get to do before I kick off. I'm 54, and while there's a lot of road ahead of me, I can see the end, off there in the distance. It's coming, and I'm not done – I'm barely getting started.
I've been around lifehacking since the very moment it was born. I was there. I published the notes on Danny O'Brien's seminal 2004 talk at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, "Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks":
https://craphound.com/lifehacksetcon04.txt
In the years since, I've cultivated a small – but mighty – repertoire of organizational habits and tools that let me get a hell of a lot done. Weirdly, many of these tools are things that other people hate, and I can see why – they use them in very different ways from me. That's true of browser tabs (I loooove browser tabs):
And to-do lists, which will totally transform your life, once you realize that the most important to-do list is the one you maintain for everyone else who owes you a response, a package, or money:
Other essential tools languish in neglect, artifacts of the old, good web – the elegant weapons that dominated a more civilized age. First among these? RSS readers:
I will freely stipulate that people have a good reason to hate all this stuff. "Productivity porn" is often proffered as a mix of humblebrag (a way to make other people jealous of your almighty "productivity") and denial (fiddling with your systems is a ready substitute for actually doing things). Many (most?) of the foremost self-appointed pitchmen for "lifehacking" are cringey charlatans peddling "courses" and other nonsense.
But if you keep digging, there's a solid foundation beneath all the rot. At its very best, this stuff is a way to figure out what you really want to do, and to organize your life so that the stuff you want to do is the stuff you're doing.
A lot of people get into this kind of thing thinking it'll let them do everything. No one can do everything. The best you can hope for is to make conscious decisions about which stuff you'll never get to, while leaving at least a little room for serendipity.
Like I said, I want to do a lot of stuff. My organizing tactics are as much about deciding what I won't do as they are about deciding what I will do:
Which brings me to another tool that everyone hates and I love: email. I live and die by email.
First of all, I filter all my incoming email: mail from people who are in my address book stays in my inbox; mail from people I've never heard from before goes into a mailbox called "People I don't know." When I reply to a message, Thunderbird adds the recipient to my address book, so the next time I hear from them, they'll stay in my main mailbox.
I also filter out anything containing the word "unsubscribe," sending it into a folder called "Unlikely" (but not if the message contains my name – which is how I can stay subscribed to mailing lists I don't have time to read and make sure to reply when someone mentions me).
Second of all, I have a zillion Quicktext macros that I use to reply to frequently asked questions. I have one that spits out my mailing address; another that spits out my bio; and others for politely saying no to things I don't have time for, for information about how to pay one of my invoices, etc, etc.
Third: I have a small folder of emails that I can't reply to right away (usually because I need some information from a third party), which I review every morning and answer anything that I can clear.
Finally, I save it all. I have so much saved email, which means that if you ask me about something from 20 years ago, there's a good chance I can find it – provided we organized it over email.
All of which explains why I refuse – to the extent that I can – to do anything important over instant messaging, whether that's Signal or any of the other messaging tools that come with social media, workplace software, etc.
I understand why people like instant messaging: it does not overwhelm you with the burdens of the past. It is largely ahistorical, with archives that are hard to access and search. Its norms and register are less formal than email.
And, of course, instant messaging is far superior to email in some contexts. If you're on vacation with friends, having a big group-chat where you can say, "I'm making dinner – is everyone OK with cheese?" is indispensable. Same goes for asking a friend for directions, announcing that you've arrived at someone's office, or confirming whether it's OK to substitute 2% for whole milk on a grocery run.
But if you're like me – if you've figured out how to do as many of the things that matter to you as you can possibly squeeze in, then getting an IM mid-flow is like someone walking up to a juggler who's working on a live chainsaw, a bowling ball, and a machete and tossing him a watermelon while shouting, "Hey, catch this!"
The problem is that if you are asking about something important, something that can't be instantaneously managed by the recipient, then they will have to drop everything they're doing and, at the very least, make a note to themselves to go back to your message later and deal with it. Instant messaging doesn't have an inbox with everything you've been sent. Of course, that's why people love it. But the fact that you can't see all the things other people are expecting you to answer doesn't mean that they aren't expecting it. It also doesn't mean that everything will be fine if you just ignore all those messages.
Instant messaging is a great tool for managing something that everyone is doing at the same time. It's also a nice way to keep an ambient social flow of updates from people in a rocking groupchat. But IM is fundamentally unserious. It is antithetical to the project of making a conscious decision about what you won't do, so that you do as many of the things that matter to you before you get to the end of the road.
A massive email inbox is intimidating, but switching to IMs doesn't make all the demands in the email go away. It just puts them out of sight until they either expire or explode. Far better to decide what balls you're going to drop than to have them knocked out of your hand by a fast-moving watermelon.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
I've been getting some work done on my comics which makes me feel productive instead of lazy. I've also been getting work done on decorations for a VBS I'm helping out with this year. And I also have a craft project I'm doing with polymer clay.
I've definitely filled my days with things to do. It's all good though! Hope you have a wonderful day. Lord bless you!
When I got back from my run I took a look at all the fence repairs Hubby did yesterday. The fence rails had warped and were pulling away from the posts but Hubs put them right. He was going to stain them today but he will have to wait for the return of the sunshine. In Hoya news the wee flower has the most delicate fragrance which I noticed this morning when I walked into the living room. So nice.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I had a bad day. I've been feeling pretty lost for the last month or so, uncertain about the future - where I will live, how I will earn money, etc.
So after the disappointing meeting with my employment counselor that was the cause of said bad mood, and after trying to find places that I could afford but that will never let me rent because I don't have a job, and after desperately trying to get Alba to the vet, but failing miserably because he ran away from me in a panic - I moped. For three hours or so.
Then I had dinner, started my daily chores. I might not be lost after all. I mean, I still won't have a place to live or an income that would allow me to find one, but at least I am able to get off the couch and get started.
A bunch of things have been said in that David Allen book about natural planning and how reverse planning may get you stuck.
However, I've found that adjusting purpose is the best way to get me to "finish" things. By that I mean, shift focus away from finishing. Ironic, since the book is literally called Getting Things Done.
Generally, when doing stuff, we default to want to finish the thing it is we're doing. If it's the dishes, or scrubbing the floor, or making the bed, this is fine. Same with the corporate environment I guess the book GTD was written about.
But for things like watching shows, reading books, you simply cannot have your purpose be "finish." Why? Because Tv shows, movies, and books are longer in scope and more complex than chores, and even those are a tossup on whether you'll do them.
So, what do you do? Adjust your reason or purpose for engaging. This goes for writing and art as well. If you go into a show like "Let's watch the whole thing" or into writing like "let's write a novel", unless you curb your enthusiasm and set a better goal, you'll drop it. 100%
So how do you ensure you'll engage? Take the goal and make it small, or word it as a process, not a finish line:
