Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Daily log?
mdl | Mar 29 2007
I've been thinking of introducing a daily log into my GTD system but am not sure exactly how to go about it. Why do I want a log? Isn't the beauty of GTD the ability to get stuff off your mind and out the door? There are four reasons I'm interested in a log: 1) I want to assess my work habits/productivity during the weekly review. The action lists don't give me much clue about the order in which I do things or the amount of time it takes to get each thing done. The log would also help me become more aware of why I procrastinate on certain tasks. (Also useful for billing and tax purposes when I do freelance work.) 2) Research tracking. I want to be able to review my academic work to understand how I've gotten to where I'm at--to revisit dead ends, to understand my reading/research habits, etc. 3) Spending & health. To monitor my bad habits. 4) To have a "diary" of sorts. I might consider expanding the log to include brief notes about conversations, activities, observations, etc. This all seems appealing, but I'm also wondering whether it's too much work on top of collecting, processing, and acting. It introduces another level of stuff to be aware of and record. Also, I'm not sure whether to have a single log (simpler - single point of entry) or whether to divide this into multiple logs (spending, health, work, research). Finally, I've gotten myself all confused at how a log relates to collection. In some ways, collecting is a log of thoughts. It's the input side of GTD--stuff that comes into my life that needs attention. But I would also like a running log of the "output" side of GTD--stuff that I do. It would be ideal to keep these two logs distinct. But separating them also introduces a whole new level of complexity into my system. (Right now, I'm all paper, using a hipster PDA.) Any one have any success implementing a log? I'd be interested to hear any advice and/or suggestions. I'd prefer a paper-based solution, as I do much of my work away from the computer. 10 Comments
POSTED IN:
 Great tips here everyone. Thanks! Finally,...Submitted by mdl on March 30, 2007 - 7:57am.
Great tips here everyone. Thanks! cornell;8765 wrote:
Thanks for the tips Cornell. In fact, a while back, the big text file idea inspired me to develop a big text file note system, so I enter my notes into a text file. Link here. I'd agree: text files are fantastic databases, especially when combined with "tagging." So fast. So portable. Using grep, I can find whatever I want. And I have a few aliases and scripts to spit out "tag clouds" or word indexes of any subset of my notes, to get an overview of what's in my ever-growing file. I hadn't thought of putting daily log entries in there, but I might start doing it. (One thing I've found particularly useful is field delimiters. I use two colons--::--as a field delimiter. That way I can search and/or sort by field and also spit out date in a cleaned-up, easily legible format with awk. The only thing is that I have to stick to a very consistent entry format, which might be a drawback for some people.) Anyway, I guess right now my main question has to do with how best to implement the log in a paper format. Right now, I use index cards to capture stuff (including academic notes). These have the advantage of flexibility; I can sort and file them according to topic/subject. But I do, at times, long for a chronological record of my thoughts, ideas, activities, commitments, etc. A Moleskine as a capture device has the value of providing an automatically archived record of one's "stuff." Maybe it's simple nostalgia, but I'm drawn to the idea of being able to flip through past notebooks and see what stuff (both lofty and mundane) preoccupied me at any given time. Right now, I save only the "lofty" ideas; the rest gets thrown away after it's processed and completed. But as I'm realizing, this gives my future self only a very partial view of what my current self is doing. To make a long story short, with index cards, the collection does not function as a log, since all the stuff gets split up, processed, and discarded. With a notebook, a record of the original "stuff" remains even after it is processed. Is there any way to have the best of both worlds? Or am I being greedy? » POSTED IN:
|
|
| EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |
