Last week I wrote about the smallest unit of getting stuff done:
the TODO item (or "task" as I've taken to calling them now).
Since it's a new month (we're only three days into it and it
still has that "new month smell"), I feel like it's a great time
to write about the largest unit: the month.
NOTE: When I say "the largest unit", I mean "the largest
unit *I* currently have a system for." Not the "largest
possible unit of planning" (which I suppose is closer to the
Clock of the Long Now. Or Asimov's Foundation series...)
For years, I tried various ways of planning my days. It always
failed. I suspect my earliest attempts were lack of discipline
in deadly combination with youthful inflexibility. (Here you can
imagine a young guy muttering, "well, I failed to follow _that_
plan to the letter, now it's all crap. Planning is crap!")
Parenthood sharpened up my self discipline, but suddenly my
ability to plan became even more challenged. You simply _cannot_
predict your day when you have one (or more!) children under a
certain age living in your house. It will end in tears for
everyone.
I found that I couldn't even plan a week anymore. Just one cold
or flu in the family could wipe out a whole week (or more).
Particularly painful was realizing that even the venerable
_weekend_ was no longer a steady source of good, whole blocks of
free time. I'm sure experience varies, but in my experience,
parenting means no longer being in charge of your own schedule.
What to do? Give up?
I tried that and found that I didn't like it.
Nope, it turns out I just needed to expand the size of my
planning block. To stop trying to exert fine-grained control
over time and start thinking in big, flexible blobs of time.
The month
=================================================================
Okay, a week is too unpredictable. A year is too big and
unknowable (for me) to plan.
But a month? I'm finding it to be the "Goldilocks" of personal
planning: long enough to absorb a lot of chaos, but small enough
to predict and stay on track.
The theme system
----------------
I'm a long-time listener to The Penaddict Podcast. One of the
hosts, Myke Hurley, came up with a notebook design called The
Theme System Journal. The notebook has some clever features
worth stealing, but the part that really caught my attention was
the idea of having a "yearly theme". Something about the word
"theme" appealed to me.
So I started to think about what theme I might want to pursue in
a year.
I have a broad spectrum of interests and I simply couldn't do
it: I couldn't come up with any one theme that would encompass a
year's worth of my life (other than something hopelessly vague
like "family".) Nope, if there's anything I've learned, its that
I don't do well with vague.
So I shelved that idea, but it kept cropping up as I continued
to explore new ways to use my paper logging and text file
transcription system.
The monthly theme
-----------------
At the beginning of February (last month), I got the idea that
it was time to clear my head of all of the separate project
ideas swirling around up there. So I grabbed a large notebook
(already half full of misc. notes) and dedicated a page to each
project. That felt good, but it was still pretty chaotic: how
could I rank the importance of each project and track my
progress across all of them?
Well, one thing lead to another and the next thing I knew, I had
another page dedicated to the month of February with a list of
the things that were most important to me. How to tie it up with
a bow?
All of these separate projects didn't add up to a cohesive
"goal"... But they _did_ have a common theme!
So that's how February became my month themed "Get your house in
order".
All of my goals for the month involved getting my "house" in
order: digitally, financially, and in my actual, physical,
wood-frame house.
And on February 9, I started really paying attention to my
month.
In practice
=================================================================
Here's how it went: a couple times a day (like in the morning or
when I got home from work), I checked the back of my notebook. I
had my theme written there and a list of tasks with checkboxes.
All of those checkboxed items were related to the theme.
Yup, it's just a traditional TODO list, but each of those tasks
meant I was making _real progress_ on something important to me.
Note: I had a separate page with "someday" TODOs that I didn't
want to forget, but which wouldn't help me progress on my theme.
When I had a free moment (and was feeling up to it), I would
pick one of those items and work on it.
It was absolutely incredible to look back at each week and see
how much I'd done.
If you'd asked me how productive I'd been any of those weeks,
and I had to rely on just my memory, I would have been able to
list only a fraction of the things I'd actually accomplished. I
would have seriously undersold my productivity.
After a couple weeks of this, I gained a whole new appreciation
for the *size* of a week. Even with a family. Even with a full
time job and a commute. Even having whole days where I felt so
run-down, I didn't do much at all.
(I also started the practice of writing a weekly wrap-up, which
I found immensely useful. I'll probably write about that next).
Anyway, contrary to my recollection, it turned out each week was
_chock full_ of stuff I'd done. It turns out couldn't accurately
remember what I'd done back on Monday (or I often remembered the
thing, but incorrectly attributed it to the previous week).
If each week was better than I thought, then how about the whole
month?
Well, I completed all of my tasks for the theme and completely
blew all of my expectations out of the water. It totally changed
my impression about the size of a month ("wow, that distant
thing was _this_ month?") and the amount of stuff that could be
done in a month.
Low expectations
----------------
If this sounds like bragging, then I'm doing it wrong, so let me
be clear:
1. Some of my goals were _tiny_ like, "log into the bank
website" or "rename my wiki directory"
2. I was amazed at my success because I'd been _feeling so down_
for *years* about my inability to get anything finished.
3. I had previously felt like time was flying by at a terrifying
rate.
In other words, I was hopefully optimistic, but my expectations
were very, very low.
Why 'theme' is the right word
-----------------------------
Here's why I think it works so well:
First, a monthly 'theme' (rather than, say, 'goal' or 'plan')
implies a softer relationship between the total outcome and
success.
For me, that's important:
I didn't 100% "get my house in order." Half of the house is
still a freaking disaster. My financial plans are back on track,
but they're hardly "done". I'm no where near satisfied with my
digital life.
So I might not have achieved any particular _goal_, but I sure
as heck made a lot of progress on my _theme_ in February!
Mini-tasks
----------
Another part of that softer touch is the idea of making tasks as
easy as possible.
I mentioned that some of my tasks were as simple as logging into
a website. I'm not kidding about that.
I knew that the real barrier to getting some of the least
pleasant chores done was just getting over the initial hurdle of
_starting_ them.
"[ ] Get brokerage stuff squared away" is very typical of the
sort of TODO I _would_ have written for myself in years past.
That's an awful TODO because: 1) It's a heavy task with many
implied sub-items. 2) It can't be accomplished in a sitting. 3)
It's intimidating. 4) It has no clear end (when can I say I'm
_really_ squared away?).
Now I write "[ ] Log into brokerage account". That's a great
task because: 1) It's trivial to accomplish. 2) It will get me
started on the larger goal. 3) It will feel good to check off
the list.
There's more to say about this, but I think I'm starting to
steal content from a future phlog post (and this one is probably
getting plenty long enough as it is...)
Conclusion
=================================================================
If you read this far, thanks for reading my ramble.
If it sounds interesting, give the theme concept a go.
Experiment with it, one size absolutely does not fit all.
Have a good March, ladies 'n' fellers 'n' underground dwellers!
P.S. My theme for March is "Build a game". Holy crap, wish me
luck.
