TonsofTime - Enjoy the now

This spring, performances of the opera Satyagraha of Philip Glass had a tremendous reception in New York and London. This opera, although composed 28 years ago still moves the audience with its repetative cords that bring near exaltation or trance. I hope to see it sometime if I get the chance.

I remember that I was working for the peace movement in The Hague when in 1982 Gandhi the movie came out and we all got an invitation to see the film prior to the premiere, as were all peace activists I knew.

In my library is the autobiography of Gandhi. I decided to get a copy, because on a couple of lists about “books that changed my life”, like this one included this life story from the man that hated to be called ‘Mahatma’. In this book, the image of a very honest and outspoken man is painted, somebody who is just as open about his failures as he is about his triomphs.

In her article on the Huffington Post, Linda Stone argues that time management, with all it’s never ending lists, causes feelings of helplessness and overwhelm. At the end of the day, the lists seem to get longer, in spite of the fact that you have crossed-off several items. This is how she puts it:

In the cases where people reported managing their time, they more often reported experiencing burn-out, they didn’t know how much longer they could go on at their particular job or lifestyle. There was often a sense of helplessness and overwhelm. The endless list, the one that gets added to and never completed, at the center of it all, left them with a heavy heart and a burdened sense of tomorrow.

Linda argues that the answer lies in managing your attention, not your time. You can do this by making a closed list at the beginning of the day and only put things on this list that you intend to really do. Also, an important part of Linda’s solution is switching off all the distracting technology, like IM, Twitter and cellphone.

Mark Forster also recommends (among other things) to trade in you to-do list for a will-do list. In his book Do It Tomorrow he writes that:
Open lists are demotivating, because:

• They tend to grow
• New items can be added
• Difficult to clear

Closed lists are motivating, because:

• They tend to get smaller
• Nothing new can be added
• Relatively easy to clear

Mark recommends to make a do-able list for 1 day and stick to it as much as possible. If you get new tasks on you desk or in you e-mail, put them on your list for tomorrow. Besides this idea, Mark offers a lot of other insights and techniques in his excellent book.

So what do I use?
So, is the rejection of the open list the end of time management, as Linda puts it? Not according to Mark Forster and I agree with him. If I make a task list for a particular day, I feel much more motivated to finish this list. One of the big disadvantages of Getting Things Done (GDT) is that it stimulates procrastination. I still use all the context lists of GTD, but I also use the task diary of Mark Forsters system, so I combine both. I digitally copy the tasks that I intend to really complete on that day from my context list to my task diary, and stop adding to that dated list during the day. This works great!

In May 2007, Mike Kavis decided that he would change the OS of his laptop to Linux. Furthermore, he decided to use as much non-Microsoft software as possible, while more than 1000 people of the company he works at, use Windows XP with Office.

This whole “Microsoft free” experiment started when a colleague of mine challenged me to eat my own dog food after reading many of my posts about my dabbling with open source technologies. The next day, after a few blue screens of death and various issues with Outlook, I grabbed a Ubuntu CD and installed it on my laptop….at work! From that day forward, I have not used a single Microsoft product at work.

Read Mikes article about this here.

Too busy to meditate? Why not start a meditation group in your workplace? Put an announcement on the intranet and find a quiet place to sit together in a small group once a week (Wednesday) before lunch.

Read more about this idea on the site Sit at Work.

Photo by Alan Oliveira

If you think of an action you have to do, but you cannot access your context lists or you do not have a list for that context, it is possible to strongly visualize a moment in the future and think about the task that you have to remember to do in that moment.

Example: you are riding on your bicycle, headed to the railway station. You have 30 minutes of biking to do and cannot write anything down. Suddenly you remember that you have to go to the ATM at the station. Then it helps to visualize yourself parking your bike and then saying to you future-you: “ATM!”.

I have tried this several times, and it works like this: when the visualized moment actually arrives, you get a hunch that there was something that you should think about. When you pause for a moment and try to remember, the imprint from the past suddenly pops to your mind: “ATM!”

Reverse memory
This works like a reverse memory. A memory is a thought about something in the past, but the reverse memory is a thought we try to think about in the future.

I have learned that Leonardo Davinci also used pre-imagination in the creative process, so I am in very good company :-).

Yesterday, I attended a talk by Wilco Jansen, coordinator of development at Joomla. Discussing interface design, he referred to this talk by Barry Schwartz, psychologist and author of the book Paradox of Choice. His argument is that if we have more choice, we often feel more constrained. I watched the video this morning, and found it very interesting!

Click here for a larger video.

As usual the website The World Question Center is not afraid to ask the big questions. This year, a great number of famous artists, writers, scientists and thinkers respond another intellectual appeal. This provides us with an interesting outlook on contemporary thought.

The World Question Center 2008

Photo by Carf

The blog I will change your life features a great list of tips to change your life for the better.

This has been a major year of change in my life - I became a father for the first time in February, I began blogging in April, I relocated from Australia to Canada in July, and I started a new job in November. Along the way I have picked up a variety of tips that I have incorporated into my daily routine to make life happier, healthier, and more productive. Here are 50 of my favourites:

Here is a link to this great post!

For some of you this is old news, but I still find the IBM Linux ad great:

One of my favourite blogs Lifehack.org has a good article by Shane Magee about how to maximize time for yourself by creatively adjusting your daily schedule.

Sometimes it seems like your life just isn’t your own anymore - work, family, and other obligations swallow it up to such an extent that we often look back and wonder where all the time went! No wonder, then, that many of us feel as if life is just passing us by, and we can do no more than helplessly watch. However, with these tips and a little willpower, you can create time to center yourself and face the world with renewed enthusiasm.

Five Hints to Reclaim Time for Yourself