Getting Organised

Sometimes you just think if I don't change things, I'm going to drown. Either you're drowing in too much work (I wish) or in the circumstances of your life. You might lack motivation or direction for change, more usually the latter. (We all want to better our lives but have no idea how.) I lack focus. I feel capable: I know that I can do; but I lack the ability to work out how to do.

What complicates it for me is that I get downheartened and listless from time to time. At other times, I am bursting with energy and positivity, which is wasted because I have a million ideas and cannot focus them on Getting Things Done. So I am not one of those people who is too busy. I am not busy enough.

But I have figured out that I can focus the manic, up times by using the philosophy of Getting Things Done to Get Organised. GTD involves recognising that all projects consist of actions, and one does the actions, not the project as a whole. You can only be doing one action to make progress in a project at a time. I struggle sometimes because a job looks big and I don't know where to start. Of course, the simple answer is that it doesn't really matter where you start. If you break the project down, you can see that there are lots of littler actions, and doing any one will constitute progress. GTD also realises that collecting together what needs to be done contextually helps you keep clear what needs doing and what can be, well, left undone. So I am going to be writing To Do lists. I have d/l'd a calendar, which seems weird for someone with so little going on, but this is the thing: I can write tasks for my calendar when I feel manic that will structure my life when I feel down. Instead of feeling listless, unfocused, my manic self will direct my down self.

I don't know whether it will work but I am feeling terrible that I am *mumbles* and I have not had a book published, that I do not own a home, that I do not have many friends, that I can be right on the brink money-wise and work-wise when I know that I am smart and capable, that I can be unable to learn a language, that I can fail so much, so often.

posted by Dr Zen @ 1:02 pm