I’m not sure why, but I’m not feeling quite the same level of focus and harmony with my system that I was a couple of months ago. I think that the holidays messed a lot of things up – hard to do certain errands (banking, pharmacy) due to strange holiday hours; people in and out of town; ski days; partial work weeks; parties; and so on.

So here it is a few days into the new year and I realize that I’ve been feeling out of sorts for a week or so now, and now I can finally spend some time focusing. I remembered an item I saw in the GTD document template I’m using in Tinderbox: RedoubledGTD: Overwhelmed? – get back on the GTD horse – conduct Weekly Review.

I noticed that there were things (namely personal objectives) that I was completely ignoring. I noticed that only a few of my contexts had any items under them, and that many had never been used. One particular bugger was “Home” versus “Home Office”. It seemed like a good split at the time, but in a large studio loft, there’s not that much difference. The office-specific tasks are really the “Recording Studio” context items anyways, and that one is used quite heavily.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, remember that the reviews are a chance to review your system as well. If you’re finding things aren’t working, toss them! If you have too many contexts or too many inboxes, use this time to simplify. If you find you look at your 43Things page more than you look at your “Personal Objectives” list, move your objectives into 43Things!

I used to feel stressed about making decisions like this. But I’m starting to get more comfortable with the notion that I can try something different and if it doesn’t work, I can amend it in a couple of weeks.

My lists are starting to get back under control. I feel a lot less freaked out about what I need to get done this weekend than I did when I got up this morning. It’s also nice to have a couple less contexts to place items in.