stick to a schedule

Well, I’ve been trying out this software called TimeTo, and it supposedly helps you keep a schedule while staying flexible.

I really like the idea of having floating tasks in your calendar, so that even if you want to start something at 10am, if it doesn’t happen, it’ll just drag the task along with the clock, within the limits you’ve set. (Like, I have to do this some time during working hours, but it doesn’t matter when exactly.)

The interface is a bit difficult, I think, which hampers my using it fully, but it’s been a great help reminding me to do certain things I have to do every day, and if work didn’t require me to use Outlook for managing my calendar, I’d probably be using TimeTo entirely instead. I might even register it, but now it just sits idly on my disk. Heh.

Anyway, you can take a look for yourselves, it’s a free download, and I think you can keep using it even after the trial – it just asks you every now and then if you want to register now (no more than once per day so far.)

http://www.timeto.org/

I’ve read (and am rereading parts) David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It’s a great book for inspiration on how to deal with low-level stuff – the nitty gritties that Covey’s seven habits don’t deal with very specifically. In that way, the two books supplement each other very well.

Anyhow, I’ve taken up the advice of using my calendar for only those things that must be done on a specific date. It’s working wonders for me. For one, I’ve found a great online calendar (http://www.kiko.com/) that does exactly what I need and little else. Great tools makes you want to use them, and when you only enter things that really belong in the calendar, you have a pretty clear view of what must happen when. Looking at the calendar every day is pretty much natural for me now, and getting the things in there done, more or less too.

I guess I’m not so much sticking to a schedule as making the schedule stick to me, but I’m happy.

I’ve started carrying around a pocketmod at all times. Now I just have to do regular brain dumps into it, and a weekly cleanup routine evaluating the things in it.

I tried using an html GTD wiki thingie, but it’s not working yet – probably because I only have it available on my laptop which I’ve started to leave at work.

I’m pretty sure I can get the pocketmod planner to work, especially now that I’m reading and working with Covey’s 7 habits. Covey says to schedule your priorities rather than prioritize your scheduled things. This is great advice, I guess – decide how important something is, and then decide how much time it gets (if anything at all), instead of putting everything in the schedule and then saying ‘Oh, that wasn’t so important anyway, so it doesn’t matter I didn’t get around to it.’

Next habit is pulling out the pen whenever I have to remember something.

I forgot something important – updating my schedule to fit my world. I haven’t been following my schedule at all since the last entry.

Rugby training has moved to Monday, as has trumpet practice, except that’s going to move again in January. This leaves Tuesdays and Thursdays wholly open for doing stuff.

I’m also going to cut down on the number of things I’m doing. I want to try and focus my energy more, and I guess the only way is to remove things that aren’t so important. One of my greatest problems is that I keep getting ideas that I just have to start doing right away rather than stack onto my list of things to do.

I’m going to start a hipster PDA or something like it – my wife suggested that I could keep small cards (like business cards) in my wallet for taking notes and such. Could work, I’m definately going to try that. Then, when I get a new idea, I’ll write it down for later evaluation, instead of jumping right into it.

So, without further ado, my schedule for January, as far as I know:

Monday: Trumpet, dinner, rugby. Not much time for anything.

Tuesday: OnTrack, web page updates.

Wednesday: OnTrack, blogging.

Thursday: Dunderhill, blogging.

Friday: Blogging, Dunderhill.

Saturday: OnTrack, Dunderhill, blogging.

Sunday: Prepare rugby training, Dunderhill, OnTrack.

Blogging includes writing entries on 43things as well as posting on my own blog (http://whee.dk/blog/) and commenting on other people’s blogs. I want to write on my own blog at least once a week, and friday seems like as good a time for that as any other time.

Well, Monday I spent some time looking over a rugby coaching web site, which I do think counts as preparing for rugby training. Didn’t get around to working on Softplan, but did wife-generated work. Check off Monday as a success.

Tuesday, I had rugby training, which was great, and I managed to add a feature to one of the web sites that I webmaster. Check off Tuesday.

Wednesday, there was a swimming competition, so I didn’t actually get in the water as I was controlling the competition software, but my baby did swim. After that, though, I didn’t get much done. Wednesday can’t get more than half a check-mark.

Thursday, I played the trumpet with my coach, which was really good after a 5 week break. Didn’t get around to working on my MUDs, which sucks. Thursday gets a check-mark, but only a small one.

So that’s at least pretty good, I think, for a start. Getting in gears about following a schedule, and finding time to at least do some of the things I want to do along with the things I have to do – I read something about baby steps somewhere.

Simple schedule for now, which I’m going to try to stick to, meaning that I’m pretty sure wife has other stuff that needs doing as well, and they take precedence. So after her tasks for me are done, I’ll do things in the sequence I’ve listed, and not go on to the next one until I’ve clocked at least an hour on one thing, or am out of sub-tasks for that project.

Monday: Prepare rugby training, Softplan

Tuesday: Rugby training, update web pages, sudoku game

Wednesday: Baby swimming, update web pages, Softplan

Thursday: Trumpet practice, Dunderhill/Wyrden

Friday: ewai, Dunderhill/Wyrden, KillBugs

Saturday: Practice trumpet, Softplan, update web pages

Sunday: Prepare rugby stuff, write on book, sudoku game

Every morning before I hit the shower, I’ll do 10 push-ups and 10 sit-ups, which should be enough to get me started.

I’ve a feeling I’ve missed something, but at least it’s easy to adapt the schedule to life and its oddities. ;)

Well, I started this 5 days ago. Still haven’t even made the schedule. I got so caught up on this idea that I started making a piece of software for making a schedule. Silly me. I should have made a manual schedule first, and then only work on the software when I’d planned to.

Free times are sparse, though, I’ve identified that much… oh well, schedule going to be up over the weekend, I promise myself.

So I’m setting up a schedule for myself. Having a baby and a Wife With Plans™ naturally means that I can’t stick 100% to any plan I make, but at least I’ll be know exactly what I should be doing when I have a spare moment.

Well, I need to do three things to get started:

• Determine things I want to do. 43 things helps me with this.
• Determine free times during each day.
• Determine when to do which things, and how much of each thing.