Although it is not the topic of this post, let’s first of all start with the positive aspects. The good thing is that you actually see, that you manage something. Yesterday I had a lot of tasks on my list, that I managed to cross out. This gave me a lot of motivation.
For today that is different. I did not manage to cross out one thing yet. And as crossing out a lot of stuff gives you motivation, the opposite also gives you the opposite feeling – it’s quite depressing, somehow.
So what was I doing all day? Oh yes, I remember, I worked on one project of mine, at a task that was not on the list yet.
Then I had two meetings, meetings that went quite good. We archived something and went out with a lot of motivation for the next tasks.
And last but not least I have two time critical tasks, I needed to do. They just came in, and had highest priority, so I really had to do them. Oh, and I managed to write and send a letter.
But all these things where not on any of my lists. They just appeared today, and needed to be done. But as there was nothing on the lists to cross out – it does not feel as something that I archived for today.
So one thing I still need to learn is not to feel bad if you have such days as today. Or maybe to write everything down, even if you need to do it asap.
Or add the completed task afterwards to your list. This way you see you archived something and you feel good again.
Hm, yeah. But that is not really sense of the context lists. According to David Allen (GTD) and especially to Leo Babauta (ZTD), is simplicity one of the important facts of a self management system. Your lists should be as short as possible, so you just need a glance through them. This is also why it is better to move old tasks to a new list, if more then 70% of your list is already done.
But anyway, I just found an interesting tool on the internet – a kind of track logger for goals. I will write an extra post on that one, as soon as I have some spare time.