The Blank Canvas - Day 2

Thursday

10.30 a.m. It’s the same time of day that I started feeling that I’d done everything yesterday, and it’s just the same feeling now except that today I got up an hour later. So the improvements I noted yesterday have had quite an effect.

10.30 p.m. I felt I was losing focus during the afternoon, so switched to a “tighter” no-list method, the one I described in my post on May 9th. It was my original intention to stick to the same system throughout, but in fact it’s one of the advantages of no-list that one can change systems mid-stream without causing a problem.

I’ve got a few points about the order in which I’ve been doing things in the morning which I want to change tomorrow.

Comments

[Don R]

May 9th system is my favorite, and I use it frequently.

[Scott Moehring]

Mine too! The May 9th system is helping me experience leaving work with everything crossed off. I've so rarely felt that in 27 years of work.

The funny bit is that all the stuff I used to fret about are mostly work that I would create for myself. My co-workers are getting everything they need from me, and I'm also moving a couple key personal projects forward. I'm just not stressing about all the "value-add" things that I don't have time to do. I will get to the other projects later (or not). But I won't worry about them because I didn't have time to do them anyway! The only thing I found time to do was write them down over and over and worry about how I wasn't moving them forward.

Another surprising benefit. When someone asks for my time, I am totally available! I used to look at my long undone list and think "argh, I can't afford to give them my time right now". Now I look at my list, see 1 current task and maybe a couple rewritten, and I am able to fully give them my attention. I'm even finding I can drop everything when opportunity strikes! It's remarkable.