First Week Back in 2007

This has been a good, productive week. I’ve been making an effort to have a life aside from work, and it’s paying off. I’m happier all around, I’m doing things I want to do (and have needed to do) at home, while making good progress at work. I’m feeling pretty on top of things.

I did my weekly review in the morning today. I used to do it in the afternoon, but too many things got in the way by Friday afternoon, and I often found myself pushing it back till Saturday, or not putting in the proper effort. Today it took me 2 hours and 45 minutes, because I’ve had so much stuff going on, so many ideas bouncing around in my head, and so on. Through the course of the review I generated 36 to-do items in my inbox, which I then of course processed and entered into the system appropriately.

Now it’s time to pay myself back for such a good week — it’s Happy Hour!

Capture While Running

One of the pillars of a good GTD implementation is the ability to capture ideas or thoughts in writing whenever and wherever they occur. This can be a problem when running, biking, or in other situations where one doesn’t want to carry something as substantial as a notepad or PDA.

Several months ago, I found a great solution to this problem: Take a pen (of good thickness) and wrap a sticky note around it, sticking it to itself. This works best when the pen has a clip, under which you should slide the sticky note. Please see the example below:

Ultraportable Capture Device

The clip is also good for holding the pen in your pocket, on your belt, or whatever. If you use both sides of the sticky note, the amount of writing space is actually pretty substantial.

The Inevitable iPhone

The good news: The excellent-looking (and I mean in terms of “It looks good but I haven’t tried it”) iPhone was announced to day.

The bad news: GSM + EDGE and only on Cingular. Blargh. What about WiMax? Such a groundbreaking bit of technology except for the outdated WAN connectivity. Grr.

Back to Baltimore and JHU: Avoiding Burnout

My vacation and my trips to New Orleans and Seattle are are over. I arrived back in Baltimore yesterday, and made my way through the cold, wind, and rain to the lab today.

Hopkins has an “intersession” period at the beginning of January, affording me a brief break from classes. Assuming I passed Models of the Neuron (I still don’t have my grade), and that I pass the two classes I’m going to take this semester, this should be my last semester of classes. Finally. Anyway, for the moment I am free, and I have two more weeks free of immediate and pressing deadlines (i.e. homework).

I plan to take full advantage of this time to knock down Next Actions and finish some projects.

The flip side of this plan is that I am going to try to avoid burnout. In the effort to (a) settle in, (b) keep up, and (c) make a good first impression at JHU, I went full-throttle into the fall semester, working many days 08:00 – 22:00. In short order I found myself burned out but without enough free time to properly recover. I had a very good meeting with my advisor toward the end of the year, in which she suggested that I make time for exercise, meditation, etc.

I know those things are important, but it’s interesting how easily I push them aside when things seem “urgent”.

Thanks to my vacation, I am now well-rested and not a bit burnt out. In fact, I am eager to dig in to my work. However, I’m going to set a few priorities. Call them new years’ resolutions if you like:

  • Exercise – in addition to my daily bike rides, I’m going to continue swimming three times a week, and re-introduce weight training at home to my routine
  • Meditation – I’m going to try to give meditation a higher priority. 20 minutes per day. Surely I can spare that, right?
  • Dharma – I’m going to try to crank through some of the Audio Dharma and Zencast podcasts that I’ve accumulated. Listening to these before, during, and shortly after the Katrina debacle helped to keep me (relatively) sane. It also helps to keep me centered and mindful of attachment.
  • @Home projects – my @Home projects have barely moved in half a year. I’m going to devote some more home time to finishing some of those Next Actions.

Also, several people in my life are climbing on to the GTD bandwagon, and this is giving me renewed interest in streamlining and making more effective my own system. On the flight to Baltimore I spent some time with my treo, whacking the stupid out of my system and re-evaluating some of my stubborn Next Actions. I’ve already seen an increase in my ability to knock down the NAs.