HUD, part 2
(continuing from yesterday. This is more of my exhaustive explication of each line-item on my daily “status weblog” at [Heads-Up Display].)
The next section is what I think of as my daily “score”. On a less abstract level, these four lines let me quantify how I’m doing on four basic ongoing goals: “1) Remember to take care of myself & my daily business. 2) Keep my inbox clear. 3) Keep my finances positive. 4) Remember to water my herbs.” Since forgetfulness, communication shortcomings, budget concerns, and straight-up slackerdom are my four big weaknesses in life, these four numbers are a decent indicator of how my day is going.
The first line is “checklist items:“. This is the output of my basic daily todo-list system.
Two of the five essential items I have in my pockets at all times are a spiral-top pocket memo book and a pencil. I like spiral-tops because they’re double sided. I keep my to-do list on the top page of one side, and flip it over to scrawl random notes on the back side. Plus, they sit better in a pocket than the spiral-side kind.
Here’s a quick rundown of my checklist system. (If you’re the tl;dr type, just skip this paragraph, but I know there are other [lifehacker]-type folks out there that get switched-on by this kind of thing.) I separate tasks into only three categories. “new” items are things I just wrote down today. Every morning, I copy over all the “new” items on to a fresh page and write a number in front of it (generally 7 or 14): that’s the number of days I plan to keep the task alive. If an “old” item stays on my to-do list for days, I copy it over again and again, decrementing the number each time. When an item reaches 0, it’s “expiring”– if I don’t cross off an expiring item by the end of the day, I just erase it. (Erasing an expired task is a tough thing to do, psychologically. It generally means admitting that I dropped the ball on something. But taking that hit and getting closure is much preferable to dragging around a todo list of months-old crap. Took me a long time to learn that.)
The memo books I use have 15 lines on a page, so I try to keep the list capped at 15 items max. Yet another good reason to keep your todo list on paper instead of a PDA.
The next line is “inbox:“, followed by a number. My goal is for this number to always be zero. (see [this lecture by Merlin Mann] for a good explanation of what “Inbox Zero” is about.)
The key addition for me is that “Inbox” is an umbrella concept that *includes* my Gmail inbox, but also encompasses all the other ways that people use to communicate me– voice mail, real mail, RSS feeds, Facebook, and all that. It’s the whole ball of string. I try to process (again, see above vid for what I mean by “process”) and respond to *everything* that hits my Inbox within 24 hours. Sometimes I slip. (In fact, I slip a lot.) But if you have a good mental system for processing your ‘box– and I think my system is pretty good– it’s hard to get too far lost.
If the number is higher than zero, it means I have stuff in my Inbox that I’d like to respond to, but haven’t got to yet. If *you* left me a message and my Inbox isn’t zero, then it’s likely yours is sitting right there. To quote [jessicapierce]: Please be patient, I am only a donkey.
The next line is “budget:“. I definitely don’t want to unpack my entire budget process right here either (though, yeah man, I’m proud of my budgeting method too). The main thing to know is that I consider my budget to have only three states: “green”, “black”, and “red”. I update it about once a week.
“Green” means that my savings account is going up. “Black” means that I’m on budget, but haven’t yet met my savings goal for the month. “Red” means that my savings are going down because I’ve gone over-budget. (note: “red” doesn’t mean that I’m broke, just losing money. So don’t panic. I have savings. Right now, “green” means I’m saving 15% of my income straight off the top.)
And the last one is a simple boolean. “checked herbs?“, yes or no. Because I am constantly forgetting to water the potted herbs on our back porch, and if you forget to water them on hot day they get toasted.
So that’s it for that. There’s still 6 blocks to go. I’ll keep going tomorrow.
Comments
Leave a Reply
