Tuesday 8th December 2020

My life is all about making lists currently.

After two weeks on WoWcation, there are a lot of tasks I need to do.  These range from creating editions of The Climb for each day I was “off” to patching a couple of HEMA websites I look after.

I use a variation of GTD to manage my tasks.  The basic idea is that you have a “bucket” for all your incoming tasks and then at a set time during the day or week, you triage them so the important tasks get done first and the smaller tasks don’t forgotten.

The idea of the “bucket” is to have an easy to access place to dump any “oh, I need to…” thoughts.  I use an app called ToDoist and over the years I’ve got quite advanced how I utilise it.

Every ToDo item gets added to my ToDoist inbox.  Because the app is available on my computer and range of devices  (including my Alexa if I need to), it’s always very easy to add a task.  that way I can dd it then forget it.

My Inbox looks very similar to anyone’s ToDo list.  It’s long and messy.  But I then do further work to tidy it up.

I have various projects for various areas of my life.  House, fitness, work.  All the usual ones.  However, I’ve set mine so there are projects for fiction and non-fiction, and even subprojects for various novels.  I have HEMA in there.  I have Warcraft.  It’s truly personalised.

In 2020, due to wanting to have content ideas when I brought The Climb back during Lockdown, I organised the days of the week into pillars. So Monday is admin, Tuesday is HEMA, Wednesday is Warcraft.  I’ve started to use this to aid planning.

I will go through my “bucket” and schedule each task.

Need to analyse my professions in Warcraft and decide what’s left to do?  I’ll move that task from the Inbox of ToDoist to the Warcraft project and set a schedule date for Wednesday.  I may set a time.  I even add a tag as to whether it is something I physically need to do at home, need to leave the house to do, or can do it online.

Some tasks might not wait though.  If there’s a sale on swords that ends before Tuesday’s HEMA day I would obviously schedule that sooner.

I can then go to my today view and see all the tasks that need to be doing.  By organising my days into pillars, I can batch complete a bunch of them.  Inevitably, I’ve scheduled three detailed tasks at the same time so my first task each day is to go through and reschedule, spreading tasks throughout the day.

On a good day I’ll be productive and advance a bunch of projects.  On bad days, a bunch of task don’t get done.  So the overdue tasks get rescheduled.

All this means that what I need to get done each day gets automated.

And of course, after WoWcation there are a bunch of overdue tasks as well as a huge “Bucket” that needs taking care of.  So inbetween catching up on The Climb and continuing to up my raider’s gear in Warcraft,  I’ve been busy scheduling and rescheduling tasks.

But there’s another list I’ve been writing.  Xmas is coming, and I’m really not in the mood this year.  A lot of close family are high risk and so we opted to cancel Xmas this year in favour of a catch up event when everything is over (hopefully next summer).  But there’s still a plan for C and I to have a slap up Xmas, and that means a ton of food.

So I’ve started compiling a list of food we need to buy to make it a great day.  For this, I’m using Notion which I use for all my notes.  That way I can classify everything as whether it is meat or veg or condiments, etc. (to aid shopping as some items obviously can’t be bought until closer the time), as well as keep a note of where it is (as we’ll probably need to utilise both our fridges and freezers)

I still need to buy a couple of gifts but I have to be honest and despite C playing loads of Xmas tunes and putting up a tree, I’m really not feeling Xmas this year.

2020 has been 3000 years long and I’m not really in a mood to celebrate.  At least Xmas signals the year is almost over.  Let’s hope 2021 proves to be better.

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Past Years: 2019 – The Year of Soldiering Through | 2018 – The Year of Priorities | 2017 – The Year Of The Offensive