I can feel the momentum building, I still have A LOT going on, and I’m not being nearly as productive as I need to be, but I AM improving, I am grateful for the good people that I work with and that have been so understanding so far of all the ‘stuff’ I’m dealing with. I do feel like i;m coming out of the ‘fog’ though and thats a good feeling, much better then the overwhelmed, oh gawd, stop the planet, I want off feeling that I have grown accustomed too over the past 8 months.

With some additional effort and a dash of luck, I;ll be out from under the looming soon.

The trick is to keep moving, it kinda reminds me of a phrase my mother told me… “If you’re going through hell … keep going.” and I have been, and as a result of my colleagues and friends, I have managed to not drown, and I’m grateful for that. Even better, I can feel the momentum and I know things are just going to keep getting better and better … Tomorrow’s meeting should prove insightful too … Will fill you in if and when I can.

Procrastination… it’s an art…

Being more aware of my thinking as of late, I see all of the things that I’m doing that are an actual effort on part of my brain to put things off … How strange is this? Why not just do the things and get them out of the way????

How do I unlearn this art form I have managed to pick up … I don’t want to be a procrastinator, I like getting things done, I feel GREAT when I do. so how did this happen?
Does it really matter? … That would (delving into the why of something as useless as procrastination) be just more of the same…

No more procrastinating … if you see me, remind me of this (expects to hear it from the guys at work).
I want to get things done!!!!!
Thats what I’m going to do right now … so thats it for today

I’m at the 4 week mark and thats a good time to review my progress on my goals for the year I think.

Still in progress for #1, this will be a long haul, but I’m doing the things I need too to make this a reality.
#2 is still lagging, I’m hoping that all the GTD stuff will free up my mind, although I do think that a video camera, some storm trooper helmets and a few friends would be a step in the right direction.
#3 is moving forward, although I am still smoking, I have cut back on my caffeine intake and started to eat better.
#4 was lagging until about a week ago, and I’m happy to report that I’ve hit this mark the past 7 days straight.
#5 started slower then I wanted it too, but I have been practicing.
#6 is an ongoing process, but the autotest was a step in the right direction.
#7 still an unknown.
#8 this is lagging, I haven’t managed to meet up with my group the past two weeks. I’m sure there is a good reason for this though.
#9 is mostly on-track, although I have been lagging in getting them up and my average word count is around 250, this should change now though (with he aid of GTD).
#10 is in a holding pattern, I inquired and now I’m waiting on someone to get back to me with prices.
#11 always needs more attention, but I feel pretty good.
#12 is lagging, if you have some work for me let me know
#13 is looking like a ‘careful what you wish for’ goal, to be debt free, all of your debts come crawling out of the wood work, (so it feels like I’m moving in reverse).

I opted to just update by number this time, so that I’m not giving myself a false sense of word count. Feel free to check a previous Back on Track Experiment post if you can’t recall what the goals for the year were.

I signed up for 43 Things a few months back, and then I forgot about it… Want to know why I forgot about it? Because I added the 43 Things widget to my iGoogle so that I would see it all the time (releasing my mind from having to think about it). Problem was, it’s lower on the page and not somewhere I actually look, so it wasn’t somewhere that I would see it (although my mind thought it was a good enough place to put it to allow me to forget about it).

So my ranting the past few days has been centered around GTD, and clearly, I haven’t been getting anything done (or at least very little). My biggest problem is that I’m taxing my brain to remember far too much, so I took the time to do a brain dump a few days back, and I actually already feel less stressed about some of the things I need to get done, not because there is a lot of forward movement on any of them yet, but because I know that getting them out of my head was a great step in the right direction.

Today I have to get a few more details for a project wrapped up and I’m utilizing the GTD philosophy to manage the project. I haven’t started using OmniFocus to it’s full potential yet, but in the coming days I hope too, such a great tool (and the iPhone support makes another case for acquiring an iPhone in the near future).

So I nabbed a copy of David Allen’s book, and Audio Set, I swapped out my normal nighttime audio to the Getting Things Done Fast seminar. So far, so good. I also actually fired up my OmniFocus because although I have had it for a while I never actually bothered looking at it too closely. The site has a few short video tutorials that got me moving pretty quick, although I still have this nagging feeling that something is missing from my understanding…

The premise to GTD is pretty simple, Collect your ‘stuff’ (write it down / get it out of your head), Process your stuff into actionable, not actionable, Organize your stuff into projects (anything thats more then a single actionable item), and assign a context to them (where you physically have to be to perform the actionable step). This in itself will reduce the clutter in your brain, all that pointless thinking…

David says that the things your thinking about that cause you distraction are there not because they are unfinished, but because you either don’t know what finished looks like for them, and/or you haven’t determined the next step to move them forward, and/or you have not placed a reminder to do the next action step in a place that your mind believes will help you get it done. So you think about it.

There are some interesting parallels between what David Allen is saying about thoughts and the mind and how Eckhart Tolle expresses the thinking self in ‘The Power of Now’. They are both quite correct in their understanding that NOW is the only time, so I’m having a good time so far listening to David and pounding out lists of things that I need to get done. OmniFocus looks like it was designed specifically for the GTD principals, and meshes perfectly with what David is saying.

I’ll update this line of thinking from time to time, but I highly encourage you to check out GTD. (Thanks Craig for reminding me to look at the resources I have, its been a godsend) … After all, nobody is going to manage my life but me.

Yesterday, Craig asked me if I had any good resources for GTD (Getting Things Done)… Because I’m a LifeHacker whore, naturally I did, so I pointed him towards David Allen’s Site, and the 43 Folders Site…

But that got me thinking… Why am I not utilizing my GTD knowledge to help ME get things done?

That said … off I go on a distraction/rampage that hopefully will help me get things organized and done

Some links to get you started if your interested in the GTD philosophy.

David Allen’s Site (http://www.davidco.com/)
43 Folders (http://www.43folders.com/)
LifeHacker (more of a distraction then a strict GTD site, but a GREAT distraction full of usefulness) … (http://lifehacker.com/)
OmniFocus (if your looking for a good commercial GTD app) … (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/)

I have read a fair amount of GTD stuff in the past, but in all honesty i have NEVER really implemented it.
I guess I should take a few deep breaths and plunge in… back to student mode while I re-learn my habits to get things done.