Excursions avatar

Excursions

The last few days have been extremely hectic at the office for me. I want to get hold of things, but there just are too many threads to look after. I need some system of sorts – I know prioritizing and time-bounding the tasks has helped me in the past. Plus I have come across so many useful systems for getting more done.

But I, of course, still need a system that works for me. I am starting small – stitch a list of tasks, merge a few to shorten it, and finally get them lined up to be ticked off. My only concern at this point is I am adding a lot more tasks to the list than I am getting off of it.

My hope was things would settle down in a couple of days. I am afraid it’s not going to correct on its own. Tells me something is inherently wrong with how I am managing stuff.

The last few days have been extremely hectic at the office for me. I want to get hold of things, but there just are too many threads to look after. I need some system of sorts – I know prioritizing and time-bounding the tasks has helped me … www.amitgawande.com/2024/01/0…

I came across this prompt a while back, which I had no opinion on. I wanted to attempt to elaborate my thoughts on it now.

If someone looked at how you spent your time over the last year, would what they see as your priorities match what you see as your priorities?

They won’t.

I had set health and focus as my priority for the year. Even after starting the year well, I didn’t spend enough time on any of those. What’s worse is that towards the end of the year, I was numb enough not to attempt doing any of them.

The results are here to show. I am distracted. I am not in the best of my shape.

Is it time to set them as a priority again, then? Nope. It is time to discover why my attempts were derailed later last year.

Back from a week-long vacation, the first thought I had when I logged into my system after a couple of days rest was I must have missed so much. I wasn’t wrong, of course. My feed reader and timelines were full of unread posts. I did what any sane mind should do - I marked all items as read and started fresh.

It’s very unlike me. I tend to skim through the list and keep things to catch up on later and discard everything else. I simply discarded everything this time. I have learned from the past. I rarely catch up. The list stares back at me the psychological pressure rising with each day until I eventually mark everything as read.

I pre-empted that this time.

One entry missing from the list to handle this time was my email inbox. Surprisingly, HEY has that covered brilliantly. Nothing that’s not of interest reaches my inbox anymore. After a period of indecision on the utility of HEY, I am hooked to the service now that it has solved my email problem.

Back from a week-long vacation, the first thought I had when I logged into my system after a couple of days rest was I must have missed so much. I wasn’t wrong, of course. My feed reader and timelines were full of unread posts. I did what an… www.amitgawande.com/2023/12/3…