6096 comments
2357 subscribers
6253 on Twitter
Subscribe! Feed reader E-mail

One to three, that’s all

One to three good pieces of work each day. That’s all I want to check off my list, and anything else is a bonus. On a day-by-day basis, this seems unambitious. Sometimes I wonder if I’m wasting this opportunity of an experiment – but I’m slowly feeling my way around, and it’s good to take my time.

This week’s accomplishments:

  • Monday: business planning, and a meeting with a potential client.
  • Tuesday: book sketchnotes, the book club, and halfway through putting together an e-book follow-up for my talk
  • Wednesday: lunch with another entrepreneur; coffee with Quantified Self organizers and brainstorming; ENT101 sketchnote; finishing the e-book
  • Thursday: digital sketchnoting podcast with Mike Rohde; on a personal note, survived another fitness class
  • Friday: first coworking session at ING Direct; more business planning; brainstormed business marketing with someone

I am so glad I stumbled across the power of writing and review. It’s much too easy to forget about where the time has gone, and to forget to celebrate the small wins.

While I waited for W- to finish his krav maga class, I mapped different emotions and the situations in which I feel them. The predominant emotion for this week has been a little hard to pin down. It’s not quite the thrill of developing code and closing tickets, or the happiness of having everything line up. It’s more amorphous. I think it’s more of a patient, deliberate preparation.

One thing at a time, one step in front of the other. If I accept this as the normal, it’ll probably be much better for me than assuming that normal is a whirlwind of activity.

Then I can hack this pace, bit by bit. I can experiment with breakfasts and other starts. I can write down more challenges and worries, and I can get better at working with other people to make things happen. I can figure out what my “treats” are – those small, productive tasks that give me a thrill – and sprinkle them through my week.

I’ve played with the “manic productivity” setting in life. Let’s see if I can get the hang of “steadily increasing strength.”

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/24168
  • http://www.labescape.com/ Trevor Lohrbeer

    Check out Getting Results the Agile Way. It uses the Rule of 3 for planning: plan for 3 outcomes each day, 3 outcomes each week, 3 outcomes each month and 3 outcomes each year.

    It then adds other practices to help you get more effective at getting things done. I’ve been slowly integrating it for about a month now and it’s definitely increased my effectiveness.

    One thing I do to track accomplishments now is use Google Forms. I’ve created a simple form that let’s me enter my accomplishment once I’ve done it and give it a value for how aligned it is with my goals, the impact it will have and its longevity. My next step is creating a dashboard that let’s me see my accomplishments over time.

On This Day...

  • 2011: Growing as a developer: Automated tests — For this project, I put a lot of time into writing tests. Now they’re paying off. User acceptance testing [...]
  • 2010: Android life so far — It’s been three weeks since I bought my Android phone, and I’m having lots of fun hacking it. Here’s what [...]
  • 2009: How I find and learn from mentors — Would you be willing to describe in more detail how those relationships came to be, and how you’ve gone about [...]
  • 2008: Cintiq 12WX, OpenSuse 11.0, and much pain and suffering — Let that be a lesson to me: Always blog solutions to problems. The cost of doing so is not just [...]
  • 2007: Tips for conference bloggers — Conference reports are a great way to help share knowledge and justify the expense of conference travel, but attendees are often [...]
  • 2006: Stuffing envelopes, writing cards… — <stretch> Halfway through my US/Canada 2006 letters. I’m limiting myself to 100 letters for now, although I *might* send more from the [...]
  • 2006: Learning from the best — I grew up with books and audiotapes of Tom Peters, Zig Ziglar, and Tom Hopkins. I can *still* hear Tom Hopkins [...]
  • 2006: Enthusiastic rapport with Emmanuel and Rob: movies that motivate — What a day, what a day! I went back to Second Cup for coffee with Emmanuel Lopez and Rob Schaumer at [...]
  • 2006: Kudos to Kevin Magee: sales and networking tips — I had a terrific conversation with Kevin Magee over coffee and chocolate chillers at Second Cup this morning. I met him very [...]
  • 2005: Missing — Finals were great. =) Now to figure out where the missing pieces are… I remember going back to my room this [...]
  • 2004: planner tweak: What am I supposed to be doing? — This snippet helps me keep track of what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve bound it to F9 F9. Calling it [...]
  • 2004: PLUG Christmas Party — I would like to invite you to attend and celebrate with us in our upcoming Christmas party and General Assembly this [...]
  • 2004: Kanji sentence — 今年度はデジタル家電の需要の低迷などから1けたの伸びに減速する。 ことしどはデジタルかでんのじゅようのていめいなどからひとけたののびにげんそくする。 減速する。| [It] will slow down. 伸びに減速する。| Growth will slow down. 1けたの伸びに減速する。| Growth will slow down to a 1-digit figure. 低迷などから1けたの伸びに減速する。| Because of sluggishness, [...]
  • 2003: chess.el — Another John Wiegley creation! Mumble mumble… ;)
  • 2003: Natural language processing — http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/11/2358209&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=126&tid=156&tid=185 From Slashdot: Zhang Le, a Chinese scientist working on Natural Language Processing has decided to pack the most important language analysis and [...]

Get the highlights as a PDF!

Stories from my Twenties: Highlights from a Decade of Blogging

Free sample!