This week I have mostly been giving feedback on manuscripts (still ongoing). Two PhDs have manuscripts that are mostly written, ready for co-author feedback. A third incoming.
I’m working a new todo list system where I spend some time thinking about how much time I need to do a given task and then reserving that time in my calendar. So far it’s doing wonders for my guilty conscience. Instead of constantly thinking about the long todo list and when I should do all these things I can think “I’m doing it on Thursday,” if indeed I think about it at all.
I read about this system in this blog post
here. It made a lot of sense to me because in fact it is quite close
to the system I already have (mentioned in (202401171334)) where every day I
try to write down in a long .md what I do. The big addition
is the use of the calendar to keep the todo list, which previously I had
in a little book. Coupling the thing to be done with the time at which
to do it has a nice simplicity to it, which is important in any
discipline if I am to have any hope of maintaining it.
I’m still trying to figure out how to be a person with Responsibilities. I never used to have them before. I had so few things that I could think either my friend Bjørn will know what I should be doing or if it’s important it’ll turn up eventually. And then I could always do the thing on short notice because I would have so much free time. But no longer. I started suffering from Responsibilities about the same time we had a child, and I’ve been struggling to keep up. But it’s getting better.
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