Another Mother Dies, Plus a 2005 Blog Round-Up

In what feels right on the heels of my own mom's death, my wife's mother passed away this weekend. I hope you'll forgive the lately chaotic posting frequency and content of mine (I continue to experiment with these). On top of this is a series of workshops (always fun) which have required some juggling to keep in place. As a former musician and performer, the show must go on! (Well, as much as possible :-)

So allow me to punt and share some older posts you may not have read. If they are still with you, enjoy your moms!

• On The Power Of Saying "Thank You"
  
• Transitions: A Secret Ingredient To Getting Things Done?
  
• What's Your Maximum Response Time?
  
• Debbie Downer And The Six Thinking Hats
  
• "Interesting, But Not Useful," Or Does It Pass The Scribble Test?
  
• Pickle Jars, Text Files, And Creative Idea Capture
  
• Use The STING Method To Stop Procrastinating
  
• On Saying Yes - 3 Possibilities: Always Yes, Always No, Or Only When You Really Want To
  
• Handling Worries: Keep A List, Schedule Them, And Have A Worry Place
  
• E + R = O (Event + Response = Outcome) - Dealing Appropriately With "cringe" Inbox Items
  
• Organizing Electronic Documents GTD-Style?
  
• Temporal Binoculars
  

Comments

[jp in MD]

to you and your family on the passing of your mother in law.

I was reading some of the references to the older posts and the one about "Does it pass the scribble test?" asks do you have a metric for evaluating your inputs? Well yes sort of...

Some stuff if I thin it may be important, I write down, on what is more or less a temporary To Do list. It is more like the current operating plan but it can change on a moment's notice. Stuff on this list may get done, or it may get deleted, or it may be transferred to: A) a more permanent to do list, B) an action list (a to do list with interrelated items) C) a follow up list, basically a to do list with items that cannot be done right off...

Some ideas I jettison as not being worthwhile no matter how interesting they are while a number of ideas are jettisoned on the idea of "There is already a reminder in place for this..." "

For instance treating my grey hair. I am not going to write this down, I get reminded of this every day I look in the mirror it is pointless to write this down...

If you really come to think about it, there are tons of reminders every day in our home our car, the radio etc. So it is redundant to write down so much stuff. Much of my shopping takes place once I get to the store and look at the flyer, I used to try to mark up the weekly grocery store insert at home with what I wnat to buy but it just takes up space sitting on a counter. basicall I either just throw it into the car for later or just wait till I get to the store. Same with advertisements on the radio.

There are reminders on my bulletin board, there are reminders on my calender, there are reminders when I pull a folder and leave it on my desk, there are reminders in my bathroom where my toothbrush is..>The list goes on and on.

Note that this clashes with Allens' idea you have to write every step down. But if you think about it a todo list is nothing more than a reminder, it functions exactly like my mirror does for grey hair or my bulletin board does or my email acccount does. There's nothing better about it.

So I jettison a lot of idea on basis of "Already a reminder in place.."

[Jeri Dansky]

Matthew, I'm so sorry to hear about your wife's mother; my heart goes out to both you and your wife.

And thank you for your choice of painting to illustrate this post; I wasn't familiar with it, and it's both beautiful and a perfect complement to the post.

[matthewcornell]

Thank you for your sympathy, Jeri. Re: the painting, I'm happy you like it. [ Frederic Lord Leighton - Google Search | http://images.google.com/images?q=Frederic+Lord+Leighton&\1oe=utf-8&\1rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&\1client=firefox-a&\1um=1&\1ie=UTF-8&\1ei=oPdQS6jONc2QtgeZ0MGtDA&\1sa=X&\1oi=image_result_group&\1ct=title&\1resnum=1&\1ved=0CBcQsAQwAA ] is pretty amazing; I think Lachrymae (Mary Lloyd) is one of his best.

[matthewcornell]

Hey, jp, thanks for sharing your workflow. You cover lots of categories: capture of incoming stuff, processing it, saving appropriate reminders, and the impact of environment on reminding. Regarding whether (or how much) the latter is effective is interesting. If it's activities like brushing teeth, then of course you don't need a reminder - you've internalized it into a habit. If it's a grocery list, I'd go nuts if I didn't write it down during the week then take the list with me. I invariably forget something otherwise. Regarding the gray hair (me too!), I think this is a serious category: "Problems with frequent environmental reminders." For me there's a slight obsessive edge around these, such as aging teeth, that's not productive. A big question I'm grappling with is handling problems that I'm acting on in the future (surgery or a dental appointment), not able to act on now (not enough money), or that can't be helped (gray hair, say). Just my initial thoughts...

Thanks for getting me thinking!