Life Hacks
Goal Tracking
Inspired by Gretchen Rubin, who was inspired by Benjamin Franklin, I've been using a Google Spreadsheet as a dashboard for tracking personal goals and resolutions. It's similar to stuff I've used for work projects, only applied to my life.
The most success I've had was with a personal goal tracking dashboard for Groupaya. Each week, I give myself a point for:
- Playing basketball (or simply shooting around)
- Taking a long walk (1+ hours), going for a run, or generally working out
- Taking a play day. I include holidays here.
- Turning off my work email before dinner on weeknights
- Not checking my work email on Saturday or Sunday during the day
I track weekly points, yearly averages, and a rolling four-week average.
Work Big
I have a dual monitor setup: Samsung SyncMaster 204BW (20" widescreen) and a Dell 24" monitor. In 2011, I converted my desk into a standing desk using a couple of IKEA platforms. When I get tired, I switch to my laptop and sit down somewhere comfortable.
Whiteboards are expensive. I ended up buying a barely used, magnetic whiteboard, which I love.
Task Management
I use a combination of Chandler and Gmail with multiple inboxes and superstars.
I used to use todo.txt, which I still really like. I hope to write a todo.txt clone using Chandler as the backend.
The Big Picture looks really nice. Integrated task management and calendar with sharing, plus a clever visual interface. Probably doesn't have Chandler's import/export capabilities, though.
I'm starting to move away from Chandler. I am highly conflicted by this, because Chandler is still a great tool, it does things others still do not, and I'm on the board of OSAF. However, development has stalled, and there's no ecosystem right now. Specific issues:
- Poor collaboration support. Sharing is hard with anyone other than other Chandler users, and it's hard for them too.
- Poor mobile support. There's an Android client but it's add only, which is useless.
I looked at a lot of other tools, and I'm starting to settle on Remember The Milk and Google Calendar. Remember The Milk as a tool is okay, but they have done an amazing job on building an ecosystem. There's a great Android client, there's integration with a lot of tools that I use, etc.
I used to use todo.txt. I would sync the data files between my home server and my laptop. It consisted of a single to do list, and each item could be mapped to projects and contexts (as prescribed by Getting Things Done).
I don't use that many contexts. Things like "@computer" aren't useful for me, because I'm almost always near my computer. My main contexts are:
- @call
- @write
- @errand
I use aliases for each of these contexts, so that when I'm near my phone, I can quickly type tocall to see a list of people I need to call across all my projects.
When I'm not near my computer, I keep lists on good old paper, which I eventually transfer to my computer. I like index cards, but not for managing tasks, as the stack would quickly become unmanageable.
Time Management
Spend the first hour of your workday email-free. Finish a high-priority task first thing in the morning, then check your email.
Schedule a post-work appointment to prevent post-work lingering.
I have rudimentary calendaring software -- no meeting maker or anything of the like. When I propose a meeting (both business and personal), I'll enter it in my calendar delimited by parentheses so I don't accidentally overbook.
Time Tracking
Using Hamster on Linux. Experimenting with Lumina on the Mac; would need to write some scripts to merge the information. Or, I could use SlimTimer.
RescueTime for Mac/Windows is intriguing. May be worth it, even though there's no Linux support. Should also