Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Meditation on "Minimalism: the ultimate life hack" (Everett Bogue)

I've been thinking about this post by Bogue for a number of days.

He lays out nine ways to focus on your priorities, and I've been mulling them over.  And like one of those jawbreakers, the questions keep changing but are still hard.

And then I signed up for some free journalling prompts and on day one, today, had something of an epiphany, and it's all fitting together.

But first things first:  the nine.  Go over to the original post to see Bogue's commentary on each of these.  It's important.

1.   Identify the four areas of your life that are most important to you.
For purposes of full-disclosure, I have some other "must-dos" that don't fall into the "most important to me" category.  Housework.  Cooking. Chauffeuring.  So these are my top four things that are actually important to me, LOL!
  • Reading/Study/Journalling
  • Music
  • Craft
  • Genealogy

2. Learn to say no to requests.

I don't think I have a lot of requests that I deal with on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis.  But I'll keep this in mind.

3. Start to eliminate things you don’t care about.

I have some volunteer work that falls into this category.

4. Give yourself huge blocks of time to work on one project.

This is an eye-opener.  For me to focus on items 2 or 3, I really need to have hours at a stretch.  Bogue suggests finding chunks of 5 hours.  I could really make progress on these items if I can allocate that kind of time.  I mean, I CAN allocate that kind of time....I just haven't realised that I NEED to.

5. Turn off distractions.

Uh, yeah.  This is a huge thing for me.  Internet, blogs, twitter, etc etc.  I need to corral that time into some manageable chunks.

6. Don’t comment on things that you don’t want to be involved in.

Not sure that this is an issue for me, although something along these lines came up today and it got dumped in my lap.

7. Make time for important things.

If I plan it right, I can get my must-dos into a manageable time commitment and then can chunk off big swaths for my important things.  

8. Tell people about your priorities.

Not an issue here.  Very supportive family and friends.

9.  Learn as much as you can.

Again, I'm already doing a lot of reading and not enough doing!  I know where and what I want to learn.  With some time-chunking, I am coming to the realisation that I can accomplish a lot. 

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The journaling prompt had me write and reflect on a highlight of my day.  Without going into detail, I learned that what is important to me, and what I have been missing over the past few years since I left the paid workforce, is a sense of focus, with a deadline (self-imposed is fine), and the resulting sense of accomplishment.

You see how this all fits together?  By chunking my time, and focusing on the important, I hope to be able to set myself some real goals for each of my important areas.  And actually make progress on my family tree.  Make myself a computer bag.  Sew curtains for our bedroom.  Read my Western Civ book.  Things that I haven't "had time for" because I was trying to get them done in an hour here or there.

1 comment:

bashtree said...

I love it. I read the same entry and for some reason I didn't bother to respond. Maybe I'll do that now!