old years day [12/31/2007 11:37:20]

So. I spent a week helping a friend through sort of a rough time. Then somehow I got interested in poker (of all things!) and geeked out on all the math and logic that goes into winning that game consistently, and that became an obsession. When I realised I'd lost a month to it, I spent a week or two just catching up, only to head off to texas for ten days to visit my family. Somewhere in there, I spent two days helping to rebuild a bridge.

I've been craving those personal test cases. Some of the individual tests don't seem all that important in retrospect, but the combined effect made for one of the most productive periods I've had in a long time. Certainly the most clear-headed one.

Looking back a little further, I still think there's something to be gained from having big year-long goals as well as tiny daily habits. Otherwise, the daily checklist is just a well-tuned engine purring along in a car that's stuck in neutral. What I really want is to apply that discipline toward the pursuit of some larger goal.

So what's my goal? I've realized that I tend to make a lot of potential futures in my imagination, and they're all interesting and fun to think about, and it's more fun daydream about ten cool ideas than to set aside nine of them and dedicate myself to only one. Or even to just decide on the order in which I'll tackle them.

But that's what I need to do, and so that's what I'm doing today.

My plan is to... Well, make a plan.

Since time is linear and there's only one of me, a good plan should read like an imperative program. Work on one thing, then the next, and so on. But if you're talking about months, then you HAVE to multi-task. I mean you can't work on fitness for 3 months, and then stop that and work on email. There's on going work to be done.

I think a checklist is a good tool for balancing multiple plans. It gives you a tool to manage concurrency. But even so, there's only so many threads you can run without bogging down the processor (stressing out and being ineffective).

Basically, the point is to balance a set of good habits, and then have one big thread to handle bigger projects one at a time.

It occured to me that I would be incredibly effective if I could just write a little program to tell me what to do - or at least where to focus - on a moment by moment basis. Something with a default schedule for the day that guided me through breaking my goals down into tasks and then organizing and implementing those tasks... Reminding me to start cooking healthy food before I get hungry and go searching for a snack. Checking my email in the background and only notifying me of new messages between tasks. That kind of thing.

I want to talk more about this concept of self-automation, but I'm already starting to ramble here. I really just wanted to check in since I hadn't written in so long. I'm going to post a couple big goals for the year either today or tomorrow, and also probably some 3 and 1 month goals.