Overwhelm

cfoley

Registered
I just sat down to do a weekly review and hit a brick wall. I looked though all the open loops and felt uninspired by all the things I have committed to do. Part of the problem is that I have put a lot of things off in recent months in order to finish a PhD. The result is a backlog of household maintenance, paperwork, calls, awkward conversations, etc. I could easily spend the next month cranking out widgets and would still have a mountain of things to do.

While I’ve been putting off all this drudgery, I’ve also been putting off a load of things I’m really passionate about. I want to start a martial arts club, learn to play the guitar and learn a new programming language. My ever-patient girlfriend deserves a holiday too!

Some of these are big commitments. How can I possibly embark on them while I have so many open loops? At the same time, I’ve been wanting to start a martial arts club for a decade and learn the guitar for nearly three. I’m afraid that if I put them back on someday/maybe they will fester there for decades more.

I’m sure GTD has the tools to help me through this but I can’t see the wood for the trees. I would appreciate any advice you are able to give.
 

Cpu_Modern

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I would put "all this drudgery" into one project plan and execute on it one item after the other. They could wait until now, so they can wait a little bit longer. Well, they have to, since you can't do them all at once anyway. The reason for this project is clear: you had to finish the PhD, so no fault to anyone that some things had to be pushed to the sides.

Along with the "drudgery"-project I would put all those new and exciting things like guitar, girlfriend and language learning on the active list.

Just make sure you work on the "drudgery"-project often enough and fast enough.
 

cfoley

Registered
Right, sort of like consolidating debts and paying one fee at an affordable rate.

I like the concept. I'll have to think how that might work for the open loops I still have. I expect it will work well for a large subest of them.

One concern is that some next actions would not be on context lists for me to pick up opportunistically... but that's no different from using the someday/maybe list.

Thanks for the idea!
 

Cpu_Modern

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cfoley said:
I like the concept.
Thanks for the idea!
Thank you for taking the time to write that, feels good!

cfoley said:
One concern is that some next actions would not be on context lists for me to pick up opportunistically... but that's no different from using the someday/maybe list.
That is ALWAYS the problem with these ideas :)

You could optimize the project plan accordingly. For instance start with all those items that happen in esoteric contexts to catch the opportunities.

Or you could start with how things would support each other: first clear the paperwork, then finish the household, then make some calls. That way the polished household already supports the conversations, the mental weight of the paperwork is gone and that makes the calls easier.

What I mean is find ways to create synergies other than the @opportunities, because they are not so much possible with the situation.

Also, if you have so much on your plate, is it worth it to sacrifice happiness just to catch some @synergies? Is that congruent with your 40k-life vision?

(Sorry, I could not disolve the problem, it's a known problem with our data-model.)
 

TesTeq

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cfoley said:
While I’ve been putting off all this drudgery, I’ve also been putting off a load of things I’m really passionate about. I want to start a martial arts club, learn to play the guitar and learn a new programming language. My ever-patient girlfriend deserves a holiday too!

There's no other way than "bird by bird" as Anne Lamott wrote in her great book...
 

mcogilvie

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Learning to play the guitar is a good example of a project that cannot be sped up beyond a certain point. You're building muscle memory and your fingers are probably going to hurt too. However, most people can learn to play in a rudimentary way in a few months. The key is to practice regularly. Constant improvement leads to unconscious competence, and eventually perhaps to mastery. Bird by bird, note by note, chord by chord.
 

Yiannis Miliatsis

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Might i add as a former martial arts teacher and school owner for 15 years that just by teaching and engaging in the art will calm your inner self and help you identify and terminate a lot of other project you might be dragging for a long time!
 

Instigase

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So now you have identified and given a name to these open loops that have been lurking in you head. Congratulations! Now you have the powerful ability to say this to tasks that are not in alignment with your higher level goals:

No.
 
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