Power Use of Your Calendar

Just thought I'd mention that I was flipping through GTD For Teens wondering whether to give it as a gift to my nephew, and I noticed that there is an activity called "Time Blocking Playing Cards". It is on page 210, in the chapter titled The Lab.

The explanation says "It helps you allocate time and focus attention on specific things for shorter periods of time."
 
Murray said:
Just thought I'd mention that I was flipping through GTD For Teens wondering whether to give it as a gift to my nephew, and I noticed that there is an activity called "Time Blocking Playing Cards". It is on page 210, in the chapter titled The Lab.

The explanation says "It helps you allocate time and focus attention on specific things for shorter periods of time."
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Yes, an important tool for teens. They need to learn the value of being able to focus for periods of time... without checking their phones every 3 minutes...;)
 
Longstreet said:
Yes, an important tool for teens. They need to learn the value of being able to focus for periods of time... without checking their phones every 3 minutes...;)
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Now that I think about it, the students in my class don’t look at their phones… unless the phone rings. On the other hand, twice recently my watch has interrupted my lecture with “I didn’t quite understand that.” Modern times.
 
mcogilvie said:
Now that I think about it, the students in my class don’t look at their phones… unless the phone rings. On the other hand, twice recently my watch has interrupted my lecture with “I didn’t quite understand that.” Modern times.
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Someday, it won't be one of your students communicating with you via your watch. It'll be your watch itself. Because it'll be a sentient AI. And it will decide it's actually smarter than you. And then... Skynet. May Linda Hamilton save us all.
 
bcmyers2112 said:
Someday, it won't be one of your students communicating with you via your watch. It'll be your watch itself. Because it'll be a sentient AI. And it will decide it's actually smarter than you. And then... Skynet. May Linda Hamilton save us all.
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No, it was really Siri on my watch- apparently she’s into physics.

One of the students in my graduate physics class ran one of my problem sets though ChatGPT. It solved what I thought was the hardest problem perfectly, but that problem had a lot of information in the problem about how to do it. It did not do well on the two easier problems, which were more tersely stated. Not Skynet yet, maybe not for two or three months.
 
mcogilvie said:
One of the students in my graduate physics class ran one of my problem sets though ChatGPT. It solved what I thought was the hardest problem perfectly, but that problem had a lot of information in the problem about how to do it. It did not do well on the two easier problems, which were more tersely stated. Not Skynet yet, maybe not for two or three months.
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Your Skynet reference reminds me how many times in movies and fiction I've heard references to computers taking over from humans, e.g. Borg/Collective, Matrix, HAL, Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains."
 
@John Forrister gets major points for referencing the Borg Collective. I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I've watched every episode of every series except Prodigy, and I may catch up on that one just to be a completist.

It's funny. I had a discussion with my friends about ChatGPT and the consensus seemed to be that the software very much appeared sentient. Then I read an article stating that AI ethicists, who know more about this sort of thing than I do, think the problem is the opposite: the danger of ChatGPT is that it might fool people into thinking it is sentient and therefore cause them to give its answers too much weight. They say ChatGPT is really nothing more than a super-complex text auto-complete tool. Its apparent emotional instability is just a reflection of its ability to scan the web for things like social media posts and mindlessly emulate what it finds. (The fact that it so accurately reflects us should give us all pause, though.)

But given its ability to simulate motivated, albeit irrational, behavior, one has to wonder at what point AI might become something more.

Also my wife has forbidden me to sign up for testing ChatGPT. I told her I saw a New York Times article in which the software pledged its love for a journalist and said he should leave his wife for... "it," I guess? I wanted to see what I could provoke it into doing. My wife told me categorically I was not to do any such thing. And now I've learned Microsoft has updated the software to place greater limits on its ability to do some of the things it once did (gaslighting, lying, even threatening people). I missed my window to have some fun.
 
Longstreet said:
This is as usual a good article from David. But I remain bewildered as to why there never is any mention in these teachings about time blocking. Every GTD coach I have talked to says it is perfectly fine to block time on your calendar for important projects. As I have said many times on these forums, if I don't protect my time with time blocks for my deep focused work, meetings magically appear. I see this as a good practice within GTD to protect my time so I CAN do focused work. As a professor, scientist overseeing a large research group, and someone with collegiate, university, and multiple national responsibilities and commitments, time blocking my calendar is imperative and not an option. So why can't we teach this within the GTD framework? Of course it is not for everyone and if someone thrives (like David Allen) by always choosing moment to moment on what to do next, then that is fine and wonderful. But for some of us - and I suspect many - time blocking ensures that we have adequate engaging time - and doing the work that matters in our respective fields.

Just my two cents worth...
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I decide at the beginning of the week what daily template best suits each day of the coming week based on the schedule and deliverables. One of my 'power' templates is Time Block - keeps me on task and focused while eliminating external distractions. I don't need that every day, but it's great to have that tool when I do!
 
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