Tag: list

To Think List

First draft of my “to think” list for the next 2 weeks.

  1. A think-week tradition dedicated to my craft. Bill Gates used to take a week off to think about work. I’d love to do some version of the same. I had taken a few days last year to summarize my thinking on tech in 2014 in preparation for internship interviews. Perhaps I do another round of that?
  2. Re-evaluate my social media use and strategy. There’s a lot to think about here. Key questions are – how do I use the various tools?, how should I be using them?
  3. Re-evaluate my phone + laptop use and strategy. As above.
  4. Annual review – focused on getting prepared for re-entry into work. While the preparation for work has been in progress since August, 2015 was my full year as a graduate student. Looking forward to thinking about the next step.

Here’s to making headway down this list.

to think, list,

Living with a list

I wasn’t a big list person growing up. I believed it got in the way of relaxation and spontaneity. David Allen’s books – “Getting Things Done” and “Ready for Anything” changed that point of view. I’ve learnt to both use and appreciate lists over the past few years.

As I think about the coming weeks, the list I’ve put together is fairly ambitious considering there’s time off and a fair bit of travel planned. However, the order of tasks make it very clear as to which ones are the “must dos” vs. “nice to haves.” A few lesser priority “nice-to-haves” (including a lot of little improvements to this blog) have gotten pushed back again. But, that’s just part of the prioritization process. I’ve learnt to enjoy it rather than have it stress me out. Thanks to this, I learn to scope work and improve my estimates on how much I can actually get done, to stretch myself a bit (if I want to), to evaluate what actually matters and get better at re-prioritizing and making decisions.

Most importantly, putting these ideas down on a list means being able to take time off without a worry in the world. It means being very well prepared for unexpected obstacles and it means being alive, present and mindful when I’m not working on the list.

What’s not to like?

list, priorities