Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Why !daily works for me

Disclaimer - This article refers to terminology specific to GTD.

For about 6 months now I have had a daily checklist called !daily (exclamation point added to move it to the top of my lists in Remember the Milk). !Daily came from a project "Create a Daily checklist" that I set after listening to Barbara Bailey's interview on the @context podcast. Barb had mentioned that she had a Daily checklist and it worked wonders for keeping her on top of her day to day so I added the project and about 3 months later !daily was born.

I walked through the natural planning model to determine the Purpose and principles so I knew what would go on the list.

Purpose - to develop daily habits
Principles - flexible, friendly, positive. - I will not be dissapointed if I don't complete an item.
I didn't determine an outcome at this time:

What has the outcome been? I wake up every morning and start doing items on the list without even checking it!

Here is my list
01 Iaido
Minimum (usually ends up being more) Practice my circle Drill in Iaido (Anything labeled 01 is something I do every day, the other's I am flexible on)
01 Read physical Bible
Pull out my actual book bible (rather than read online) and read my bible.
01Yoga
Minimum, 1 set of sun salutations but it usually ends up being more.
@prayer
Pray for the people on my @prayer list
Check the calls context
Check my @calls list and schedule or defer all calls.
Cursillo Devotional
As part of Lutheran Cursillo of Southern California, we have a devotional in which we prayer for 2 team members each day, it includes a Bible verse as well. This task will run through October.
Google Reader
Read all blogs in my must read list on Google Reader that take less than 2 minutes. Send the rest to Del.icio.us for Read Later. These include but are not limited to:

Gratitude Journal
A time to focus on what I am grateful for.
Pray a prayer of thanks first over the budget, then do today's budget balance
This one used to just be called Budget but changed recently after a reminder that all we have we owe to God in a sermon at Church.
Review your blogs
I open each of my blogs on a new tab, read my last posts and post something new if I either feel like it or it has been about a week since my last post.
Write one sentence in the Ballard Story
Here is where I work on Ballard.
Review New Posts on GTDConnect
Here I review GTDconnect's forum's new posts like an inbox.
Post To GTDConnect
This item is every 3 days - Post a new forum post to GTDconnect.
Add one photo to j:\digital Art
I added this recently to do every two days - Add a photo I have taken to my digital art folder on my computer. I added this after I found I wasn't doing it by habit anymore.
Review Readlater list on Del.icio.us
This is another every 3 days - all the websites and blog posts I added because I didn't have time when I found them. I usually process 1 or 2.

4 comments:

dmgoetz23 said...

Brian, first of all, thank you for sharing your thoughts on GTD and your life through your blog.

In this post, you mention "send the unread to delicious". I use google reader and was wondering how you do that.

Thanks

Brian said...

Thanks for the comment.
It is a pretty new feature.

Here are the instructions on how to use it on Google's page
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/08/flurry-of-features-for-feed-readers.html

dmgoetz23 said...

Thanks, I mainly use mobile reader, so that's why I wasn't aware.

Brian said...

You use the mobile reader? What platform do you run it on?

I use a Blackberry Curve and haven't really gottin into mobile reader. I have my feeds seperated into two folders in Google Reader - "Must read" and "nice to read".
As far as I know mobile reader doesn't support my folders and I love them.