Is There a Task List That Isn’t Structured?
Summary:
Budget work is not, by itself, an action. It’s harder than you think to actually articulate what the action is that is captured by a given task. A universal list that just is really long with a bunch of stuff on it is not useful. That snuft doesn’t provide sufficient structure to the landscape of what’s on your plateo....
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Or these things maybe aren’t a all type of the same project, but they’re all the same type of work. And im going to put em in their own list, like things i have to do in my yard, et cetera. Also, during this configure component, you can clarify, david allan is real big on this. There’s a big idea from david allan an. I think he’s right on the mark about this. It’s harder than you think to actually articulate
Speaker 2
what the action is that is captured
Speaker 1
by a given task. Now,
Speaker 2
you throw something down
Speaker 1
a budget work, you throw that down in your task list to get it out of your head when you’re doing the capture. But budget work is, not, by itself, an action.
Speaker 2
What does budget work mean? How
Speaker 1
do i go budget work? You know, what does it look like to see someone do budget work? What that really is is just a rough reminder that there is specific work you need to do relating to your budget. This configure component of my productivity philosophies, where you really sit down, you work that through, it will budget work. What it really means is, i need to do these five things, and i gon to put that i’ll indent the list and write that all down. If i’m using trello and i have a card for the budget work, a click on the card to flip it over and have a check list on the other side of what those elements are. Maybe there’s complex dependencies. Wi’ll have to make this call. Andthe once i hear back from my accountant about this, and i can make a decision on xi, it might be kind of complicated. That takes time. I guess you have to think about your task. You got think about your work. You got to clarify what it means. Also, during this can figure component is where you might assign status to work. I’m a huge believer in this. I’ve talked about this before. A
Speaker 2
universal list that
Speaker 1
just is really long with a bunch of stuff on it is not useful. That’s not sufficiently structured. That snuft, that doesn’t provide sufficient structure to the landscape of what’s on your plateo, i’m a big believer that you have to structure this. You have to understand what are the different statuss this type of work has. Like, maybe this is stuff i’m working on this week. Maybe this is backburner stuff. Maybe this is part of this project. And once i start that project, here’s the things i need to do. A status that i really like, for example, is if there’s people in my professional life that i have to regularly meet with, if we do a lot of business together, you know, like i’m the director of graduate studies right now for the computer science department at georgetown. In that capacity, i have to do a lot of work with my department chair, and i do a lot of work with the graduate programm manage. So, you know, i can have a status for
Speaker 2
things to go over
Speaker 1
next time i meet with the department chair, and a status for things to go over discuss or decide on next time i have a phone caller meeting with my graduate programme manager, and now i can start moving tasks into there. So now ther just not on a big list. I’s like, you knowt you know where this obligation is. Now this obligation is over here with this status, where i know that it’s something i’m going to deal with when i have my next meeting with this particular person. So adding structure, assigning these status, is how every one to say, it takes this landscape of anxiety producing obligations and actually puts a framework around it. Am i working on it now or not? Is on the back burner, ok? If it’s now, when am i going to work on it when i have this meeting? When i’m next working on this project is if am i doing monk mode mornings for deep work? And if i’m doing that, then maybe i have a particular status for here are the things i’m in order that i want to tackle during those muckmod mode (Time 0:15:22)
How Do You Read Books?
Summary:
Will prefers to use physical books, especially for research materials. He uses kindle versions of books when there’s a time sensitivity. In the kindle book, you can highlight on the screen while you’re reading it and then down load your high lights in an e-mail format....
Transcript:
Speaker 2
do prefer physical books, especially for research materials, books where i intend to use information from them
Speaker 1
in my own writing, because i like to slash check format.
Speaker 2
Will, however, use kindle versions of books for research. I do this in particular when there’s a time sensitivity. I’m too impatient to wait a couple of days for the hard cover to get here from amazon. Or
Speaker 1
maybe i need to turn something around really quick, and i think this source is going to be relevant, then i’ll do a kindle book a.
Speaker 2
You can’t slash check, obviously, in a kindle book, because it’s digital. But you can highlight, and that works prety too. So in the kindle book, you can highlight on the screen while you’re reading the kindle book, you can then down load your high lights of the book. You can down load them. There’s a thing you do that it it gets sent to you a via e mail from amazon in a pretty nice p d f format. And so that works almost just as well. So with a kindle book, i high light instead of doing slash chacks an then and then email myself to d f. And there i have all of the relevant passages. And in some of the kindle books now too, you actually will get the page number that
Speaker 1
corresponds to either the hard cover or paper back, which makes citations really easy, though you don’t always get that. So,
Speaker 2
stephen and j my
Speaker 1
combined answer to your questions hopefully gives some more insight into how i read and how i go and remember things i learned from what i read (Time 0:35:38)