Done is better than perfect. So let’s get this done.
I’ve been blogging on and off for years and it’s never really gone anywhere. My themes have been disjointed. I’ve not kept up with regular posts. Interests have come and gone, and often life has simply gotten in the way.
But I really wanted to blog again, to have some sort of writing output and also just to share with anyone who’s interested. One theme that has remained constant for the last 15 years or so is my desire to capture and organise.
I try to capture my days both in photos and words. They reside in my journal software Diarium (which currently stands at 1,336,238 words at the time of writing this) in what I hope will one day be a rich reminder of the decades of my life when my brain no longer works. Obviously, in a journal, the days are organised by date, but I try to take it much further than that by tagging locations, people, and themes.
Another form of capture and organisation is information and knowledge. I’m gradually adding everything to a single repository (currently UpNote). This can be as simple as opening times for the local tip, my NHS number, or instructions for setting the alarm on one of my watches, right through to notes from books I’ve read, interesting articles, how-tos I’ve written for various tasks, lists of things, ideas, inspiring photos…. it goes on and on.
And finally, as a new father with a full-time, multi-disciplinary job in a family business, living in a home that needs lots of finishing, and the desire to find time for hobbies like writing, photography, and art — I’ve spent the last few years gradually improving my to-do list using GTD (Getting Things Done) principles. It’s now a habit to capture everything that either needs to be done or that I want to consider doing and either actioning it, setting a reminder to action it, or just ‘parking’ it. For this I use MyLifeOrganized both at work and at home.
So I suppose why I’m starting blogging again now is that I pre-ordered Tiago Forte’s latest book — Building a Second Brain in the hope of adopting some solid methodology and refining the way I do things now to make it even more effective.
See, I feel with so much going on, and so much information out there and so much to remember, I’ll go crazy trying to store it all in my head. So I try to outsource as much of it as possible to apps and my devices. Gradually I’m getting to the stage where I can either focus on something fully or just let my mind wander with a good audiobook or some music without having to feel like I’ve forgotten something.
I guess this blog is heading towards being about a mix of journaling, productivity, and information management in the hope that 1) Others can benefit from the way I do things, and 2) I’ll get a bit more concrete around the way I do things and refine even more.
So let’s see what happens.