One year ago I wrote a post on ‘digital strategies’ – on how to manage our digital lives. That was not professional advice and it was never meant to be. Just like everybody else, I was struggling to manage my digital life and that post reflected my thoughts & workflow. Over the year, as our one year old kid started to grow, we started snapping his pictures in reckless abandon on our phones and cameras, storing them in our mobiles, laptops and desktops. When I wanted to see his gradual growth over the year, I couldn’t to my satisfaction because his pictures were scattered between my iPhone, iPad, my wife’s iPhone, my laptops (work & personal), my wife’s laptops (work and personal), my digital camera, my handy-cam and my desktop. With 10 devices to collate from, I went mad. How do I get all of them to one place? Is there a way to do it without losing my mind? Is there a way I can ensure I don’t fall into this situation again?
Omnifocus Core Perspectives
There’s a great deal of discussion on the internet if the traditional ‘context’ is dead due to the ubiquity of mobile phones (read computers) and internet. Contexts such as ‘computer’, ‘online’ and ‘phone’ seem to have lost their relevance. Add to this all those other abstract contexts such as ’think’, ‘energy’ – which just dilute the traditional concept of a context further. When I moved from Things to Omnifocus I was quick to create perspectives which filtered my tasks to show how Things showed them – in Today, Next, Scheduled & Someday views. My workflow was to use Today and Next perspectives to find stuff to do and Scheduled and Someday to plan. My workflow was simple – get done with what’s in Today and move on to Next to find tasks.
My Digital Reading Strategy
I read online for almost two hours everyday. I don’t remember exactly how the time went up from a few minutes of casual browsing to two hours of serious reading, but, it all started when I bought my first smart-phone three years back. At first my reading was limited to Wikipedia and articles I googled on topics I was interested in. But, before I knew I had a list of websites I was visiting almost daily. I bookmarked them and dutifully checked for updates. As time passed, the number of blogs I read grew and pretty soon visiting all them became a chore. Looking for a solution, I stumbled upon something called ‘RSS’ – Really Simple Syndication – a notification system which alerts us whenever the blog/website we love posts something new. Sometimes, a RSS feed brings us just a few lines with a link back to the post and sometimes the entire new post eliminating the need to visit the site altogether. All I had to do to start with this was to create an account with a ‘Feed Reader’ service which I quickly opened with Google Reader – the then defacto leader of RSS reader service and bought a very good app (still on my home-screen) called ‘Reeder’ for my iOS devices – to sync to my account on Google Reader – to browse my feeds. It was bliss for a long time.
Routines & Willpower
Where there is a will there is a way. We all know this adage. If only we put our heart in and focus on an issue, we’ll get through it. A nice motivator. But, unlike popular belief, willpower is not limitless. Research tells us it is a finite resource and needs to be used carefully. According to me there are two major ‘willpower wasters’ we encounter on a day to day basis – avoiding temptations & decision making. Let’s see how –
Scenario 1 – You are on a diet regime, but walked into an eatery displaying a new pastry. Do you think you can control yourself from eating? You are financially broke but walked into a mall running sales. Do you think it’ll be easy to control your expenditure? You have to prepare for an examination but turn on the TV. Do you think you can switch off the TV in the middle of a good movie?
Scenario 2 – Have you ever been to a restaurant and spent thirty minutes just looking at the menu unable to decide which curry you’d like to order from the fifteen listed in the menu? Did you anytime get up in the morning not sure what to wear that day to work and spent half hour just trying to figure that out? Have you walked into a mall, wondering which butter to buy from the available 10 varieties in each brand?
My Three Words
These days on the Internet I see this ‘three words’ trend (started by Chris Brogan), a concept where we’d chose three words and make them the focus of our goals for the year. These three words identify the ‘direction’ you want to take in life – what you want to do and what you like to focus on this year. They act as triggers to remind us of, to move us to action. If losing 3 kg of weight is your goal for this year, the number “3” can be one of your words. Also, these ‘three words’ act as an effective alternative to the the traditional new year goal/project/resolutions concept. We can use it as a general direction to align our life to instead of describing specific outcomes.