Getting Back on the Horse

Despite the best intentions, I have not yet accomplished the things I wanted to do this year. This could be due to one or more of the following four possibilities:

I may not be working long enough

I have made the choice separately to work a job only part-time, which allows free research and exploration during the rest of the time. But work toward my individual goals is not accomplished in someone else’s office anyway; by working my job part-time I have committed the rest of my time toward my goals, and fill each day with work, yet that has not accomplished my ends. I am working long enough to accomplish my goals, which if done ideally would take only a fraction of the time allotted.

I may not be working hard enough

“Hard” differs from “long” as defined in A Brief History of Hard Work, Adjusted for Risk, by Seth Godin. It involves choosing riskier paths that may pay off bigger. I have made difficult choices to eschew traditional, ensured success in order to pursue what I believe in. Those were hard work. Committing to a singular goal, ignoring all others, is really hard work. I don’t do that yet. So this is an area I could improve.

I may not be working well enough

I am blessed with great talents and a deep and broad education, which ensures that when I do work on something, I am able to do a good job. The quality of my work is rarely questioned, so I do not believe this to be the holdup.

I may not be working on the right things

This is my biggest problem. I’ve realized that my time allocation is skewed wildly. I spend the majority of my time on trivial, urgent things; little is left for the truly important items. Steven Covey is the proponent of First Things First, the philosophy of doing the most important tasks before (or at least alongside) the ones with the most urgent deadlines.

I’ve had little success with programs to solve these problems in the past–the closest being Life Balance software for Mac, PC, and Palm Pilot. I even got as far as installing that one…but seriously, for those who would prefer not to spend half their free time scheduling the other half, there seems to be no solution. What I need is something editable in seconds, an interface that mirrors the way I think and live.

If only I knew an interface designer…oh yeah. So now I have Whassup.info, ComingUp.org, ComingUp.info, UpNext.org and UpNext.info . Revolutions are afoot…any ideas on how to fire the first shot?