43 Folders

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Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

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”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Change of life : what is the best fresh start ever ?

Hi guys, I'm about to quit my job (today is my last day at the office), to finish my degree in Computer Science. I'd like to take that opportunity to make a fresh start in my GTD system, my working habits, and my life in general. Here's my question : what is the single new habit you took that dramatically changed your way of doing things, in work and in life ? I'm not looking for a silver bullet here, just someting easy that gets me on the right track for that new route in life I'm taking. Thanks in advance,

dhartzell's picture

Acknowledge that you are a resource too.

Probably the biggest difference for me happened when I started considering my energy level and motivation as resources equal to things like "near a phone". (Which our host on this site gets into a bit in his recent talk).

I adjusted my contexts to include "easy" and "needs concentration", for example. When I'm having trouble getting getting started, I've got a few things in "easy" I can start with to get me moving and into a productive state of mind. Being able to pull things that require a lot of attention when I have time and energy makes the quality of my work on those better.

And when I do a weekly review, looking at the balance between easy, difficult, quick, or time-consuming tasks and my calendar helps me get a realistic sense of what I can accomplish for the week. And those details also help me evaluate my priorities - if I realize there's a difficult, time-consuming set of tasks coming up, I know that's a list that needs to have a really good reason to be in my workflow, otherwise it's time to scrap it or find someone else to do it.

 
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