I’ve always had an enlightening working relationship with the guru of genius (surely no greater compliment can be made to a human whose life revolves around general cleverness than that) Dave Doolin of Website in a Weekend (@websiteweekend).
He beguiles me, bemuses me, and oftentimes just plain confuses me. That’s the problem with, and the gulf between, the academics and the ne-er-do-wells like my very questionable self.
But today the boy Doolin emitted a ripper in my RSS reader and I’m compelled to travel that bridge and exemplify his work.
In this incredible post at There is no box emeritus professor Doolin expounds the virtues of following a simple task-tracking system to get things done – in a really easy-to-understand way that the other Dave of organisation, Sr Allen, would be proud of.
Doolin proffers the following:
- Writing makes you think, thinking helps you learn.
- Having a list of tasks you know took one hour is incredibly valuable, you know what your time is worth.
- Saves time over the long term. You do your thinking ahead of time allowing yourself to rapidly complete tasks.
All quite true. But no hint to this point of the jewels to be brought forth, henceforth:
When I have an idea for something, or I need to get things done, here’s the typical sequence:
- I write, draw or jot down lists on scrap paper. I have a bunch of B5 paper left over from a previous project, or I’ll fold letter size paper in half, 5 1/2 by 8 1/2. Folding A4 in half is B5 is I recall correctly.
- These notes are then (or later) entered into a web application task list. I use the Trac system, same as WordPress (just coincidence, Trac is a good system.)
- The Trac tasks are triaged and refactored into ~1 hr chunks. For example, I’m working on a new chapter for Blog Post Engineering (Repurposing). This was initially entered into Trac as a single task, but that’s too long. I need to spend about 10 minutes and break out all the section of that chapter as separate tasks of about 45 minutes.
- Execute! Once the tasks are chunked down into small pieces, it’s easy to select something interesting to work on.
There are tangible examples and a greater description of these points at the post I mentioned earlier.
Rarely would I recommend stuff from Doolin on this sandbox site of his, since I assume (I’m allowed) that the majority of visitors to this site are economically-brained, like myself.
But this may be the start of something that you wish to take further. Dave, of the PhD variety, is always available for cerebral consultancy work and his Website in a Weekend site is certainly more mainstream for those who want inspiring on how to nail WordPress and so much more.
Thanks, Mr D. I will follow your advice and go forth and be amazing.
Photo by Robbert van der Steeg.