2K11 24/7

Doomz tackles a major challenge. A year at a time with daily updates!
 

The 2K11 24/7 CCLXV: 5 Ways to GET Outside the Box

Riding the train into work faced with a detour as one of the station in my path had been hit by a power outage. The trio of teenage girls behind me that kept bumping into me as they couldn’t seem to keep their balance in the sardine can. And the guy I had to move away (as far away) from (as possible) because he reeked of urine — at least I think it was urine...

There’s gotta be an easier way than this…

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Filed under  //   2k11 247   lessons   lists  
Views // Posted September 23, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 C: 100 Tips for the 100th Post!

Wow. WOW. Has it been 100 posts already?! Insane! It's been a crazy few months so far for this year's blog — from its beginnings where I had no idea of what to do or what to write, it's definitely seen its highs and lows, but no matter what, the daily posts keep on coming!

To celebrate making it here, I've spent the past couple of weeks putting together a list of 100 tips that will IMPROVE YOUR LIFE*.

*Well I know they'd improve mine; I can't guarantee they'd do the same for yours, but I'm pretty confident that you wouldn't feel as crappy.

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Filed under  //   100 tips   2k11 247   lists  
Views // Posted April 10, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 LVI: Prioritizing's a *****, Part 5 of 5 — What Did We Learn?

And now here I am at the end of five days, having gone through an experience that I likely don't want to touch again anytime soon, but at least things got done. So what have we learned from this experience? I guess one thing is that life isn't always fun. Or exciting. We all want it to be, sure, but a lot of it is just going to be hard WORK to get things done. Is this something that needs to be improved?

That's something I don't know for sure. I put it forward to the community at 20 Something Bloggers to get an answer, and learned that while all work and no play might make Jack a dull boy, all play and no work might make him a bit of a jerk! 

I'm happy that I got some of the priorities done — I'm actually taking a break from tweaking the wedding invitations right now (the original measurements didn't take the natural printer margins into consideration, so I need to re-work it before I print off a test copy and send anything forward to the printer for mass production), and the websites will very likely turn out to be weekend work, since, lo and behold, for the most part my weekend is free. (Let us note that "free" in my books means that I have more time allotted for free time than booked events, which I'm definitely not complaining about!)

So the moral here is that when you've got to get things done, sometimes, you've just gotta sit your butt down and do it. It probably won't be fun. It might be tedious and damn near robotic, but once you get it out of the way, it's one less thing you'll need to worry about.

To further accentuate this point, let me present a comment that a friend left on my Facebook:

"Oh Casey... prioritization kills creativity and freedom.. lemme tell ya... :( For your own sake, I kind of hope your experiment fails. Or you will become an overly efficient human-machine."

Well, I only got 2 out of the 5 tasks TRULY done, so I think I still have my humanity…

…for today.

Until next time!

--case p.

Filed under  //   2k11 247   lists   prioritizing   series   small steps  
Views // Posted February 25, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 LV: Prioritizing's a *****, Part 4 of 5 — Getting Things Done

Looks like playtime is over — it's time to get these priorities sorted out and dealt with! The last few days have seen me identify, plan and prioritize the things that are most critical to get done in order to maintain my sanity. In order to give a quick recap, I used the CARVER prioritization method to quickly identify a set of tasks that needed to get done quickly so that I could make my life a little less stressful:

  • Wedding Invitations
  • TOPS Photos
  • Performance Plan
  • Wedding Website
  • Financial Website

So now that I have a better idea of what NEEDS to be done, let me tell you what actually GOT done by the time I went to bed last night!

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Filed under  //   2k11 247   lists   prioritizing   series   small steps  
Views // Posted February 24, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 LIV: Prioritizing's a *****, Part 3 of 5 — Creating the Plan

Okay, Day 3 of trying to better prioritize a list of tasks that need to get done! So I've figured out what I need to do, and the method to use to figure out which items are the most urgent. Now it's time to put these tools to use so I can create a game plan for myself!

So let's take a look at my CARVER matrix for my current to-do list (sorry that it's an image — I was having trouble getting tables to work in my email program):

Carver_matrix

So according to the matrix, my top 5 priorities should be (in descending order):

  • Wedding Invitations
  • TOPS Photos
  • Performance Plan
  • Wedding Website
  • Financial Website

It's pretty fitting that they're all things I've been putting off in favour of other pursuits, such as:

  • cleaning up my random piles of work (which, as we'll notice is second-last on the priority list)
  • reading comics
  • learning JavaScript
  • playing Mafia Wars

But sometimes you need to bone up and get some REAL work done. If I were to actually focus on these tasks, it wouldn't actually take too much work to get them done. What I need to improve at is removing my distractions so that I can get things done!

Tuesday was my last day off of work for the foreseeable future, so I hope that Day 4 will be able to report on some awesome progress :)

But for now — well; priorities call. Later!

Other Relevant Posts in the Series:

--case p.

54/365

Filed under  //   2k11 247   lists   prioritizing   series   small steps  
Views // Posted February 23, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 LIII: Prioritizing's a *****, Part 2 of 5 — How to Prioritize

So after chatting with Sarah yesterday while preparing our ceremony schedule, it turn out that some of the tasks on yesterday's Wedding list aren't so immediate — the appointment to look at rings can wait 'til March, and the designs for the programs and the cake boxes can wait until April. That's a bit off of my shoulders. On top of that, I managed to get my sweeping done (with my handy-dandy Swiffer) while Sarah got herself ready so we could go out. So that leaves:

  • Invitations
  • Wedding Website
  • Following up with Vendors
  • Registry
  • Financial Website
  • Future Posts for the Blog
  • Blog re-design
  • Cleaning up the piles of my work

It also came to my attention that there's a couple of other tasks I wasn't taking into consideration:

  • Sorting out my pictures of the TOPS Symposium
  • Writing my Performance Plan

So my plate still has a ton on it. Joy. But it's not going to go away by itself, so let's take another look at the CARVER prioritization method that I mentioned yesterday.

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Filed under  //   2k11 247   lists   prioritizing   series   small steps  
Views // Posted February 22, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 LII: Prioritizing's a *****, Part 1 of 5 — Defining the Tasks

I don't wanna.

Maybe later.

I just don't feel like it.

There's a ton of things to do, and I don't want to do them. Yup. You heard me. I really just want to slack off and not bother with them.

However, I'm not going to allow myself that option.

Kevin challenged me some time back to do a blog series on prioritization, since he knows that I hate to do it. I know hate is a strong word — that's exactly why I used it.

Personally, I'm more of the type to fly by the seat of my pants. I plan things — but loosely. I'll work on a project until I get bored of it and move on to something else. But I've definitely let commitments fall to the wayside and timelines lapse due to my scatterbrained nature. So it's time to prioritize!

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Filed under  //   2k11 247   lists   prioritizing   small steps  
Views // Posted February 21, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 XL: Life and Dodgeball

Ugh. Sometimes the choices we need to make in life bother me. I missed out on the Network Roulette that went down last night because I was simply too tired and didn't have an environment around where I could really go out and participate. Excuses, I know. You don't have to tell me. But just seeing all the comments from the event, it looks like people REALLY got a lot out of it. I'm going to schedule my time better so I have more energy to hit these kinds of things up.

In order to cheer myself up, I scanned some loose papers in and really sorted out my Gmail. I don't know why people don't take more advantage of what Gmail can offer — for someone who's OCD about organization like I am, it's a Godsend. Between setting filters for certain emails so that my BlackBerry's not going off every two seconds and being able to take a look at what's been cluttering up my Inbox, it's been a helpful exercise. (Went from 700+ emails in my Inbox to 388. Pretty good progress so far!) Still doesn't make up for missing the event, but it's something. Maybe I'll even show you something I sketched up recently at the end if you behave yourselves :D

Right. So how do we start this entry?

Sarah, mi amor, suggested an entry where I make an analogy between dodgeball and life. Sure — I could do that, but I think I'll take it a step further, and call it:

LIFE AND DODGEBALL — HOW DODGEBALL CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON.

Ooh, that felt good — I think I got a few shivers. So to my readers both risk-averse and downright crazy, this post is dedicated to you!

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Filed under  //   2k11 247   dodgeball   life   lists  
Views // Posted February 9, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 XXXII: What To Do With Too Many To-Do Lists

Happy February, boys and girls! Here in Toronto we're under the threat of a massive snowstorm engulfing us overnight (yes, my northern friends - here, we consider 20-30 cm massive; let us not forget the debacle of 1999 where we called the Armed Forces to help us shovel), so we'll see what the next few days are like. Obviously I'll keep posting - I don't think that a snowstorm will stop the juggernaut that is the Internet - but should make for interesting times!

In the comments from my post some days back, NJ and I were alluding to the fact that we're the types to constantly keep busy. CONSTANTLY. Relaxation for me seems to be more like a punishment than any good. I get stir crazy, I start thinking about the next thing I should be working on - yeah, it just doesn't work out for me.

To keep all of this sorted out, I use a ton of charts, to-do lists and mind maps. I'll open a random text file and just dump my thoughts into it until I've come up with another pile of things that I'd love to accomplish whenever I get the chance to.

But what happens when you've got too many to-do lists?

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Filed under  //   2k11 24/7   lists   ramble   random   to-do lists  
Views // Posted February 1, 2011
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The 2K11 24/7 XXIII: Ultimate Advice

Sorry guys, would've had this up earlier, but I got asked to be a sub (substitue) player in an Ultimate Frisbee game by some friends, so that took up some time. It was good to brush the dust off of my cleats and play on some turf while chasing the disc; but I can never seem to get away from an Ultimate game unscathed - I have a nice scrape on my leg from a missed catch and subsequent slide. Ah well, still awesomely fun - dodgeball tomorrow!

After the game, the team and I were talking about the entire idea of giving advice. As you know, this is a blog about improvement. Self-improvement. Your improvement. The improvement of the society and the environment around us. A pretty grand task, I know, but I feel that it's one that could use some serious contemplation.

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Filed under  //   2k11 247   advice   lists   tips  
Views // Posted January 23, 2011
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