2K11 24/7

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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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