Hacking Your Passions

I had several goals going into the Blog-A-Thon.

• Write a huge number of posts
• Have the content of the posts be meaningful
• Establish the three new blogs I had in mind to begin - Heartprint, Internal Innovation, and Resolution Revolution
• Write at least one new post on each of my eleven blogs
• Introduce my group writing contest
• Have fun
• Learn about myself
• Help others

I accomplished all but the first and fifth ones, and I am working on getting that fifth one tackled before evening’s end. 

I also got a lot of things done in the last 31 hours that I had no idea I would accomplish. I sort of planned on just writing, but life got in the way in interesting ways. Besides writing, I

• cleaned the bathrooms
• did five loads of laundry
• made the beds
• vacuumed
• joined a gym (and was not particularly upset by most of my measurements)
• had dinner with my wife’s parents and aunt
• filled a swimming pool
• slept a reasonable amount of time

So the answer to “was the day particularly successful” is a resounding “yes”! no one contributed any money to Make a Difference, but I think I didn’t market that well either. I’ll give that more thought - would sure like to get some donations flowing their way.

Anyway, tomorrow will be time for doing chores around the house and out and about. But chances are, I’ll get a few blog posts in too. And I’ll be quite happy with it, I suspect.

I spent a year of my life recently going through an intense development program at the company I currently work for. I learned untold numbers of new skills, and built significantly on those I already possessed. I learned over time how to succeed in that role, how to take the potential it held and what was expected of me and push myself to harness the opportunities present and excel. In other words, I would deem my role in that program a success.

As I moved into my new role in the company, I wondered how to take what I had learned and apply it to the new tasks at hand. What had made me successful in meeting/exceeding expectations in regards to my previous responsibilities, however, didn’t necessarily transfer one-for-one to the new role. I addressed this discovery with a friend and fellow coworker, who challenged me to consider that what worked before might not apply at all to the new job. Some things have, but it has been wonderful and an entirely new journey to learn what I need to do differently to meet and exceed the needs of my new team.

When I read this post regarding getting past done, and learning what you can from the successes and failures of a project once it’s passed, the first thing I thought of was this “aha” I had, of taking the new role and treating it like, well, something new, different, with different needs and responsibilities and expectations.

This nice, well thought out tool by David Seah to determine and visually represent the worth of accomplishing a particular goal versus the others on your list, so as to prioritize time more effectively. I’ve created similar tools in Excel for my personal use, and certainly his criteria don’t work very well for the things I care about tracking, but the concept, idea, and execution is really nicely put together, and I love the way the points are tracked.

Lifehack.org holds within its grasp the penultimate blog post on how to make the most of to do lists - how to write them, how to make them work, how to keep doing them and make it a habit. I’ll be spending some time digging through this entry.

Also, for those who joke about people who spend so much time doing lists instead of just doing the things on them - an hour spent planning saves ten in execution. It’s not just about making sure you remember everything, it’s prioritizing and making sure nothing is missed, and that you aren’t spending an hour now doing something when in half an hour something is due that would only take fifteen minutes. Or as a coworker once put it, it’s about putting out the fire that’s closest to burning you.

Some days, even the most vigilant life hackers need to take a break and have to do lists like this.

One of the core ingredients in efficient time management is spending time on what you value most. You also probably want to make sure you’re getting an appropriate Return On Investment (ROI) from the time you are spending on any particular task. lifehack.org posted an article recently on How Not to Overspend Your Time On a Task.