Updated: 26/08/2004; 19:49:34

 08 August 2004

Jenny and I go to the Cinema

I had promised Jenny a "1 to 1" trip to the cinema which is always really difficult to organise as the other kids always want to come along as well.  So I chose a movie that I thought would only appeal to Jen, "13 going on 30",  I was not really looking forward to the film, but was really looking forward to the time with Jen.  As it turned out we both really enjoyed the film, and not for different reasons.  The film synopsis follows:

Jennifer Garner (Daredevil, TV's "Alias") and Mark Ruffalo (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) star in this hilarious flash-forward romance about a pre-teen girl who goes from geek to glamorous. With the help of some magic wishing dust, 13 year-old Jenna Rink (Garner) becomes 30 and gorgeous overnight, with everything she ever wanted, except for her best friend Matt (Ruffalo). Now, this grown woman must create some magic of her own to help the little girl inside find the true love she left behind.

Whilist its true that there was a romantic theme to the film, I think what Jen and I liked most was that the girl re-invented the woman, sort of as follows:

  1. 12 year old girl knows her own mind but is starting to be seduced by the need to be popular
  2. On her 13th Birthday she is desperate to get the "6 chicks" to her party, they end up letting her down in a big way
  3. Just after her let down, she wishes herself 17 years forward to herself at 30, and finds that she has achieved all her ambitions, she becomes a member, in fact the leader of the, "6 chicks", becomes editor of her favourite, (when she was 13), magazine, get the hunky boyfriend etc
  4. However her 13 year old self, starts to dislike her 30 year old life, she no longer takes calls from her parents, misses family christmas, is rude and ignorant, betrays her magazine to further her success etc.
  5. The 13 year old re-invents herself by re-branding the magazine.  More on that later
  6. She tracks down her best friend from when she was 13, who she was very cruel to, he falls for her all over again but in then end stays with his existing girlfriend because he says, "he made decisions he has to live with" ...
  7. She goes back to being 13 again and decides to live her life, rather than chasing an empty dream
  8. She marries her best friend

Ok, slightly different from the official version, one of the cutest bits of the film is how she re-brand the magazine.  This is a teen magazine, it goes something like this:

  1. Clothes
  2. Shoes
  3. Makeup
  4. Boys
  5. All fashion models

She realises that this is the rubbish she pushes at kids every month, its the stuff that got her hooked on the empty life she ended up with at 30.  She talks to kids, she get her old best friend, (who is mad on photography), to help out, she re-images the magazine, to focus more on:

  1. Real people that kids can relate to and admire
  2. Team spirit
  3. Family
  4. Success in meaningful areas, sort, music etc
  5. ....

She says to kids its all right to be normal, to enjoy simple things, to have friends and family, to help each other, to not have enough money and to make do, to work hard etc.  Thats what I took away from the film.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 11:04:32 PM - comment []

I need help

This is a posting that I made to the GTD discussion forum.

 

I am about to start a small research project into personal productivity,  I am going to be looking at the following main areas:

 

  • Personal knowledge management
  • Time, task and action management
  • Communication and collaboration
  • Team working
  • Subscription and research

As you can see these are quite relevant to exponents of the GTD methodology, and so I need your help.

 

First I wanted to explain a little about my personal experience with GTD and history in using similar techniques.

 

“I love to be organised”

 

I am one of those people who likes a clear desk, who like kids to have tidy bedrooms, who likes to be in control.  I invest a lot in my IT, and a lot of my time in researching how to be organised.   I can also invest a lot of time in establishing a new system.  But once that new system is established, I find it hard to keep going.  Here are some of the reasons why:

 

  1. I only tend to be motivated to create my list of, “everything that needs to be done”, when things are out of control.  The process of creating the list brings me back in control and that tends to last about a month.  During that month I gradually begin to feel that I am working for my system rather than my system working for me, so I give up.
  2. I find that although they all seem important when I write them down many of the items on my, “everything that needs to be done list”, never actually get done, as new things keep being added.  So in reality I am only ever working with the things that filter to the top.  In most cases I already know about the things at the top of the list.  It’s the 80/20 rule all over again, I only ever work on the top 20% of my list, and most of the stuff in the 80% never gets touched because new items keep adding themselves to the top 20%.
  3. During the times of my life when I am not following a GTD like methodology, I find I value the fact that my  Brain forgets the 80% that’s never going to be done, and lets me keep my sub-conscious focussed on the 20% that is, and my conscious on the 5% I am working on.  When I do follow GTD, I find myself distracted by the 80% feeling it’s important and must be progressed, managed, tracked, researched etc.  For example for a month I captured research notes in Microsoft OneNote on everything related to my GTD list.  Most of that time was wasted because in the end I never got around to the tasks.  After the month was up I ended up deleting most of it because I wanted a tidier and better organised OneNote.
  4. I find my Brain balances, “Important/Urgent” , pretty well
  5. I generally always do some form of daily and weekly review and I get close to the “mind like water”, feeling.
  6. I have seen lots of projects suffer because of too much project planning, and too little project management.  By that I mean the project manager and project team start to serve the system, they spend all of their time and energy on task definition, tracking, reporting etc and not enough time on requirements, millstones, dependencies, estimating. 
  7. I think the above problem with projects is the same problem I see with GTD.  Too much attention to managing your tasks and not enough time managing your time and goals.

 

Ok so you sort of get the idea of where I am coming from with the above, but I said I needed help.  Well I have seen a few posts in this forum that really got me thinking.  I will repeat a few of the key points here:

 

  1. Someone said that it was the act of making the list of things to do that was key, not the resulting list.  They tested it with for example shopping lists.  If you make the list and then forget to take it with you, you still end up buying everything you need.
  2. This was built on by someone who said that if you forgot the list you might actually do better because you might respond more openly to inputs/ideas that you have while out shopping, and maybe reassess your needs more openly as well, (i.e. decide not to buy things, whereas if its on this list you feel compelled to buy it).
  3. In a critique of presentations someone reported how PowerPoint stifles many meetings.    The bulleted list stops people thinking, because it trivialises issues, and the slide by slide format constrains discussion and debate.  I have actually tested this myself by presenting on an eWhiteboard and its amazing how liberated you feel.
  4. Discussions comparing “Putting first things First”, top down methodology, (which works like my Brain, but perhaps not everyone’s brain), and GTD help to bring the debate into focus
  5. A few people have pointed to Life Balance and there is certainly a lot of thought gone into that software. I tried it for a while, but again concluded that I was likely to end up being controlled by the software, and spend a lot of my time working for it, rather than it working for me!
  6. Finally its obvious that a lot of people love GTD more than I do, I want to understand why!

 

I was hoping that in discussion of this post more nuggets like those above might help me work this topic through in my mind in a more open way that I have been able to do by just reading the GTD books.

 

The final problem I have is the systems that support these processes just don’t work for me.  When I look at my starting list again:

 

  1. Personal knowledge management
  2. Time, task and action management
  3. Communication and collaboration
  4. Team working
  5. Subscription and research

 

I really need an integrated system that supports all of these.  I have not found such a system.  Although if I were able to use Outlook for my email maybe I would get close with the combination of NewsGator, Outlook, Outlook GTD plug-in and OneNote.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 11:28:52 AM - comment []