outside is better

Getting things done in Seminary

I do have the odd fascination with organization and try to implement part of David Allen's Getting Things Done (or GTD as us geeks call it).  One way that I keep myself on track is by doing a "Murder Week" every now and then.  What this means is that I will find a way to organize my time in a way that I can find the weak spots and the holes in everything.  I am jumping back on the bandwagon this Monday.

How it will differ is this.  Over the last month or so I have been close to burnout.  I figure if I can work 4 hours a day and study for 4 hours a day I can get everything in.  So I will stick to that schedule.  I also have a good friend coming in town next week to hang out.  By putting this schedule out, I can manage to not neglect anything and still spend a lot of quality time with my bud.

I also have a Greek Mid-Term coming up in a couple of days.  I think it is 11 to be exact.  This is where the GTD can come in really handy.  I am going to try to make a chart up that will let me track with everything I need to so I can come out on top.

More thoughts about GTD and Sabbath later this weekend.  Tomorrow I am off to the Abbey of Gethsemani (where Thomas Merton lived) for a day retreat and then I am going to see Doomsday with Meredith, Charis and Justin.  Long live armored school buses, face tattoo's and tie-on mohawks.

It's all happening

Well here it is Saturday evening and I am at the end of murder week.  I look back on why I did all this, and realized that I never answered the questions that I sought originally.  But, if I look at what has been dropped on me this week it all makes sense.  Wednesday night we decided to do a Youth fund raiser today at Church, and I got a call from my pastor about 30 minutes ago asking me to preach tomorrow night.

Murder Week kept me together for this weekend.  I still have ALOT to do, but I am in better shape than I was last week.  It is good to get things in perspective, and to know what it takes to get things done. 

But I think after these week I am going to go in an/the opposite direction.  A good friend used the phrase "shalom zone" last week and how it relates to how we function. So for at least the next week, and maybe more, I am going to continue to focus on an intense application in my life.  As I jumped into Murder Week over the last 6 days, I am moving into shalom week over these next days.  I am not trying to figure out what a divided life looks like, but what a more holistic life does.  I hope that through these experiments I am about to learn and incorporate elements into my life.

So you won't hear anything out of me for a while.  That means blogging, commenting and facebook.  If you need me, email me...but I will only respond with things that are necessary (i.e. work).

Later

Wednesday Final

  Finished Wednesday 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

Well I am done with Wednesday.  I figured this would be a hard one and it turned out alright.  I got some serious reading done and vocab memorized (even though I just found out that we have ALOT more than I knew of). 

So far "Murder Week" has been successful.  A good buddy of mine (and my first moleskine and GTD convert), Jeremiah, told me today that he needs to do a "murder week".  I had never thought about doing it other than for the sake of the experiment.  He is as swamped as I am, school is really beating us like a bad puppy right now.  So I guess that another reason to do a murder week would be to get things under control.  I know that I can handle this because I promise you, as soon as the sun goes down on Saturday I am DONE.  No, I am not Hasidic, but I really dig the idea of sabbath.

I also decided to only post finished schedules.  Since I do my to-do lists in a different notebook I realized that my schedule is only interesting looking after a full day.  As much as I love the moleskine, I think I am going to ditch the daily planner next year in favor of just keeping one notebook, and do all of my work stuff in it. 

Well I passed through the middle.  I am about to go take some well deserved surplus time in front of the TV.

Wednesday

  Wednesday 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

So I have made it to Wednesday.  This is honestly not as hard as I thought it would be.  I even re-did my calculation yesterday to make sure I didn't screw up the math, and it really did show me that I had that much "surplus" time laying around.  I am not sure when I use it...because so far I am only using around 3 hours a day.

This is the day when I could screw things up.  There is a 6 hour block of free time in the middle of the afternoon, my best time to screw things up.  So what I have decided to do is to try to really write down everything I do and when during these times so I can see how much time I am wasting.

I was in a conversation with a friend yesterday and we were talking about this and I used the term "saturated" time.  It is when you only have a small amount of time in your schedule for something and you really want to concentrate on it.  I imagine that most of us don't really do this.  Office procrastination is something that we all know of, think of the many "man" games that have been invented with a wastebasket and some sort of object.

Well here goes Wednesday.

Tuesday and Monday thoughts

  Tuesday? 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

I was trying to think how to title this post, and how I will handle them for the rest of the week.  I will post the next days schedule and give a link to the end-result for the current day (todays is here).  Tuesday is a little more relaxed than Monday, since there is no work due immediately on Wednesday.  I usually use it has a day to get some serious school work done.  But if you look I do have a small to-do list shaping up on the right.  My GTDing is normally done in another notebook, but if it gets crazy this week I will scan that in as well.

Monday was interesting.

I was able to keep up with everything pretty well except for a few places.  I ended up crashing in the late afternoon for around an hour, taking a nap on the couch with the dog.  A few hours later a friend called and needed to talk for awhile so that took some more time out, but no problem, that is why we keep ourselves organized, isn't it?  When I need to go off schedule I want to know that it is possible, it is in the nature of my work.

I learned something about schoolwork today.  Don't attempt to start learning semi-complicated noun structures of a dead language on the day you have to prove you know them, start the day you find out about them.  I ended up taking a hit on my Greek work so I wouldn't stay up all night with it.  I did have to re-format my New Testament paper, because the margins on Apple Pages were not standard.  I swear, this paper keeps getting shorter and shorter.  I think if I take it out of double spacing and the inch margins all around we could call it a long blog post.  But I just got that wrapped up and this all puts me at going to bed around 2 a.m.

But Mondays are normally like this,  I am curious to see how "Murder Week" changes my Wednesdays, because those usually ended up being BIG blow off days...as well as Friday.

Day 1 wasn't so bad, and I am already learning things.

Murder Week Day 1

  Murder Week Day 1 
  Originally uploaded by chadbrooks

This is my planned schedule for Monday.  If you look, you can tell that I am pretty much going for around 18 hours.  The reason for this is as follows.  The image is taken from my moleskine planner, it is pretty much the reason my head is still screwed on and I haven't jumped off the bandwagon.

1. I work 3 jobs.  Monday is a great day to get alot of work done.  I have a standing meeting with a planning team for 2 and a half hours every Monday.
2.  With the exception of that meeting, my day is free to plan as needed. But......
3.  I have a Greek quiz and worksheet due on Tuesday and a paper to finish as well.  I juggle three jobs, a great wife, and grad school (I am pursuing a Masters of Divinity at Asbury Theological right now).  Monday is going to suck.

So why am I subjecting myself to this.  Well I have alot to get done, but I know that I have surplus time (see previous post).  I want to find out how much I can get done, and still take advantage of the 30+ hours of surplus time my schedule says that I have.

I will post Monday night and let you know how this went.

Getting it all together

A few weeks ago I was worrying about how I am going to handle the load that I have this fall.  Between my various jobs and responsibilities, I was scared I wouldn't have the time to devote to class that I needed too.  I ended up writing down how many hours were in a week, then taking out 24 hours for sabbath, and then docking time out for the different things I need to do.

I was surprised to find that my generous estimates still left me with almost 40 hours a week of surplus time.  It was at that moment that I realized that if I stick to a normal schedule I can get everything done that I need to.  That is why I fell in love with GTD around a year ago.  If only David Allen could come up with a way to make procrastination as evil as Greek verb structure.............

That worked for about 12 hours.  Over the last 2 weeks I have been half-assed about following it, trying to write down everything I do daily to get an idea of where I waste time.  My best guess is that six hour block in the late afternoon where you can watch CSI on FX.

So starting next week I am going to make an attempt at keeping this schedule I have made up.  What I need are for my friends to hassle me about how I am doing,  Tomorrow night I will post a quick schedule for Monday and I will let you know how it went Monday night.  I will repeat this for a week.  I will call it "Murder Week".  There will be some rules involved, but I haven't come up with them yet. 

See you in 24 hours.