Entries in Life

This past year or so, I've been working at home with my four children (three school-age, and home-schooled). Besides the kids, who really aren't that bad, I have the struggled to avoid the distraction that is the Internet.

I instinctively compare myself with my heros, and, of course, my heros always win the comparison. Sacha Chua is one such hero of mine. While seeking out ways to be more productive, the gregarious filipino has evangelized PlannerMode like no one else could have. I've always admired her energy, drive and focus. She seems to accomplish so much, so easily. I have potential, but I'm have an extreme lack of focus.

Finally, this week, while being distracted, I came across this on Digg: “Plan your day the night before”

Doh! It finally clicked. I saw how everything I knew about planning would actually work. I had found the missing ingredient. I did it that night. I planned my next day's tasks.

Until then, I'd been using Planner primarily to keep track of the billable hours I worked. This week I finally understood how to really use all the scheduling and planning aspects of Planner. I had tried it before, but it didn't work — because I didn't do it the night before. Maybe someone said it and I missed it. Maybe I wasn't properly motivated before.

Doing it the night before means I'm anxious to get to the things I've scheduled. I'm motivated to do them because my subconcious has been dwelling on them for eight or so hours.

Sacha Chua has been writing about using PlannerMode and Emacs for productivity for some time now. Shes written a lot of code snippets and done some heavy lifting with PlannerMode itself. Finally, she is combining her enthusiasm, her skill at writing, and technical saavy to write a “Wicked Cool Emacs book” that will cover PlannerMode, OrgMode as well as many other bits of Emacs. I wish I could pre-order a copy now!