Main work task today was taking a few more steps forward on the DXP project. Nothing may come of it, but I am working on the bits that need to be fixed. Having taken over an alien tech stack from someone else without any hand over, it’s a ballache, but there’s potential in the system for use this year, and I think we can amend it to drive the AI marketing rush that we will see over next few years.
Whilst it’s a Sunday, I still got up early and went to my Wetherspoons office. Their refill drinks for less than two pounds are pretty much unbeatable, and it’s a nice change from working from home since its just around the corner.
Today was one of those days where I’ve done ‘stuff’ – I am trying to systemise my actions so I can more easily repeat them and then delegate out or automate. About a year back I thought long and hard about my weaknesses and came up with a few realisations:
- I often focused too much on programming and didn’t do the general life and business admin stuff, which would mean that my life would start to become chaotic and messy, which had a negative impact overall on my work life.
- I needed to do some things a lot more consistently, and just five minutes on a specific area each day was better than none at all, or sporadic application of them.
So I came up with the concept of micro-habits – which was before I knew a book called Atomic Habits existed (it’s not a very good book) … and based on my analysis I came up with things I wanted to get more consistent at. I grouped them into two groups:
The Five Life Cleaning Habits
The first group was about keeping my life more clean, organised and streamlined. There’s a big negative drain on you when you’ve got an untidy home and office. It’s also a time sink because you lose stuff, and it can be more stressful.
- Clean (and tidying)
- Declutter (and organising)
- Paperwork
- Digital
- House
I’ve found that these are pretty solid and cover everything I need. It’s worth giving some notes:
- Cleaning and tidying. It’s nice to get away from the screen and cleaning up my environment (home and work) is always valuable. It’s obvious but it’s about doing it consistently.
- Decluttering is always undervalued. It’s only until you move house that you realise you have so much shit that you really don’t need; and are just emotionally attached to. It’s true that when you get rid of things, you do actually feel better. I have no idea why. But basically I put some time in every day to looking at stuff I don’t need, making decisions, and then selling or getting rid of it. And if you do want to keep some things, you can just organise them to streamline your life.
- Paperwork used to be a real problem for me. I never used to process it, and I used to generate a lot of it with ideas and notes; so combined with all the accounts and taxes stuff it would become a mess. When I first started these habits, I was so bad at paperwork I had to just start with one piece of paper everyday. I did that for a few months but eventually I cleared ONE of the in-trays. These days I don’t have as much resistance, but still have to put the effort in.
- Digital. Another thing that I rarely made time for – and that’s the key really – it’s just about making time for these things… but because I work on the laptop all the time it gets full of files and projects that I don’t need. Emails, files, externals … these all get attended to over time.
- House. This covers house maintenance and gardening. If you’ve lived for more than a few decades you’ll know how much work a garden needs, and how much work there is to do around a home. But doing this consistently you keep on top of it.
- A little bit everyday or every 48/72 hours goes a long way. Just consider if you did these things consistently for a long time. In a years time, your life would be way simpler and more streamlined.
Tired now, will finish this off tomorrow.
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