Probably it should be the first post. Better late than never.
First of all, this blog is for me.
It would be an electronic diary on my way to half-independence. It is very easy to assume that we will do something but without any superior it is hard to achieve any of our goals. One of the subjects of this blog is 'how to avoid becoming a modern slave', so superior is not the best solution. I will omit the part about finding someone who will keep his eye on us 24/7, maybe our parents but it is a bit too late for that. How about becoming a superior of myself? This question came to my mind many times. The main problem with self-control is that we have never been reporting back about our progress to anyone. What is more, the Parkinson law is against us. Throughout my whole adult life I had a very long list of 'TODOs'. I assumed that if I accomplish even very small fraction of dozens of ideas it will be a spectacular success. The main drawback of this way of thinking was that I started a few things at once and in majority of cases I did not finish any. My way of thinking evolved after I came across agile development. It was during my second (and also current) job. I am working as a software developer. I joined my team in a very interesting time, exactly during 'scrum transformation'. Scrum is one of agile methodologies which help team members control the whole process of software development (from specification to sale).
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development) |
It is based on splitting whole work into small pieces, which could be finished in a fixed unit of time (for example two weeks). Now I have many valuable experiences with scrum process and impediments it faces. My intention is to port somehow the best ideas of scrum to my daily time management process. It is worth to mention, that scrum is mainly about: team work, how to make teams more efficient, what is the difference between the team and the group of people and so on. I am 'the lonely rider', but some ideas are very universal and it should not be hard to apply them. I am aware that I am still not perfect and I would never be. Now my list of things to do is a bit shorter, but it is still too long. I am also trying to do only continuous tasks (PhD studies, blog) and a few single ones during one week. The single tasks should be small enough to finish them during two or three days. When I finish a task I can pick up next one from the queue. Each task should have its priority, from engineering practice I know that it should be unique, so there would be now problems with choosing more important than the others. Of course, the most important task should be done first.
Now my tasks do not have documented priorities and I can see that sometimes, because of my laziness, I start from the easiest one. It is such a fantastic feeling to see a big list with majority of tasks marked as done :) . I think that this small digression grown enough.
This blog should allow me to check how my vision of my life evolve.
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| George Santayana |
It will be as a photo album. It is a lot of fun to sit in front of the fireplace with dozens of photos, recalling passed, often better and always different times.
This blog will make my failures and successes visible.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." —George Santayana
We are constructed in a way that we are allowed to remember only good things which happened to us. There is a rule saying: to allow people to learn you have to let them fail. By writing down my progress I will be able to check what happened long time ago, what were the problems, what were the conclusions and what I should do if similar situation happens again. Sounds handy, I am curious to know if it really will be.
Finally, I hope that after some time it will allow me to obtain many valuable comments form people with similar and different outlooks.
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