Asymptomatic

I took a break yesterday from the principles to play some Rock Band 2. I hope you did something to rest yourself, too. But today continues from Sunday's revelation of the Tetris Principle on to "Move Forward Every Day."

If you come by here or read the site's feed often at all, you'll notice that I complain a lot about not having any time to get anything done. I assume that this is a characteristic that many creative people share, since there always seems to be at least one - usually more like 50 - big project that you're always talking about getting done, or simply looming out there, taunting you...

Sorry, I was just distracted by those three novels I want to write.

It's not a simple matter of budgeting time. There are plenty of systems that will help you do that. If you look at GTD, it even quantifies this particular rule pretty well with its "next action" idea. But that's still not the full picture, even if there's some implication of it there.

I had an interesting conversation with Roz last week after the PANMA event on SEO. I complained, as I always do, about the "Just Do It" attitude that a lot of the Philly tech folks have.

Basically, their thought (and I clearly don't get it - although I have many reasons/excuses for this, but all require a separate post) is that if you have an idea, you just do it. Get it done and reap the rewards. You can't wait around for someone else to do it, and you can't waste your time dawdling while you have your idea to implement. Also, there seems to be some implication of doing the thing as fast as you can to get an iteration out of your head; get it down on paper/in code and decide then whether it needs more refinement or what have you.

And to that I say, "Bah!"

I have nothing short of 20 ideas that I could implement now. And at least 5 of them are world-changing (at least in my mind). But I've got other things to do. Primarily, keeping a roof over my head, and making sure that my kids don't grow up into street thugs because I didn't read to them or teach them how to play well with other kids.

So how do I balance what I can do with what I must do? This is that rule.

Roz says, "Do something small every day." And that's cool, but it doesn't quite cover it, I think, in much the same way that a "next action" in GTD doesn't cover it. I need to make sure that the small thing that I'm doing is actually going to move forward one of my goals. And at the same time, the "something small" doesn't really have to be small, if I have the time to do something big.

This principle says, just make sure that whatever you're doing, no matter how big or small, is something that is moving you forward. This rule doesn't suggest that everything you do needs to be in accordance with a goal, just that every day you try to do something that is goal-oriented that moves that goal forward.

It's pretty simple, and it doesn't solve the inevitable problem of coming up with more great ideas than I can ever complete alone (some people would say to just give those ideas away, and that's a good plan), but it hopefully will have the result of at least leaving me feeling more fulfilled with what I do day-to-day.

If you have thoughts on this principle or have implemented something similar yourself (to good or ill), please comment. Otherwise, stick around for tomorrow's review of the next rule, "Work Should Feel Wrong."