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."

I was talking with Nate yesterday about a presentation of sorts I was hoping to give to my fellows at Rock River Star next week, and once again the topic of Getting Things Done came up.

Getting Things Done is a book by some guy that talks about a process of organization that helps produce results. I have a copy of the book, which is currently in the trunk of my car, and I haven't read the whole thing. Mostly this is because I got so far and the book and agreed with most of the premise, but the process that he dictates probably isn't the best one for me.

For example, my office, although it does have some paper and a printer, is relatively paper free. There are very few papers around, and never really a pen when I need one. But that's okay, because I do most of my work in the computer, and I have some applications that help me keep track of things like notes from phone calls and appointments. The book primarily focuses on paper-based methods for organization, including using multiple folders to store to-do items, and I don't even have a place to put file folders in my office. Still, even with those applications, I could probably stand to apply some of the organizational discipline to my routine.

Anyway, I would like to come up with some way to streamline the process that I have for my day-to-day life, not just for work. Not that GTD pertains exclusively to the work environment, but just that I've been thinking more recently that the days are getting any longer and there are so many things that I would like to do, and it seems like I'm not getting any of them done.

One problem I had, was that the process of GTD (and I'm sure I'm getting this wrong and need to reread the book in full) encourages you to accumulate ideas that you can act upon at a later time. Of course, my ability to create new ideas far exceeds the time I have much to accomplish them. And sure, I'm discarding ideas that after a while just don't seem as good as they did when I first thought of them, but I'm still ending up with a whole lot of ideas that I am never able to act on. I see that long list of ideas and think how great any of those things would be to do and yet I'm still stuck on the first or second idea that I ever came up with.

It's not simply the idea that I'm not accomplishing anything, because I'm definitely accomplishing things. I just have a lot of ideas.

What I need is a small team of oompah-loomphs to do all the work for me.

Anyway, with this new topic that I'm hoping to talk about next week, DTD should factor in at least partially, giving me an excuse to pull the book out of the trunk of my car and give it a good going through to see what I missed. Hopefully I will uncover something that I didn't see before and it will help me solve this problem as well as better organize my personal time so I can accomplish some of those great ideas.