Essential Habits* Neighborhood Mushrooms* GTD Weekly Review*

Essential Habits*

What would I consider some of the untested "essential habits" of my life?  Morning coffee?  Breakfast? Oatmeal breakfast. Eating some, but not much meat.  Morning hour of writing.  Keeping a journal.  Keeping a Dave's History spreadsheet.  Sleeping in a bedroom.  Going to bed "early" Running 3x/week.  Being pretty complacent in my job.

Neighborhood Mushrooms*

Returned from a week vacation in the UP, exploring, walking. hanging out in local places.  When we got back, there's signs of change.  Summer has wrought changes to the garden, the house.  There's a sense that things have been moving on without you.  AND a sense that if you had been home, the changes would have been so gradual that you'd have missed the changes.  But then you take a walk, see what else has changed.  You see the grass, which had been dry, nearing dormancy before you left, is thriving, indicating some sustained rain.  And then you see mushrooms, bulging agressively out of the ground, forcing themselves out of the earth.  You think: what's been going on under there!?  What forces are out of sight in everyday life, multiplying, expanding, altering?  Magma, Seismic shifts, Forests drying, nearing kindling points, species dying, ticks multiplying, mosquitoes hatching, suddenly chipmunks everywhere you look running this way and that from tiny holes in the earth.  Nothing's inert.  The earth and the creatures of the earth (including plants) constanting moving, changing, transforming, growing.  I feel that way about the weather: steadily increasing signs of "1000-year floods."  And also, conversely, dying silently and without notice.  

GTD Weekly Review*

GET CLEAR

• Collect Loose Papers and Materials
• Gather all accumulated business cards, receipts, and miscellaneous paper-based materials into your in-tray.

Get “IN” to Zero

• Process completely all outstanding paper materials, journal and meeting notes, voicemails, dictation, and emails.

Empty Your Head

• Put in writing and process any uncaptured new projects, action items, waiting for’s, someday maybe’s, etc.

GET CURRENT

• Review Action Lists
• Mark off completed actions. Review for reminders of further action steps to record.
• Review Previous Calendar Data
• Review past calendar in detail for remaining action items, reference data, etc., and transfer into the active system.
• Review Upcoming Calendar
• Review upcoming calendar events–long and short term. Capture actions triggered.
• Review Waiting For List
• Record appropriate actions for any needed follow-up. Check off received ones.
• Review Project (and Larger Outcome) Lists
• Evaluate status of projects, goals, and outcomes, one by one, ensuring at least one current action item on each.
• Browse through project plans, support material, and any other work-in-progress material to trigger new actions, completions, waiting fors, etc.
• Review Any Relevant Checklists
• Use as a trigger for any new actions.

GET CREATIVE

• Review Someday/Maybe List
• Review for any projects which may now have become active, and transfer to “Projects.” Delete items no longer of interest.
• Be Creative and Courageous
• Any new, wonderful, hare-brained, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas to add into your system???