Glenn's little ugly blog

5 or so years ago a colleague of mine recommended to me that I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I was going through a particularly difficult period of my life – what with being unemployed, having just moved across the continent to a new city in a new country, facing the repercussions of excessive drug and alcohol use – and the idea of getting my life organized at a very tactical level seemed like a great idea.

Most of us have felt the anxiety of having a lot to do but not knowing where to start and worrying about not remembering everything. It’s one of the major roots of procrastination, and people who have developed systems that enable them to quickly see everything they are working on and know what they are neglecting and why very seldom procrastinate. And when they do procrastinate about a particular task, very often they get a whole lot done – and are conscious of the process, leaving them less anxious and with a greater feeling of control.

I mean, let’s face it, a lot of us have very little control over our lives. We are handed work to do, other people disrupt us, things go wrong. Having a system in place to handle all of this information frees up our brains to handle the chaos. That system (Getting Things Done proposes a particular system) can give us some control over our lives, and lets us more flexibly adapt to the changes and disruptions.

Anyway, way back then, after I read Getting Things Done, I signed up for David Allen’s email newsletter, “Productive Living.” The most recent newsletter has his recommendations for doing a review of the past year and making a list of accomplishments and projects that have been completed.

DAVID'S FOOD FOR THOUGHT

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE LATELY?

I mean, what have you actually finished, completed, and accomplished? If you haven't made a list in the last year, I would highly recommend that you take a few minutes and capture that.

It has always intrigued me how much a less-than-conscious part of me can still have energy wrapped up around activities and projects, until I acknowledge that they're done, to myself. Kathryn and I have made an annual exercise, at year-end, of making the list of major completions and accomplishments. We've even been saving that list in a Lotus Notes database for the last few years. It's really quite a healthy, cleansing completion in itself. It includes everything that we can think of—from projects like launching a new product, to adding new staff, to trees planted, to new places visited, to family deaths handled, to old business completed, to new skills and tricks learned. (Source)

I am really terrible at finishing projects. I left our entryway door unfinished for 5 years. I think it might have something to do with excusing a possibly bad job. I mean, if it’s not finished no one can complain about how bad it looks right?

But, in an effort to counter this tendency, here’s my attempt to list out everything I’ve accomplished in 2009.

• I finished the entryway door – including paint, trim, and threshold.
• Goodstock.
• Ripped out the old kitchen cabinets and countertop and installed new cabinets and counter. (Still have some finishing touches like the backsplash and sealing some gaps to do before the whole kitchen is finished.)
• Did a talk on internet activism as part of the Let Live Activism series.
• Presented 3 times at the Let Live Conference.
• Organized an Earth Day vegan cupcake giveaway which was a great success.
• Put together and organized the designing of Liberation BC’s new environmental leaflet.
• Helped to start Vancouver’s Meatless Monday project.
• Organized a letter from several local groups to Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Team which got us on the cover of 24 and interviews on CKNW and Talk 1410.
• Made a real effort to bring groups together on projects and open communication between disparate groups.
• Learned how to use Twitter and met some amazing people through it.
• Wrote an article about “cruelty-free” eggs for the Granville Magazine blogs.
• Started this blog.
• Blogathon.
• Fundraised enough to get Liberation BC into some big shows (EP!C, Eat Vancouver).
• Tabled for Liberation BC at a bunch of events over the summer, some where we were the only representatives of the animals.
• Managed the design of a new Liberation BC logo.

Decided to take SFU’s Certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement.

I think that’s about it. It’s not a whole lot, but still a decent amount that I can feel good about. Maybe I’ll manage to finish more projects this year.