Yet Another To-Do List, Plan B

 Obviously I'm not solving the world's big problems here.

I love index cards. I love them so much I almost purchased multi-colored ones. After working this system for awhile, I managed to get half my projects finished. So it did give me the focus I was looking for. Then I was distracted by a couple of unexpected events and when I came back to my bulletin board it was covered with other paper and I was deep into creating my 2026 gardening calendar and I lost track of where I was with the index cards. 

My 3 x 4 foot magnetic bulletin board isn't big enough. I need a bulletin WALL. 

I've thought about getting a smartphone so I can have my external brain with me every second of the day but there's two issues with that. First, my eyes can't manage a screen that small. Two, it's overkill for my lifestyle. I'm not driving and flying all over the place. I don't need to be reading text messages while simultaneously navigating a sidewalk banging myself into light standards. I don't need to be instantly accessible to everyone in the world. Or vice versa. It's on a par with opening a Facebook account. I keep thinking about it but in 20 years I still haven't done it. 

I read that successful people don't keep to-do lists. They put everything on their calendar. This could well be true. Something I have noticed over time is that everything on my calendar gets done. Some of what I put on paper gets done but paper tends to wander at my house. 

I had to seriously look at the insanity of keeping a notebook and pen in every corner where I might have an interesting thought. I'm not saying this is not an interesting method, actually it's quite chaotic but, since most of my clothes don't have pockets, one fix would be to wear a belly-bag 24/7 and have one (small) notebook and one pen.

I've tried paper calendars. A day planner is too big for me to carry around, even from one room to another. A smaller calendar is too small. I've tried printing calendars, one month per page. I've tried posting them to my bulletin board. I've tried keeping them in a 3-ring binder. They all require that I'm tethered to a pencil and eraser.

I have an E-notebook for thinking out loud and doodling but the calendar function is not sophisticated enough for my taste. Even if it was I'd be constantly wondering which room I left it in. 

I don't keep files in The Cloud. I don't need to sync between devices. I don't even keep the WiFi turned on at home. 

So, my single calendar is on my desktop computer. Yes, some of us old dinosaurs still use desktops. 

Since I use the desktop to check my email it makes sense to have my calendar in the same place. 

I tried the calendar method some years ago but never got it quite finessed. I'm trying again. Anything recurring daily or weekly doesn't sit well on a calendar because it clutters up the place. The fix I found for this is to put an asterisk before a recurring item and drag and drop it to its next date instead of having it already there multiple times. As with the index cards, I only put one item per day to be worked on for a limited amount of time, an hour say. 

The other thing is to categorize those items with a color; small color bar in the case of Thunderbird calendar, maybe a colored font in others. This helps to know where the end of the line is when dragging items forward. Creating multiple calendars in different colors, although it looks nice, is actually not a good choice as each calendar has to be backed up separately. If you're trying to simplify your life, multi-colored calendars is a digital rabbit hole too far.

All this to say, it doesn't matter what or where your calendar is, if to-do lists make you crazy, try your calendar. It's a more authoritative voice. The calendar says, Here in this box is what you need to get done today. A to-do list says, Here's the stuff you should do but if you don't it will still be here tomorrow and too often it is. 

Yet Another To-Do List

Anyone who's been reading me for the past 20 years or so knows that I have a thing about organization and time management. It doesn't mean I'm good at it which I should be by now. It just means I've spent a lot of time at it. 

I've cycled through a lot of ideas. And a lot of computer to-do lists. And computer software. And methods for prioritizing. More than I can remember. Then I fell in love with paper again, different kinds of paper, colours and patterns of paper and notebooks and then I didn't look at it, or looked at it so much I didn't see it any more. 

And then AI arrived and for only $20/mth a robot is supposed to be smarter (read, less complicated) than I am. When I heard the advertiser say, "All I have to do is "brain dump" and prioritize", the word 'prioritize' had me running for the hills.  

I tried that one on paper. I folded a piece of paper into 4 and labelled it High, Medium, Low, Very Low and did a quick sort of my projects. And guess what? I immediately launched into spending all day working on the lowest priority item on the list. And then I sat back and mused on the psychology of that.

Prioritizing has a mind-boggling array of meanings and no two people in the world think it means the same thing. Except in extreme cases where a threat to life is imminent and a common survival instinct kicks in. 

Everything on my list is important to me for some reason. More or less important to me depending on the day and my mood. Unless I want to go down the rabbit hole of constantly analyzing and prioritizing and re-prioritizing my reasons ... should, could, want to, would be fun ... everything on my list is of equal status. 

So the question becomes, How to handle a list where everything's equal and everything gets some air-time?

This is what it's come to; my passion for index cards in my face where I can see them. It doesn't have to be vertical. It doesn't have to be index cards. It's just what I have.

 

 

Some of my things were on one list or another for years. And I wondered why I didn't get around to them. The reason is easy. I kept de-prioritizing them even though I thought I shouldn't. Why did I do that? I don't know. Maybe a therapist could tell me.

 

Why this system works so well for me is that a to-do list throws me into a chasm of overwhelm, anxiety and indecision. With index cards I only have to look at one at a time. 

These are not things I do daily by rote, or my calendar that's time-sensitive; a world unto itself. It's not a shopping list. These are projects that require varying lengths of time so some will finish. Some will never finish. Other items will be added. It's very open-ended that way.

 

This game is loosely based on a 30-minute timer. Or an hour or so depending on the project. That gives some focus to things I'd rarely get around to otherwise, like house-cleaning. And it puts a container around things that I can get lost in for weeks on end, like FamilySearch. It also makes me confront items that I don't see myself ever doing and it's time to face the facts. But ... I can still change my mind and add them back. 

The only rule of this game is that once the time has passed for an item I turn its card over and I don't visit it again until all the cards have been turned over and I'm starting anew. That means even the things I love to procrastinate on, but really need to be done, get some time to be pushed forward and my life stays in better balance. Pretty simple.

 

So far, so good.  

Bequeathing Your Digital Files

When I was 50, which is a long time ago now, I wrote my Will. What I left out of it was my computer files because I didn't have a computer then. When I did, it still didn't occur to me for quite awhile how to deal with them. Over the years I left README files here and there and I was religious about computer backups but one day I had a feeling I was missing something. 

On my computer, two-thirds of my 550 GB and 99% of my effort are family history files so they were mostly what caught my attention. I had done years of work, gleefully spreading out this way and that and lost track of where it was all going. 

You may think you know your way around your computer files, and you might be right. But does anyone else? 

I'm not going through the whole thing about regular backups; any combination of cloud services and external hard-drives, multiple copies, staggered by date. You've heard it all before. And certainly from me, ad nauseam over many years. Just do it. 

I do want to mention one other thing. If you don't have a plan for your family history work, chances are it's not going to survive. In your whole household of belongings for someone else to deal with, how do you think your measly hard-drive is going to rank? 

The older you get the more pressing this feels but don't wait to get old to feel pressed. 

Make your wishes known.

This is what I suggest. It doesn't matter if you're at the beginning of your journey, in the middle or at the end. It doesn't matter if you're confused and totally overwhelmed by files and photos and naming conventions and all those sticks in the forest. Your level of disarray doesn't matter. Take one day to do this and then you can go back to the other stuff.

Make a folder called ARCHIVES. This is going to contain everything you want passed on when you're gone. Then go through all your files and move those items, files or entire folders, into it. This will take you miles toward having a plan. Don't destroy any useful folder structure you already have. That is not the point of this. 

Go through everything. It will take you as long as it takes you to make your decisions. It's as simple as it can possibly be. Either you want to leave a file to someone, or you don't.  

I don't use the Music, Pictures or Videos folders on my desktop. It just spreads files around for no good reason. 

This is my setup under Documents.

FINANCES, PA & PERSONAL will be needed by my executor. And then erased as per my instructions. 

Under my ARCHIVES:

 

I'm not suggesting you replicate these folders. I'm just showing you mine as an example. This is a stable structure but it doesn't mean it's the end of my road. I keep doing whatever I do, backing up daily and weekly as I go. 

The other thing you need to decide is who you're giving it to. Make a list with their names and contact information. Not all the files under my ARCHIVES are going to everyone. This is specified in a note to my executor. 

I've gone an extra mile in setting up a backup drive for each person on my list. There's only five. If you want to be nice to your executor you can also do this. These are backed up weekly to catch any changes. Syncback can help you micro-manage your backups.

I don't keep files in the Cloud but it's the same process, just a URL instead of a drive. Have them sent when you're gone or do it now. 

Do something else. Go around your house with a clipboard and take note of books, binders, file-boxes, papers, etc. that are part of your family history and make a list. Decide where you want it to go. Leave this with instructions for your executor. Anything you can do to facilitate the process of getting your wishes complied with, do it.

There's other things I could heap on your shoulders, like scanning every piece of genealogical paper you've got, giving it to historical societies and uploading it to online trees but this is not the place for it. If you can get as far as making an ARCHIVES folder and deciding on somewhere to send it, anyone who loves the gift will have a place to work from.