Take Time To Annoy Yourself

This week I’ve been slowly transitioning away from my “day job” as a web developer to be able to spend more time preparing recording sessions with my band and marketing our forthcoming album.  While it feels good to free up the needed time and have the pressure of client work subside, it also brings into light many of the things that annoy me on a daily basis.  I have been so busy taking care of business that I have overlooked so many things that just bug the heck out of me!  So this week, I am taking time to annoy myself on purpose and get rid of those pesky things that add stress to my day.

The way this works is that I am specifically spending the week looking for things that annoy me.  A computer preference, a schedule conflict, clothes I never wear, desktop clutter…anything that causes me to think “I really should do something about…” and I’ve been making a list of those things.

Here are a few ways I’m combating my annoyances:

Sanctifying My Inbox

I get waaaaay too much email on a daily hourly basis.  My ultimate goal is to be able to respond to email within 24 hours, leaving none of it my inbox or flagged or marked for review in any way.  I want to process it once and be done with it.  To achieve this, I started unsubscribing to as much as possible.  If a subscription email came in and I knew I didn’t/wouldn’t probably read it, I took the time to unsubscribe rather than just keep deleting it.  I setup a few filters (gmail) to funnel a few semi-important emails into folders automatically like purchase receipts from itunes that I might want to save for a while but I don’t need to read it when it arrives.  I also went through any email I had flagged for later reading and either replied, processed or deleted it.  It’s fantastic to not have that overhead hanging around! (PS – I did the same with my Google reader.)

Use Google as a Problem Solver

A lot of my annoyances have to do with the way my Mac happens to be setup.  There were icons on my menu bar I wanted to hide…Firefox wasn’t opening a new tab when I searched…I had too many unused icons on some of my toolbars…   I knew these were easy fixes, but I didn’t want to waste time hacking around trying to find the right preference option to make changes.  Chances are good that if I was annoyed by it, then someone out in Google land was too and they’ve probably posted a fix for it!

So I Googled each little thing until I had my system all cleaned up and running smooth.  I gained a lot of screen real-estate by removing icons and toolbars and now when I search I get a new tab.  Google is far more useful than just tweaking computer issues.  I also used it to answer a few household annoyances I had like stain removal tips and finding lists of ingredients I needed for food sensitivities.  We all know we can use Google for these purposes, but how many times do we just keep annoying ourselves without taking the time to solve the problem? Google up the answer!

Use a Good Launcher

If you spend a lot of time on a computer, one of the BEST things you can do is download and learn to use a launcher.  Basically a launcher is an application that you can customize to open programs, surf to web pages and do many many other tasks just by assigning hot keys and mouse gestures.  It takes a little time to get used to, but the time savings is tremendous.  I’ve been using a launcher for years to open apps and bring up frequently used web pages like my google calendar or gmail.  But even though I was using the launcher (Quicksilver), I knew I hadn’t discovered it’s full potential.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours perusing the 127-page help file to see if there were any tips I could use to speed up my computer time or remove any other annoyances I had.  Sure enough I found some nuggets there that now have me calling up my apps with certain files already loaded and ready to edit and I’m using some nifty clipboard features I was unaware of before. I am already feeling less annoyed by my computer and I’m enjoying working even smarter and faster than ever before.

Kill the Clutter

Clutter annoys me.  It always has.  And of course the experts say clutter is bad and you can’t work efficiently with so much stuff lying around.  I would agree with that for the most part, but I won’t judge whether or not that works for everyone. For me, I decided to take the de-cluttering one step further. I removed the physical inbox from my desktop.  Yup – that one where all the papers, coupons and junk pile up until I “get around to it”.  It was driving me nuts and I really wanted to use the space for some reference books that I need to have handy so I went through every last piece of paper, CD, coupon and trinket in that tray and got rid of it.

Now when paper lands on my desk (as it does daily with kids in school), I process it immediately and either file, toss the paper or return it to it’s owner.  Mail, teacher notes, etc. are never on my desk for more than a few hours before they are dealt with and gone.  Nothing hanging over my head, no deadlines to worry about…it’s all taken care of on the same day it arrives.  Love it!

I know all this may sound a little too idyllic and unobtainable, but I assure you it’s not all that far-fetched.  It does however, take a little planning and consideration to achieve.  Here’s a little taste of how I worked it out for myself…

The Focus List

As the studio time drew closer, I knew I was going to have to make time to focus on a precious few items and everything else would have to wait.  It took some time but I am almost to that point (that is why this is “transition” week).  To work this out, I made a list of EVERYTHING I had to get off of my plate in order to focus on the important tasks.  From that list, I’ve been going through and systematically closing the open loops on that list, deleting them or delegating them as much as possible until I had that list whittled down to a manageable chunk for the “transition” week.  To give you an idea, I use a notebook with 30 lines per page and I started with 27 pages (so roughly 810 items) and I worked it according to the Autofocus System which is a very simple way to get things done with just a pen and paper and a couple of “rules” to follow.  (Read about it and give it a try.  You already have a pen and paper, right?)

Next I started really thinking about what my important tasks should be.  I knew they would revolve around my band, Girls Can’t WHAT? and my family.  Three things. No outside commitments, no freebie work, no volunteering for anything outside of these three things.  I know that sounds a bit selfish, but by being able to pour myself into those three things, I will then be able to use those experiences and that focused time to help other people.  It’s not selfish at all to focus on your passions.  Spreading yourself too thin is where selfishness rears it’s ugly head (I will expound more on that in a future post).

So fast forward to today.  I’m now down to 5 pages, with each page having several items marked as done, leaving me with less than 50 items total to work on.  And the best part is that only about 10 of those are from the “backlog” of the 27 original pages and the other 40 or so are the new things I am wanting to focus on over the next 3 months!  It feels so good to get up in the morning and know that the only things on my list are the important things I WANT to do!

I have a few client tasks to finish up from previous commitments and at least one or two meetings to tend to but after that I will postpone taking on any more work until after my band has finished our CD.  At that point I will re-evaluate where I am with life and focus my list towards those endeavors.  Focus. I can’t tell you how clear my goals are now that I’ve narrowed down my lists to what really matters.  I always thought I just had a lot to do because I’m a wife/mom/drummer/entrepreneur/artist/etc./etc./etc./ but in reality I was choosing to do all that stuff.  Now I’m choosing to do only what really matters and I don’t miss the rest!

And I feel so much less annoyed with life, which was the point of this post.  I hope it didn’t annoy you.  :D