Getting things done

I've been getting things done 'Getting Things Done' style this week. I've bought the book (by David Allen) and everything. As always, these things seem revolutionary in the first week you try them, just because they are new. Whether any of the new system remains at the end of a month will be the real test.

I suspect I'm similar to most people who have organisational frustration in their life in that part of the problem is genuinely organisation, but the other part has to do with procrastination and lack of motivation. 'Getting things done' kind of books are normally great with organising tips, but they don't really help with the procrastination/motivation side of things which tend to have much deeper roots in patience, perseverance, boldness and other issues of godliness.

There has, however been one helpful tip on the procrastination front in Getting Things Done: break stuff down into concrete physically doable tasks. So for example writing a bible talk might involve reading the passage, summarizing the passage, working out a big idea, etc etc. This is so helpful because being confronted with a task 'write bible talk' seems like a very big mountain to climb that stretches all the way to Sunday morning and hardly seems worth starting. Being confronted with a task like 'read bible passage' however is something I can sit down and do right now in the next hour, making it much easier to get started. Again, it will be interesting to see if this is still helpful at the end of the month, or whether it has just become annoying - do I really need my Bible talk writing broken into 10 different tasks every week!

Twitter killed the blogging star

another reason the blog has been quiet is that I've signed up to twitter. Not sure if it's a good idea, but I'm kind of interested in the whole social networking thing. I hadn't realised how strongly twitter sells itself as a community builder until I went to their home page. They really offer you a whole new level of intimacy with your friends and family.

I guess it's no surprise that people are looking for deeper relationships - thats nothing new. And I have to admit I found the concept as outlined on their home page quite compelling (check out the video introduction). But I have serious doubts wether a bunch of single sentence status updates will really offer such a great new level of intimacy. If you're into such things and you want to follow me - I'm here.

Injury woes

Well, there has been a lot of silence on this blog recently. But I'll see if I can write a bit more. Alas, my marathon never happened. My ankle got really sore and I wasn't able to run for more than 1.5 hrs (about 15km) for the month leading up to the event and there's no way I was going to make 42km!

It's still pretty sore and I've started going to the physio. I thought I'd made some progress, but I went for a 10km run last thursday and pulled up pretty sore again. THe latest strategy is to do some 30min slow runs and see if I can work up from that. Apparently I also have some pelvic/core strength issues so I'm trying to work on that too.

There is a Brisbane Marathon at the end of August, so If I could make steady progress from here I might almost get ready for that. We shall see.