I worked through the workbook about 9 months ago, and found it super helpful.
I’m now casually watching through the workshop.
I’ve decided to increase the scope of my system, and therefore doing the discovery part again.
I estimate it will expand the system by ~50%.
The ideas on where to do discovery was very interesting!
I have two questions I’d appreciate some feedback on.
Should I include the existing system in the new discovery? If I don’t, I leave out a big part of what will be/is in the system. But if I do, I might not as clearly see the new stuff.
Should I redo the area/categories or just see if I can slot it all in the existing system? The latter would be a nice way to test the system, but redoing it might give me a better structure.
Any other suggestions is also appreciated! (Including don’t do it!)
Some notes:
My system is strictly internal. I have never shared any ideas in an email, etc, and it’s not very spread out. (It’s basically confined to three apps and a file system, where 95% is in one app or file system) This makes restructuring, in my eyes, feasible.
I did the discovery on post-it notes the first time. You mentioned this in the course, but man do I now wish I had converted the post-its to a mind map (or other format) so I could just pick up where I left off.
I’m doing the same with my own stuff now. And every time I re-org, something new comes to mind. Something I’ve learned since last time.
Of course you don’t want to do this too often, because a) it’s an overhead we don’t need, and b) all your numbers potentially change, breaking history. So that’s also a factor.
(I’ve spent the morning pulling all of my to-do-like tasks out of the various corners that they’ve managed to get themselves in to. To-dos are like dust! Left for a while, they’ll gather and need to be swept.)
Thanks! I will follow both of you’s advice and rediscover my current system. It might teach me something about it as well.
If I find the time and motivation I might do both and see how they compare. In any case I’ll have two structures I can compare. If they end up similar I know I’ve wasted time.
Not concerned with breaking history as the boundaries are well defined. I know each place it exists, much thanks to the index!
(Yeah… Todo is such a catch-all phrase for stuff that exists on a spectrum, and I find it difficult to know where to put it. Must-do, should-do, could-do, might-do, will-do, won’t-do, takes-5-minutes, takes-a-week, takes-5-months-but-I-really-want-to-remember-it, context, relationship with projects, dependencies, …
Maybe you can invent a complementary system for tasks as well?)
I haven’t forgot about this. I’ve just been distracted by life in general, so I haven’t gotten around completing it. One observation so far is that since I already have a system, there is an inertia for me to explore it, because it contains the bulk of the new system.
But the hiatus hasn’t been all bad; I’ve reflected more over my current system for the past month or two. I think this has given me some insights as to what to improve and what to change. As @johnnydecimal instructs us, take your time with it.
