emdeha

Over the years, I've switched between several daily TODO lists. I used a plain sticky note in the beginning where I outlined all the tasks I had to do. After that I used Steven Covey's time management matrix, but I found that I'm not using all of its quadrants and some important and urgent tasks were never done on time. Currently I have a TODO list with two columns -- Making, for the long-term things I have to provide substantial amount of undivided attention to; and POSS (projects, organization, skills, social) -- for tasks which require frequent context-switching. It was greatly inspired by Paul Graham's "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" article [1].

For long-term plans, I keep a simple text file categorized by projects where I plan ahead for about one or two weeks and put deadlines for my plans. I derive these plans from my long-term goals, for which I store the big picture in various mediums (Trello, E-mails, text files, written conversations, paper, etc.)

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Because management decisions ain't always driven by logic.

The simplest reason may be attachment to the feature--the feature is of no use but the person who's invented it is scared by the possibility of removing it.

Great article! It's interesting though, how did you convince management to remove features no one was using?

I just decided I wasn't happy at my 9 to 5 job. What followed was a deduction that unhappiness means there's an opportunity I'm missing. So I started observing and found what I wanted at the moment--I started working part-time at a small software organization doing systems integration. The transition was flawless--I didn't need to stay at my corporate job.

Of course, such undertakings are a bit risky. After a few months I found my money starting to melt as I wasn't receiving stable income from the new place I enjoyed working in. Doing a bachelor's degree while teaching and working quite prevented me from seeing how this money meltdown would shortly lead to some uncanny situation of mine. So, with about 3 months delay I understood that I'm in another unhappy situation and I should start observing for the new opportunity I was missing.

Here comes a time for some background. For about 3 years I was living with a close friend of mine who is involved with an organization called Camplight--a digital cooperative working in the web outsourcing business. Things were quite great in this company and it was a bunch of sustainable, playful and hard-working people. I wanted to join them since I heard about it, but the lack of experience prevented me from doing so. However, during the years I worked a 9-5 job and switched to doing systems integration, I got quite experienced. Also, I loved to talk with my flatmate about Camplight and the challenges around being a part of a cooperative. And it started to click that this was the opportunity I was looking for.

And that's how I escaped a 9-5 job in about a year and am really happy about it. I'm doing quality software, communicating with valuable people and helping the cooperative grow.