The More Things Stay the Same

I find that every time I make some pronouncement about my latest system, I immediately change it. So NoteStudio has gone away again. I spent way too much time tweaking it. I've dropped back to A5. I think that part of the problem is that I don't have all that much to track and it looks like I'm busier if I go with a more complicated system.

I've found it useful to keep a systems journal, a small notebook where I keep track of my thoughts about what works and what doesn't. It's a record of all the various twists and turns on my GTD journey. And it shows a lot of fussing and fidgeting around with different software. It can be a useful experience in that I always learn a bit more about how I like to work and what sorts of reminders work for me. It's bad in that I spend way too much time setting up systems that I later blow away. I have the time to try these things because I don't have that many things to track. Someone with a busy schedule would be destroyed by the time wasted with this.

I posted a file for a GTD_Palm member, a white paper he wrote called "Lifescripting". I noticed that he uses a certain amount of symbols in his implementation. This must be pretty common, using things like # for a next action or ~ for deferred. It's like a secret code. I know that it makes sense and if you use it for awhile, it becomes second nature. I've never managed to really use symbols like this for any length of time. I tend to forget what they are supposed to represent and they seem to complicate things for me. Guess that's why I went back to simple for a bit.