It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity. -Beatrice Webb

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Trouble with my Hipster PDA style


How I noticed the problem:


With the intro of my Palm TX, my Hipster PDA has been reduced to a mere ubiquitous capture tool. That is all well and good.

However, lately I have been procrastinating a lot.

Reading the first habit (collect) in the Zen To Done ebook. The mission is simple:
  • Collect all your "stuff" (GTD term) into a ubiquitous capture tool
  • Empty the stuffs you have collected into a To Do List within the day
  • Make sure to do this for 30 days to make it a habit
Simple enough. Although, this has already alerted me to one of my GTD problems. I do not empty my inbox daily. Still, it sounds relatively easy to do.

BANG! Why do I feel like procrastinating while simply processing my hPDA-based inbox? Because I included too much information on the item.

The Solution:

At school (which is the source of most of the complex 'stuff'), I should always carry my Circa Notebook. I should stick to its system:
  • Tabbed per subject (NCM, Asian Civ, Thesis, GTD)
  • Papers with contents at the back part
  • Blank Paper up front for easy access.
This is now my capture tool for school stuff. I will add a Legends Page as suggested in Journaling To Done to remind me what all my symbols mean. The nice thing about this:
  • I write only once (no need to transfer details on my hPDA to notebook)
  • I have a history of the things we were instructed to get done.
What will happen to my hPDA?
Well, it will reduced to a tickler (pocket notebook) and will still be used to capture ideas, just no complicated stuff like school requirements.

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