Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great Hogmanay and are now fully recovered, ready and eager to grab 2010 and the opportunities it offers.

I’ve said before that I don’t like New Year resolutions, I consider them an excuse for failure. However that doesn’t mean ignoring the change of year. It’s still a powerful symbol that we can harness to boost our motivation and personal development.

Even though I don’t do specific “resolutions” I do use the New Year as an opportunity to look back over the recent past and forward to the future. It’s a good time to take stock of where I am and where I want to be – as well as who I want to be.

So although I don’t do “task based” resolutions (eg “go to the gym twice a week”) I do think about more general achievement based plans (eg “live a healthier lifestyle”). At this time I find it more useful to concentrate on the outcome rather than the method.

Of course these objectives need eventually to be translated into actions. So the New Year is also a good time to look at the system(s) I’m using for this (GTD, Eisenhower matrix, Pomodoro, etc) and make sure that a) they meet my needs and b) they’re up to date. Essentially I treat the New Year as a time not for low level resolutions but for a much higher level annual review.

As a wise sage once said: “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun”.

If you’re new to the world of time and task management then you’re probably overwhelmed by the choices available to you. To help you out Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal has written this article in Barron’s. She tries out and reviews three of the most popular systems around today: Getting Things Done (GTD), The Pomodoro Technique and FranklinCovey’s Focus.

The result is a very useful introduction of the three systems (I especially liked her description of the GTD workflow diagram!). Shellenbarger concludes:

In the end, I expect I will embrace elements of each of these systems—the approach experts recommend for most people. The essence of good time management is sticking to rituals that make you more productive, and rituals are largely a matter of personal preference.

I’m a great fan of pinball and spent much of my life as a student happily flipping the silver ball.

When you’re playing pinball you don’t just bash the flippers and hope for the best. There are certain shots to aim for and certain goals to achieve. Ideally you bring the ball to rest on a flipper then take your time and make a carefully aimed shot.

Unfortunately a pinball table rarely lets you have an ideal shot. Instead there are times when you’re main concern is saving the ball. There’s no time to plan carefully and make sure your shot’s perfectly on target. That’s especially true in multi-ball mode where the table throws everything at you.

Life’s like that too.
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I love games of all sorts, from abstract board games like Go to console based shoot-em-ups. One of my favourites remains Grand Theft Auto 3 (GTA3). Despite having played it through numerous times it’s still one I go back to.

What’s this got to do with personal productivity? The other day I was playing when it struck me just how well I knew the game world. I recognise landmarks, have a mental map of the city and can easily navigate from one location to another. I know the virtual world better than my own neighbourhood!

That realisation led me to wonder how much time and brain power I’d spent becoming an expert on one silly little computer game. It’s a lot.

What a waste.

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