Firethorn – Father, Gamer, Geek.

I have a label in GMail that is “@na” and I have just completed everything in the list. Some of those items were months old. It feels great to start a “staycation” with that as a first step. Tomorrow: cleaning the entire house.

Our new au pair arrived from Australia on Friday, the whole set of in-laws were over on Saturday, and the wife’s parents were here Sunday. Both au pairs are here for the rest of this week and then our first au pair goes on to New York for a new start with a new family.

Lots of activity, preparation, planning, cooking, cleaning. Less sleep than normal.

The boy puked again tonight as he was going to sleep. I don’t know why Mommy tries to put him down when he’s obviously awake.

I’ve been playing a bit more of Call of Duty 4. It’s a game I have and it is still a lot of fun.

Need to send invoices for the business. Need to get some things moving on the house.

Need to go to bed.

Work is good but as a few major efforts wrap up and a new one gets started my work day just flies by. I am enjoying almost all of the things I’m doing tremendously, and it’s a very fortunate position to be in these days, but it also means that when I get home and have some free time I want to turn my brain off. I have not gotten much done on the weekends as of late either with a number of family events going on.

So, things should get closer to normal in the coming weeks and today is the first Saturday that has been predictable in many months. It is nice to relax at the computer while the boy sleeps and I knock off a few low hanging fruit from the GTD list.

The weekend was originally forecast to be on the road but when the boy came down with a cold, plans changed. I decided that if I can’t see my friends that I was going to at least get something done. And so I did.

I recently picked up some equipment to better focus on accomplishing tasks. I picked up an inbox and a file stand for my desk. The problem is I have no space on my desk:

As you can see, it is a cluttered mess. Even the cables under the desk were beginning to drive me nuts. My closet was also so out of control that things were spilling outside of it. I hated hunting for cables and any time I needed something (which is surprisingly often, honestly) that I end up dumping them out on the floor, finding the one I want, and then ramming it back into the container. This was was no longer fitting into the container either.

Long story short I spent all day (up until midnight) reorganizing my office. The end results are very pleasing as I now have a layout that is more conducive to focusing on being productive but still allows me to game as I can:

A certain amount of cables are to be expected and I can not make them all invisible but this is a huge improvement. Now that the boy likes playing with everything on the floor, this was also necessary to make my office a lot more kid-proof.

On Sunday I focused on getting taxes done and you know what? I got them done! This is by far the earliest I’ve ever completed my taxes. Normally I push this task off until late March and get all stressed about it. I decided that I was going to get it over with and thankfully I’m getting a return this year — which was pretty much expected but honestly the return wasn’t all that huge. A return is a return and all things considered I’m happy I’m not paying in more money.

So I’ve earned the Serious Nerd Merit Badge this week by purchasing and using a voice recorder. The number of times that I’ve had a thought as to what I want to do and when I want to do it — and do not have a pen and paper handy — is surprising. I got the Olympus VN-5000. I picked this one as it was a cheap one to try out and the reviews for it directly referenced GTD.

The first thing is just how well this thing works. It is very intuitive and straightforward. It has “folders” so I can separate my work thoughts from my “to-do” items around the house. I also have one that I can use more free form for recording a conversation or something else. The thing is tiny but not so small that it is hard to use. It’s a simple but well designed tool.

I’ve worked to get the inboxes empty this week, to get things into my systems (one for home, one for work) and now I need to finish ensuring I have the right processes set up to go through my inboxes and prioritize.

I do have goals for 2009, and I have systems set up to get tasks done. A friend commented something to the effect that aligning those two can sometimes be hard. I need to build in some more tasks that help me achieve my goals. I have done that a bit but a work trip really interrupted my efforts to build something longer term (working out, selling junk I don’t need on Craigslist, etc.).

I’ve added a GTD category to the blog; it’s something that I hope to keep around for a long time.