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Blogging for mental clarity
I read a great post this week that inspired me to blog more. Why? To reduce my sense of information overload. Yeah, not the first thing you would think of, but I have to say, Michael Gilbert’s argument makes a lot of sense to me. It merges with some of the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) approach I attempt to live my life by (relatively unsuccessfully, but I keep trying).
The part of GTD that I resonate most with is this. By making a point to dump information out of my head and onto paper on a regular basis, I can avoid it hanging around in my synapses, keeping me up at night, it lets me stop having to think about it.
So why blog? How will that help?
Well, all week long I make notes of things. I favourite items on twitter that I like. I bookmark pages I come across that I want to remember. And I read countless blog postings, starring, sharing and tagging the ones that I want to remember.
But where does all that information go? It feeds into Google, Magnolia, Twitter, and other places…..and then it sits there, untouched.Yep, keeping me up at night.
It turns out, putting it there is only the first step in the process. GTD theory would call that the Capture step. But the Process step is missing, and it’s been bugging me for a long time. I’ve always known I should do something with that information one day, but never done anything about it.
Enter blogging. By doing a weekly review of all the stuff I’ve noted, I can filter it further, and ultimately extract the reasons for noting those things in the first place.
So starting in just a few minutes, I’m going to attempt to do a weekly review of my digital inbox. Stay tuned!
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3 comments for “Blogging for mental clarity”
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[...] Here’s the first post of what will hopefully be a weekly roundup of things that interest me. It’s inspired by an attempt to blog more to achieve some mental clarity. [...]
Do you have one system where you put everything, or are you using several - the latter seems apparent from your post.
I’ve found that I need one trusted system into which I put everything that I need to remember. That simplifies the weekly review, because I’m just in one place.
During the week, I send everything that is actionable or may be needed for future action to my trusted system as quickly as I can after receiving it.
I’ve written several posts about my experiences with GTD on my blog at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/how-to-gtd/ John
For implementing GTD you can use this web-based application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version and iCal are available too.