Today the Blogging Floodgates Will Open!

Whew! I am finally home, for real.

I have several major things to write about, and it is going to take some time to get it all written up and posted. Each of these things deserves its own post, so that is what I'm going to do, before the end of the day.

As you may know, I went to Chicago and ran the marathon. (SPOILER ALERT: It went well.) From there, I drove to Iowa to pick up my mother, and took her to Omaha, where she had brain surgery. (SPOILER ALERT: It went extraordinarily well.) Then I came home to work, because you can't take time off indefinitely, but also drove back to take care of Mom, and came home again, and got up at 4:30 this morning to run a 5K with a Mystery Person. (SPOILER ALERT: It went extremely well.)

On the day of the surgery, my overriding concern was that it would be a successful operation. But, that being a high probability, another hope was that I could drive back home that evening, in time to play for choir practice and turn in the music for Sunday. I like to think that there are some things that only I can do, and I needed some normalcy. There was no substitute for me that evening, and the psalm was in my computer, and it was almost done. So if I could get home in time, I could save my coworkers some hassle.

Of course, brain surgery is a big deal, and although it was a procedure with a high success rate, it is still brain surgery, and something could go wrong. I was prepared to stay in Omaha if the situation called for it, or if Mom just didn't want me to leave. I know what is most important.

But I had not been home for a week, and I really wanted to get home if I could. So I was glad when the surgeon came out after surgery and told me how well it had gone, and said that it would be perfectly okay for me to go to Kansas City to take care of business, and come back the next day.

We made good time, and I got home in time to edit and print the psalm before choir practice. The mailman had left a small package from Amazon.com in front of the door, so as I opened the door and struggled with my suitcase and armloads of stuff, I kicked the package across the threshold, into the living room. I had ordered some books, and was glad that one of them had arrived. It's always nice to receive a gift, even if it is one you buy yourself.

I was greeted by the kitties, and used my gushy mommy-voice to let them know how much Mommy had missed them.

But as I walked in, I immediately caught a whiff of something nasty. One of my cats had left me a welcome home present. Great. Calliope is a wonderful cat in many ways, but when she feels neglected, she does let me know in an unmistakable way. I walked in, put everything down, and looked in the usual places where she leaves such presents. Usually it is in the same room as the litter boxes (thank goodness for small favors.) But this time, I had trouble locating it.

As I picked up the package off the floor, I found it. Yuck! I had kicked the package right into a fresh offering of feline dissatisfaction.

So there was an urgent housekeeping matter to attend to, and I took back what I said about having missed Calliope (I still missed Tripod, though), but I did get the psalm printed, and got to work with not a minute to spare.

As I discarded the poopy packaging, I discovered that it contained the book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forster. I am familiar with most of the productivity books out there, but I don't read every single one of them. I have found that most of them say the same kinds of things ~ it is rare to find one that says anything revolutionary ~ and many of them contradict each other. (This is okay, because what works for one person may not work for another person. You have to find what works for you!)

But I have been hearing about this book a lot. Many people use an approach which combines GTD with DIT. If GTD devotees have honored another author's book with its own acronym, I decided I might need to look into this book myself.

I've only read a little of it so far, and I'm rather inspired by it. One of Forster's Big Ideas is that you are more productive when you clearly define your limits. So, many GTDers will follow David Allen's advice to have a complete inventory of Next Actions, but they use Forster's method of writing a "closed list" of to-dos each day. I tried it yesterday, making a list comprised only of things I knew I would complete that day. It is okay to do more than that, but the official list could not be added to.

It was an interesting experiment! I did have a more satisfied feeling at the end of the day, because I did everything on my list. (I still have my GTD mega-list, and I will NEVER do every item on it, because things keep getting added to it.)

The theory is that as you do this, you get better at it. You get used to crossing off everything on the list, and you get better at discerning what you can realistically do in a day.

Today my aspirations are fairly modest. I've already done most of the things. The only things left are:

1) do the dishes, and
2) write 3 more blog posts.

So stay tuned to this channel ~ Before midnight tonight, I will tell you 1) how I won the Chicago Marathon, 2) how the surgeon relieved pressure in the brains of several people at once, and 3) the identity of the Mystery Runner!