JeffKirvin.net

I’ve started using Life Balance again, and this time I really think it’s
going to stick. Why? It frees my muse.

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of planning. Regular readers will remember
I’ve been doing advanced project planning for as long as I’ve had a Palm,
never content to rely just on plain to do lists. And at some point, all of
these systems, Life Balance included, have fallen by the wayside.

I’ve often wondered why. What eventually drove me away from things that
were supposed to make me more productive?

I’ve been able to figure out two possible culprits, and the answer is
likely a combination of the two. The first is that, on the surface,
planning feels like extra work. Intellectually I may know that planning
actually decreases the work I have to do by making me more efficient and
effective, not always rushing to get things done at the last minute, but it
feels like more work than doing everything ad hoc.

The other reason is that I dislike having a taskmaster, even it’s me. A big
part of ditching planning systems has been my desire to be unproductive, to
throw off the yoke and say, “Dammit, I’m just going to lie around all day!
Ha!” I can be very active and determined about doing nothing.

Now part of the solution to this is to build time to do nothing into the
plan. In the past, I’ve tended to spend a great deal of time and effort
trying to maximize every bit productivity in my day. I’ve pushed myself too
hard and burned myself out. Recreation, literally, re-creating myself and
my energy, is vital to a successful plan.

As for the work thing, well, I have a new reason to stick with it. Sure,
sure, I know I have before. After all, who doesn’t want to get more done on
the things that really matter? But that’s very big picture thinking, and
how do you really know, right? That one’s too easy to rationalize away.

But I realized something today that will keep me on this plan like Bernie
Kerik to graft. Planning, when done right, frees my muse.

Now to make this work, you have to do the full monty. According to David
Allen, the idea behind planning is to get everything out of your head and
into a trusted system you know you’ll come back to later. This is what I’m
doing. I’ve dumped an enormous amount of “I should do”s into Life Balance
recently, building my outline. And the more I do, the more creative spark I
have.

I honestly didn’t realize how much of my brain was given over to just
keeping up with all of my crap. But now that I don’t have that to deal
with, I’ve been writing like mad, coming up with ideas that simply would
not have come to me last month. I’m sure some of that is stress level and
the fact that my fortunes are considerably less dire now than they were a
month ago, but I think the planning has a lot to do with it as well.

So that’s it, then. Organized, smorganized, I need to keep writing. And if
planning makes me more creative, then plan away!