Doing more

I seem to be on a bit of a get shit done kick at the moment.

My desire to simplify and declutter continues and that in turn seems to be feeding my desire to tackle lots of the little things that rattle around in my head on a fairly constant basis. On the face of it none of them are particularly important, or at least aren’t likely to be deemed important to anyone except me, but I think that’s the point. I want to get these things done for me.

That may mean I spend a night faffing with this blog, or trying to setup Slogger, or reading through the stack of back issues of Wired magazine that lie untouched from 2013, or going through that box of cables I barely use and actually throwing stuff out, or rearranging the prints hanging in my living room, or replanning my budget…

None of these things hold much interest to anyone else but are things that are on my mind at some level so I’d rather tackle then than let them continue to spin in my head. That’s just, to me, another form of clutter.

I’ve talked before about my desire to simplify things and of my need to treat myself a little better than I might have been in the past and this all fits with my current mood. Looking back at the past year and it’s the times of high stress that have the biggest negative impact on me, so anything I can do to help reduce those is surely a good thing.

It’s also why I’ve set myself a running goal for 2014 as being healthier will make it easier to cope with those times of stress, not to mention give me more energy to get more things done. The goal is a very achievable 400km in a year; each week I need to run for about 45–50 minutes in total which equates to two runs a week on average and allows me some breathing room should I miss a few runs over the year.

This is not a New Year resolution!

This mood has definitely been growing through the last couple of months of 2013 and the festive holidays gave me the opportunity to do some of these things (not to mention list a whole raft more!) [1]

So, in the past week I’ve managed to finally tidy my spare room so it’s no longer a dumping ground, my Facebook account has been slimmed down (and will continue to get slimmer in the coming months), I’ve been through a few drawers of random crap and slimmed them down to only the things I need (if I’ve not used an item in the past year I surely don’t need it) and next up is this blog; I really want to reduce the number of categories (or convert them to tags), and continue to remove the barriers that stop me writing.

On that note, Byword has proven an excellent tool. I can write and publish from my iPhone, iPad or MacBook, making it much easier to write up a draft post to capture some ideas then, thanks to the wonders of cloud sync, I can pick it up later to edit or finish before publishing. Yes, this post is being written in Byword (and I’m slowly getting the hang of Markdown too).

Why am I doing all this? Largely because I believe it will mean I will have better quality ‘me’ time, which means I’ll be able to focus more of my energies on my loved ones when I’m with them. It should also allow me more time to write which, whether it’s being published here or kept private, has always been a way for me to process my thoughts, more time to read as it’s a good way to escape the world for a while, and in general more time and energy to keep on doing more for others.

I realise it may seem like I’m setting myself up to fail simply by writing and publishing these thoughts but, for once, I need to make myself accountable to me. I’ve been thinking a lot of this stuff for a while now and it’s about time to take some action.

And yes, it’s also a ‘new year’…


  1. Speaking of which, I’ve finally settled on Todoist. Multi-device, syncs well, rich enough options without being overwhelming.  ↩