GTD the Erica way

I've been sharpening up my systems for getting stuff done lately and thought I'd share a little bit of the latest iteration of my productivity system because I think it's cool, especially for people who, like me, have lots of thoughts and ideas and only a little teeny bit of RAM those thoughts in at any given second.

I like the bucket approach of GTD - essentially one bucket to rule all thoughts. That bucket, in my case, is a handy dandy voice recorder that avoids the little slips of paper that are a/my bane and b/my utter downfall. The voice recorder captures everything: phone numbers, ideas, books to read, grocery items, even the atta-girls I file in a list I refer to when I need a pick-me-up (lots of writers keep those lists. It can be a lonely, thankless profession). To make the voice recorder capture system work well, I download the notes every morning as I'm planning my day.

My to-dos (sorted by tags like @computer, @errands, @house) and someday/maybes live in .txt documents on my computer which I can open or reactivate with hotkeys. To that list, I've added, on a 'Let's see how this goes basis', a gotta-do list, which essentially holds the stuff that needs to happen today. Items on the gotta-do list need to have time-limits to a/create urgency and b/avoid the pitfalls of  Parkinson's Law which states that any task will expand to fill whatever time's allotted to it. Leave it open ended and you can find yourself spending all day on one stinking 300-word profile. For me, the most important attribute of the gotta-do list is that I actually plan it for the next day so I can hit the ground running, ideally with a writing project, before delving into email or other web-based delights.

The one challenge I'm finding right now is syncing my lists from my laptop to netbook and back. So far, I'm just being strict with myself and sticking to one computer or the other rather than moving back and forth. An online solution would fix this, but it wouldn't be as fast as calling up my .txt docs and I don't always have online access and am not anxious for my system to break down when I lack it.

For projects, I use system I developed while working at the South County Spotlight: a flip steno pad with the name of the project highlighted in the upper left corner of the page. The power of paper is that I can easily scan through projects for next tasks and write down ancillary notes and tasks and put x's next to the tasks I've completed and o's next to what I couldn't accomplish for whatever reason, , creating a record of what has and hasn't happened. When the project's done, I just tear out the paper, and stash it with whatever notes and paper the project generated. On my computer, meanwhile, I use the same project name on the associated folder so all project collateral is easy to locate for later reference.

What's your system? Drop a line/comment/tweet and let me know.

The life and business of writing - thoughts on place and patronage

I had a late coffee on a recent Wednesday with a woman named Sara Gray. Sara is a 25-year-old magazine writer turned wedding photographer who lives in west Portland with her IT consultant husband.

My reason for meeting her was to talk to her about her techniques for acquiring magazine clips. She shared stories of endless 10 hour days sending out 5 proposals per day and earning less than $4,000 over the course of an entire year. But through her stories she revealed herself as an entrepreneurially-driven woman who runs on grit, enthusiasm and determination — a woman who let nothing stand between her and her goals.

Nothing did until she grew tired. And still.

She wrote front-of-book magazine pieces to gain the trust of the magazines she targeted. She obtained the occasional feature assignment. Her husband kept them going while she chased her writing dreams.

She turned to photography as a form of respite and likewise threw herself into that. Studying and developing her skills were central --- her passion drove her to absorb 300 hours of conference classes over the course of 9 days in Las Vegas.

She thought she'd have to struggle as a photographer as well, but the clients came willingly and things started looking up for her. She still writes but doesn't have to burn herself out seeking assignments. She has, for the moment at least, found the right balance for herself and says she is as happy as she has ever been.

I ponder my own career and life on this rainy Portland afternoon. I'm in a sandwich shop called Kenny & Zukes whose walls are made out of glass. The rain outside keeps a steady cadence. I will bike in that rain before it gets dark, will stop on my bike and buy groceries to stock the flat I presently share with the Lewis and Clark English majors I found on Craigslist.

Earlier today, as I prepared to leave the apartment to meet Sara, I found myself posessed by a gut-deep, happy-dancing joy. I wasn't sure why it happend. This not knowing never happens; there's always some reason when I feel that happy. All I could pinpoint was how excited I was to get outside, to get on my bike and ride out into the rainy weather.

And so I ponder. Portland? Back to a car-free existence in a place I'm not ready to admit is probably my spiritual home?

In the model I've established for myself of late, the “where” is of little consequence. The “what” matters far more—that “what” being that I've thrown myself into a freelance writing career, have pared my life down to an almost capital-free existence. I've done this to buy some time. If I can work my way into a few magazine stables, get those editors calling me, then I have a chance at a sustainable magazine writing life. I have a shot at being that writer who gets to report the glossy 5,000 word microcredit article from Bangladesh.

The difficulty is that I am doing this bold thing and still there are details I haven't worked out. How long can I be on my own and living on nearly nothing?

Two and a half months is the current answer.

How much longer until the exhaustion from constant financial worry drives me back to a job?

Span of time: unknown.

But I'm not entirely on my own. The patron-artist model embodied by Sara and her husband is a hallowed one and the patrons I've had so far in my career have been many. There were the couches and trailers in that first year of serious writing. There was the three year relationship with the fellow writer; he was my patron and my lover and I still regard that time with a mixture of gratitude and guilt. Though perhaps I should upgrade that feeling to simply one of gratitude.

My latest patrons, the gentle, intelligent Coppick family, gave me space in their house in Washington, shared their hearth with me and generally opened up their lives to me. They gave me an office and quiet in the mornings and the necessary respite from quiet and solitude in the afternoons and evenings. It was an utterly elegant situation and within its confines, my writing thrived. I was useful to the twin girls while their parents ranged out of town for their careers. I was utterly isolated from the coffee houses and pubs where my friends might have forced my eyes upward and away from the page. It was, I felt, a life fueled by pure grace.

And then it ended. The invitation remained, but my usefulness waned. At the same time, I had a conference to attend in Portland and so I arranged to stay there for a few weeks thereafter to see friends and to get my bearings. I thought perhaps that I would go mountain biking in eastern Washington after that.

But the city of Portland is a green siren. She beckons with her art and her natural beauty, her urban trails and her cultured gardens. She opens up most days now that it's May with sunlight, raising warmth from the carpets of green and sprouting friendly people who are newly freed from their dour, gray bonds. I struggle to resist her call. I do not want to fall in love with a city like this, with any place so far removed from my beloved Arizona, but on days like today, my enthusiasm slips through the grate of my consciousness and I dance with joy without realizing why.

I'll decide soon whether to leave for Eastern Washington as I've planned or whether to linger for the summer here in the City of Roses. I once wrote that Portland was a good city, a place of green dreams, but don't think I sincerely meant it. I just had to pick a sustainable Northwestern city.

It wasn't going to be Boise, was it?

When I make it, it'll be an interesting choice. As always, the 'how' will be via instinct. The 'why' will be tougher to pin down, but there will assuredly be an intersection with my arch-purpose if I'm to say yes.

I left Prescott to seek my fortune and have found these several months later that its discovery is a daily unfurling.

That, at least, is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Green fuzz grows here and so do stories

Naturally, much has happened since I was in Reno. Ashland, Oregon, for example, happened. Synchronicity drove me there and wanted to keep me there. But I left and things fell apart all the way to Portland. Way far apart. And knowing I shouldn't have left Ashland poisoned me for awhile, because once I got to Portland, there was no turning back.

I wanted to drop a resume in a suburban newspaper in Portland, but I had to wait until office hours Monday, and I'd pulled into Portland on a Friday.

That's not to say that Portland completely sucked. The hostel 90 percent sucked, and the mountain biking in Forest Park all the way sucked plus a little - the all the way being that there were plenty of mountain bikers but - get this - no singletrack. The plus a little came from 12 different modes of weather from driving snow to rain to just plain muddy and wet. It took a while to warm my body after coming back an icy ball of mud.

But I did meet a man named Brad in the park with a black and white Great Pyrenese. Maybe one day I'll write a story about him and his trek from spiritual guy to materialistic guy and back. And my friends Chris and Christine took me to eat Cajun food at a place called Montage. Where I left my favorite hat.

I escaped Portland and drove to my friend Joe Coppick's house in Puyallup, Washington. I sort of expected to kick off of Seattle like a swimming pool and head back south to the high desert. What I didn't realize at the time that I would effectively be making the Coppick family's house my home for more than a month.

It's not the most obvious choice I could make. Puyallup is a suburb and there's almost nothing I hate more than suburban planning, than cul de sacs, than the banishment of wildness that occurs in places like this.

On the other hand, there's nothing I value more than family and friends and this was a family of friends. Joe Coppick has been a friend since 1989 when he started hanging out with my nanny. He was a 19-year-old Embry Riddle student with a passion for quantum physics and motorcycles. Many days, he'd pick me up on the latter and spend hours teaching me about the former. To this day, there's a juniper Joe brought growing in my father's front yard. It was 8 inches tall in '89 and now it's 8 feet tall. Stuff doesn't grow very fast in my beloved homeland.

As opposed to here in Puyallup where stuff not only grows fast; it grows everywhere. On the sides of rocks, in pavement crannies, on fences, up stoops and over road signs. The green fuzz is something I can't relate to. While some people would be charmed by it, I feel indifferent, and that indifference - combined with being stationed in the suburban mire - has driven me inward. It's been a month of thinking and visioning and following the thread of my destiny (if such a thing exists). I imagine the best possible outcome, see it in my mind until it settles in my heart and I smile. I do this for the stories I am to publish, for the home I one day shall have, for the penguins I'll spy as I approach the Antartic coast.

Don't get me wrong. Apart from the fuzz and the raging arterial traffic, life here is very pleasant, actually. Apart from chasing my dreams by day, I pass time in the evenings with the twins, 12-year-old Cayley and Maddie, and their mother, Andrea, who is an airline pilot. There are also two large dogs who pile up at our feet and a guinea pig named Doodle who whistles from the kitchen for carrots (Snicker died last fall).

Late evenings, I roll out the bed I carried from Prescott and sleep on the living room floor. I love my bed. And I get good sleep in the living room, so it works.

Mornings, I get up and task out my day. I try to spend time writing as well as writing letters to sell my writing. With enough persistence, I figure optimal results are only a matter of time.

And I've got about three weeks left here before I go elsewhere. Where to is anyone's guess. In fact, if you want to guess, leave a comment below.

Living life out of buckets: Notes from the skinny front

A little over a year ago, I attended Money Camp in Santa Barbara. My stated goal was to be as savvy with one dollar (which was roughly what I had in my possession at the time) as I would be with a million.

The whole premise was that lottery-winners, inheritors, bubble home sellers and the like don't automatically know how to manage their money, and as a result often lose it. I figured if I knew how to manage my money like a true millionaire, I might by default end up there.

What I came away with, in part, was the idea of putting my money (at the time it was of the low-quality, sporadic variety) into buckets. No matter what comes in, it gets divided into the following accounts:

IRA/Healthcare Savings: 7.5 percent
I'm not saving a lot for retirement right now because my priority is paying down a few dollars of debt from my adventures with the magazine formerly known as Read It Here.

Giving: 5 percent
There's some serious happy happy to knowing that, no matter what your financial situation, you have something to give. My favorite place to give right now? Q2 Youth. By knowing there would always be money coming in my account, I was able to pledge $500 to their 2 to 1 matching grant. Which means I was able to give a leadership organization for a segment of at-risk youth the equivalent of $1,500. Bodacious.

Rent/Credit Cards/Extra Money Fund: 60 percent
I keep $1000 in an account at Arizona State Savings and Credit Union that pays 5% on up to $1000. Once I've funded that $1000 (if I've had to dip into it for necessary expenses, like shattered bones, car repair, etc) and I've covered rent, the rest goes to pay those tiny, little, infinitesimal credit card balances accrued by buying entire print runs for my diaphanous formerly-in-print magazine.

Daily Needs/Spending Money: 20 percent
Groceries, shampoo, cat food, $40/week walking around money. The basics we all need.

Sunny Day Fund (Mad Money): 7.5 percent
This was originally my savings fund for a motorcycle, but I decided that small treats like a decent stereo, beautiful original art, and of course, some new clothes (Yay!) might make my life a happier place to be than 8 months of enforced austerity so I could buy a dirt bike. But that bad boy's still in my future - just a matter of time.

If you feel yourself blanching at the thought of discussing money, you're not alone. Most parents would rather talk with their children about sex than money. I, however, am utterly fascinated with the dynamics of money, and sometimes run my budget through my head for self-entertainment. I'm so much into money these days, in fact, that I have been marketing a mutual fund and last week, scored my Series 65 license.

Oh so yay.

My Last 15 Minute Lifehack

I've found something that works for the ever-common, ever-insidious Internet-itis. It's the Last 15 Minute Lifehack, wherein you wait till the bottom of the hour to succumb to such follies as Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, MyYahoo! and Nerve Scanner. And even then, you try to keep working if you can.

The way I see it, if you only really suck for a quarter hour every hour, you're doing pretty damned well.

Now the challenge is to set up a system to create targets during the other 45 so that I'm definitively rolling forward with my myriad writing projects. Call these targets artificial deadlines; they're still a work in progress.

Jumping into the cold, deep water on command

Greetings from the land of the great, cold lakes. I'm not talking about Minnesota. I'm talking about the land of writing on command. When you're not into it. Not feeling it. When all you're feeling is the hot, fetid breath of the deadline on your neck and the sweet lure of what you'd prefer to be doing calling to you.

I was on the last leg of my roadtrip driving towards Flagstaff, when sweet anchor client lady called and said can I do one little thing today, can I, can I? I tell her I'm going through Albuquerque and of course I can stop off at a little coffee shop and whip it out.

Which is where I am right now, creating an essay on unity, the spirit of oneness and the elephant in the living room (a concept I grabbed on a high hurry from here of all places).

Writing on demand works. But it hurts. The question I sometimes ask is why do I do it? Why can't I just climb out of the deep end and live a normal life like nearly everyone else?

WTF is the problem?

I wrote a query back in June and just sent it today. It was a good query - simple, direct, to-the-point. And I'd already completed it. For some reason that I can't begin to explain (other than bone-jarring terror at putting myself out there), I had kept it back until just today.

So please...please leave a comment if you have any ideas about why I'm so frickin' silly.

Moab and the illogic of friends

Made it to Moab, spent a couple of hours working on a commercial project at a coffee shop and proceeded to the Amasa Back Trail for some true slick-rock riding. I can't explain why I feel this way, but I will never, never again ride Moab by myself. I mean, it's not like my bailing off a cliff is going to hurt less — or be any less fatal - if there's someone friendly there to watch it happen. But there you are.

Stayed the night in Moab and woke up with the burning desire to get some miles behind me. And so, after a couple of days in Utah, I rolled into Denver where I've been working on commercial projects in my friend Bill's sensory deprivation tank/apartment ever since.

I think that after several months of romance crazy, moving crazy, and what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life crazy, I just needed a quiet place to crash and be isolated.

But tomorrow I head back into my life and into the great wide open. I'll keep you posted.

Chunks for Every Temporal Budget

I talked about hour-long chunks before, but I wanted to point out that I also use chunks of time between 5 minutes and 8 hours effectively. Today, I'm using half-hour chunks because after moving, I'm behind in EVERY area of my life, and need more chunks than there are hours in my work day. The biggest drain on my productivity (besides wanting to do ANYTHING besides write) is an anxiety that I won't have time for whatever it is that I need to make time for. But if I can convince myself that I'll only be doing it (it being folding clothes, cleaning out my dad's truck, blogging, whatever) for half an hour, then I don't have to feel guilty that I'm not billing (and therefore eating).

And here's the other, more important part of the equation. Those of you out there who are into productivity writing (generally the same people who, like me, are procrastinating by reading all the really good stuff at lifehack.org) have heard of Pareto's principle, or commonly, the 80/20 rule. F'rinstance, I got 80 percent of my writing done today in 20 percent of the time I spent doing it. Twenty percent of the people control eighty percent of the world's wealth. Only 20 percent of all you all out there have well-thought-out goals, and of that 20 percent, only 20 percent (or 4 percent total) write them puppies down.

That sort of thing.

So if I know that I only have one hour (or even a half an hour) to write that press release for my client, my time's going to be spent more productively than if I give myself four hours. It'll take an hour either way, but in the second scenario, the hour will come after three hours of inwardly howling about my crap luck to be writing a press release.

So there you are. Hour chunks. Or half-hour chunks. Or even five-minute chunks (as when I had a house and would spend five minutes straightening each room first thing every morning). Or, if you must, eight hour sleepy chunks so you awaken dewy fresh each morning.

Packing and moving and writing among the ruins

The nice thing about having a computer-based business...I mean career (but let's face it, business) is that you can do it anywhere and at any time. Right now is a case in point. There's hardly any furniture left in the house, but I can still hunker on the floor with my array of legal stimulants (am) and depressants (pm) and type away.

The not-so-nice thing about having a writing business is that the deadlines give not a damn about my moving, how ruinous my life looks or whether the cat has to be micro-chipped before his release among the rockpiles of West Prescott.

So forgive the lack of posts. I have lots of great ideas and can't wait to start posting more, but have to catch up on the following:

• Meaningful sleep
• Meaningful protein consumption
• Deadlines for my lovely anchor client
• Deadlines for my news site
• Deadlines for getting out of my lovely, erstwhile abode

A note: What I have more than nearly everyone I know is boatloads of freedom - I'll be in Moab in a week- so don't take this post as complaining. It's just that...you know...dare I say it...freedom isn't free. Oh God. My therapist is waiting.