Fiddly bits

A rope buried in the sand near Road's End at Lincoln City, Oregon. One of those ordinary items that catch my eye when I'm walking around with a camera.

One of the tricky parts of being productive that I'm still working on fitting into my time and task management is that a lot of the things I do prompt response. I ask people for help with something and get replies, I submit patches and get feedback, and I release software and get questions or patch submissions. When I get that mail in, it tends to act as an interrupt, and then I spend the time that I would spend working on my to-do list processing that mail instead. Sometimes that's the right prioritization, but sometimes it's not.

Also, when I'm in catch-up mode, trying to feel like I'm getting more on top of things, that incoming mail feel like setbacks. This is another version of the basic time management problem for me: I want to be "caught up," which is not a meaningful concept. What I want to aim for is productive, making effective use of my time. It's hard to pull my mind around to that, though.

This hit a bit today, but what ended up working was to just ignore the mail for a while and start another project off my to-do list that would take a while. Once I finished that, I felt more positive about getting things done. Even better, in the long run, would be to move the mail into pending folders and add it to the to-do list, but one step at a time.

One day of vacation left. I could use another week, but I'll also enjoy getting back home. I'm not horribly enthused about switching from the things I'm working on now back to work projects, but I'll cope.