Life Balance
Comments: 7
I’ve been saying I’m going to get organised for years now (when what I really mean is “the hell with it!”). Like anything of seriousness and importance, getting organised requires … well, getting organised. You can see the conundrum.
In today’s TidBITS Jeff Porten has an article called Life Balance: Balanced Software for Unbalanced People where he talks about software called Life Balance from Llamagraphics. Looks like it might be worth a look.
There are two basic categories for to-do list software. The first category is straight and simple, like the to-do list features in iCal or Palm Organizer, where the programmers say, “Here’s a to-do list. It’s got some nice features. Have at it, and good luck.” The second category is more complex and potentially more rewarding, and says, “Here’s a method of organizing your life, which we’ve implemented in software.”
Life Balance falls very much in the second category, and if you’re not looking for a new method - or if this method doesn’t work for you - you’re not likely to get anything out of it. You have to buy into the Life Balance way of doing things, and it can take two or three tries before you get the hang of it. Once you do, though, you get much better results than with a basic to-do list.
I’m leaving a little Post-It to myself to check it out more thoroughly later, just as soon as I deal with these other things I’ve got to do over here.
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Posted to Computers • 2004.02.03 (Tue) • 23:01
Comments
Posted by matthias 2004.02.03, 23:58
Note to self: organize notes to self.
Posted by Richard Wanderman 2004.02.04, 03:43
I downloaded a copy of an earlier version of this a while back and did not like it much.
I prefer to use a simple outliner like Omni to play with lists, categories of ideas, and timeline.
The idea of an algorithm doing that for me scares me a bit. I know you can tweak the knobs of it but still…
Posted by Matthew Aaron 2004.02.04, 03:55
Hehe. Organization is more than lists and Post-It Notes, my friend.
I’ve been using Life Balance (both the desktop and Palm versions) for a few months now, and I really like it. It does take a bit of getting used to (and a slight leap of faith to trust the algorithm), but it really does help you to focus on what you should be doing right now. I find that it stops me giving undue time and effort to urgent (because someone else has told me they need me to do it now) but not important (because I don’t really give a fig if I do it or not) tasks.
Posted by kevin 2004.02.04, 19:48
Wow, I was just lamenting to a friend yesterday how I can’t find a project management software that is not so “work” project oriented.
I’m pretty skeptical about this though. I think that keeping up with program like that takes more organizarion skills than I can muster just to input my to-dos and dids, but I’ve downloaded it and it at least looks interesting to start with. Especially the pie graph that shows your “ideal” work-life balance compared to your “actual” work-life balance. I just have to figure out how to use it.
I wonder what category “reading and commenting on people’s web-sites” goes in… Maybe I can make a plug-in for it that will stop my browser from browsing after I have reached my limit. It could render all links not on my original reading list inactive, so that I can’t get lost in cyber-space.
Posted by Richard Wanderman 2004.02.05, 12:47
“Organization is more than lists and Post-It Notes, my friend.”
Gee, I never thought of organization as an end in itself; I think of it more as process to serve another end: getting stuff done. If lists and Post-It Notes do the trick, what’s wrong with that?
What’s “the trick?” Getting done what’s on the list or Post-It Note.
Organization is what you make it. I’d say that Mr. Hedley’s MT setup is a pretty cool organizer as well and I think it serves him (and me as reader) well.
I’d agree with the anonymous poster above. It took a leap of faith — and some effort to organize initially — but Life Balance has really paid off for me. The effort of setting it up and outlining your goals and determining “subtasks” that will help you achieve those goals is quite a task in itself, but the exercise is well worth it (for obvious reasons!).
I am one of those people who seems insanely organized, and is quite preoccupied with keeping things in their places, in managing lists and tasks and goals. This program relegates the “task” of keeping track of tasks to itself and frees the user to set about accomplishing them — and oh, the satisfaction of checking things off!
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