Tag Archives: Organisation

A Time to Panic

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Life passes slowly, when epic things lie ahead.

I have two full days ahead of me as a “free” man, before I am to be married to the only woman crazy enough to have me. And, naturally, I am panicking so much that by Friday morning I expect to have exploded in a shower of caffeine and miscellaneous body parts.

I’m sure at this point I’m supposed to be nervous about my choice of wife; that I’d picked the wrong woman and was dooming myself to a life of unhappiness. Or something. But the time for worrying about that was a very long time ago.

Eric, Joseph and I

About this long ago.

No, this panic is merely a result of having to organise the biggest thing I have ever organised (by about a factor of 4, in terms of people, or a factor of 400 in terms of the precipitous fall in my bank balance). The service is organised, though we sent out 30 invites with the wrong time. The reception is organised, though if it rains we’ll be an hour early. The DJs haven’t replied since I told them “no soppy crap and no 90s boy bands”. Flowers might happen at some point, and the cake maker hasn’t been in contact for weeks.

Facebook, Twitter, Google Talk are all abuzz with people asking questions; where they should be and when, what to buy, what to bring. The morning of the wedding is shaping up to be a bizarre and convoluted guest-shuffling exercise.

A wedding appears to be not so much about love, as spending pots of cash on a great big party and going mad trying to make it all happen. And however it happens, in the end, we’ll love each other just as much afterwards as before.

Eric and I

But maybe we’ll be people again, not insanely vibrating beings hewn from raw elemental stress.

Inbox Many

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There’s been a recent increase in productivity-related posts on Lifehacker, so inspired by that I thought I’d share how I “get things done”, and hopefully swap tips with others!

My approach is simple: I attempt “Inbox Zero”. And deliberately fail.

After several years of attempting to keep a clean inbox, having any messages at all sitting there really annoys me.  I use that to my advantage and end up doing the polar opposite of “Inbox Zero” — that is, I use my inbox as my to-do list.  Whenever I think of something I need to do, I write a short e-mail, usually just a subject line, and send it to whatever inbox is appropriate for the task (work or home).

It has the advantage of simplicity — while corporate firewalls could prevent me from using a todo.txt and a filofax could be left at home, there’s virtually no situation when I’m more than a few feet from a device that can do e-mail.

And the worry that “Inbox Zero” was designed to address — huge inboxes that get piled up with junk that never gets acted on — is avoided because having those e-mails in my inbox, even though I put them there, is annoying enough that I clear them as soon as possible.

I’ve taken to calling the technique “Inbox Many”.

So, great untamed hordes of the internet — I’m intrigued. How do you lot get things done?

Failure to Organise

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My parents were, if nothing else, organised at all times. I don’t recall at any point realising that they had no idea what was going on, or that they weren’t absolutely in charge of what we did. In contrast, Eric and I muddle through day-to-day, just about keeping it together — sometimes we forget to brush Joseph’s teeth, or can’t be bothered to wash up, or leave the laundry sitting in the washing machine for a bit too long.

Which is why the fact that Joseph is starting pre-school next week is all the more scary. We’re used to a life where, assuming it’s not a work day, what we do just doesn’t matter. If Joseph doesn’t wake up until 9am, no problem! If we can’t be bothered to get dressed before lunchtime, nobody cares!

But as of next week, Joseph has to be places. Regularly, on time, washed and breakfasted and bussed across town by the same time, three days a week. And picked up at a certain time, no matter what else might be happening. It’s a wee bit scary.

I wonder if having a school-age child will suddenly grant us powers of organisation — but I doubt it. I once hoped that having a child at all would do that, and clearly it hasn’t.

Hopefully being a disorganised parent is okay, because I don’t seem likely to turn into my parents anytime soon.