Fuzzy Thinking

Summer here (not really, but it sure feels like it) and I’m trying to figure out a new summer schedule. My office hours and everything stays the same, but the kids are home. This means I don’t have to be at school to pick them up from school, practice, etc. So, my schedule is different. It isn’t better or worse, just different.

I’m working on several online projects, the main one being a complete redesign of UMSource.net. I was hoping to be able to make it ‘live’ before now, but, I feel like there are a few more things I would like to do to it first. Hopefully it will be up and running in the next few weeks.

This blog has MOVED to http://fuzzythinking.davidmullens.com. So…if you want to read any more of my posts, you will have to go there. Blogsome has been alright (I like WordPress), but, I am limited in what I can do. I have full control on my own domain at http://www.davidmullens.com. Also, for any wanting to get a free blog on blogsome, just know, they do _not_ have any type of export that I could fine. It was a real pain transferring all the posts on here over to my new blog. Please visit me at the new site.

Wow. It seems like I’m just posting once a month. Not good. I’ll try to do better.

The reason why I’ve not posted is just being involved in other things. I’m doing a couple of shows over at talkshoe.com and that is keeping me busy. Once is the Two Middle Aged pastor’s podcast and then I just started doing a new one called What Would Jesus Podcast. I do it along with two other guys. We look at news stories from “a Christian perspective”…whatever that means.

I’m also trying to keep up with my doctoral studies. I hope to post on that pretty soon over at the InnerJourney page. Other than that, not too much is going on….oh yea…I’m trying to keep up with the kids with soccer and all too.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I’ve been so busy trying to get stuff up at UMSource that I haven’t posted here. At first, I just thought I had too much to do, but now I think there is another reason. Basically I keep getting confused on the purpose of the two sites. This one, I believe, is more of a ‘personal’ site while UMSource is more of a commentary, thoughts about the UMC. Then my Doctoral blog is for thoughts/quotes, learnings, etc. from my doctoral program and the process there.

With that in mind I wanted to post on what has been keeping me ‘busy’ over the past week or so. Through a series of ‘odd’ happenings, I discovered David Allen’s concept of GTD (Getting Things Done) which has given me an odd type of hope. I can’t remember where I first saw the reference (perhaps 43Folders.com) but it has changed how I’ve been doing things.

GTD is a productivity system. I was a bit skeptical at first. The one thing that ‘hooked’ me is how GTD believes that all the ’stuff’ rolling around in your head all the time steals mental energy from what you are presently doing. I could relate to that. I know that even when I’ve mentally placed something on the back burner it ends up taking energy from my current activities. I keep thinking about things that I should be doing, but I think about them when there is no way I can do it. I head out of town and of course remember that person I was going to visit…but now I cannot.

One of the activities of GTD is getting everything ‘out’ of your head and deciding what needs to be done with it. So basically you don’t have to keep thinking about all the ’stuff.’ Once you write it down you can concentrate on the activity at hand because you know you can deal with what you wrote down later. The rest of the GTD is the process of making _sure_ that none of the stuff you wrote down falls through the crack.

Anyway….as of today I’m much more organized than I have ever been. For the first time…ever (I guess) I feel fairly good about what I did this past week. I wrote things down, put things on the calendar, filed things away where I could find them and actually did the things I was suppose to do! My INBox is at Zero and I’ve gone through all my mail. This is not the way I usually operate.

It has only been two weeks…and I keep figuring that at somepoint I will ‘fall off the wagon’ but I don’t want to. We will see. I’m posting here…in a way…to keep me accountable. Perhaps in the future I can post updates and also some of the tools I’ve found helpful.