tests and meta tests [10/12/2007 09:04:08]

These are the tests I had trouble with:

• I have a list of all my goals, projects and roles (contexts).
• The contexts are clearly prioritized.
• I have clear goals for the month posted on my wall.
• I have defined and printed clear goals for the week.
• I've scheduled time to complete each of my weekly goals.
• I have collected all notes for each context in one place.
• For each context, I have a list of tasks to work on.
• The tasks are clearly prioritized within each context.
• Each task has an estimated completion time less than 30 minutes.
• My work today is scheduled in detail.
• For each context, I've anchored an optimal state of mind.

All of these tests are basically meta tests. They're not really important in and of themselves, but I had them because I believed they would help me be more effective across the board.

Now that I've narrowed my focus to a few small roles (health, social, support, marketing, development, blogging, Spanish, chess, piano) and I'm not juggling a million projects anymore, the above tests don't really fit my needs.

This makes a lot of sense. As you remove wasted time and energy from a system, you should be able to simplify your management procedures. So there's no point hard coding those procedures into lots of meta-tests like the ones above.

I think all of them can be replaced with a simple mechanism like a Getting Things Done-style weekly review. In fact, I think a lot of the ideas in GTD will work better for me now that I've gotten rid of all the wild tangents.

So... Here are my current tests:

- hard drive backup within 30 days.
- weekly review within past 7 days.
- worked out yesterday (or it was free day).
- no work mail older than 24 hours.
- 30 min marketing yesterday.
- 30 min blogging yesterday.
- 30 min programming yesterday.
- 15 min piano yesterday.
- 15 min spanish yesterday.
- 15 min chess yesterday.
- all (non-pirate) test cases passing.
- paleo diet yesterday (or it was free day).
- got up by 8AM today.
- blogs clear of spam.
- desk clean and clutter free.
- apartment clean.
- company ledger up to date and reconciled.
- personal ledger up to date and reconciled.
- reading exactly one book.
- recorded the following metrics:
    weight
    sei checking bal
    mjw checking bal
    mjw saving bal
    orange saving bal
    oanda bal
    cmsfx bal
    prosper bal
    usaa debt
    net worth
    num personal unit tests passing