Be a better human (a technique, not an order)

I'm recording a new video course for JDU, working title Task & Project Management using Johnny.Decimal. I'm tackling (again!) the age-old problem of 'getting stuff done'.

(No, I don't think it's a solved problem. Yes, I have my own ideas. They're really helping me.)

In doing so, I've realised that there's a class of task which seems to go un-done. It's the stuff that isn't truly important, otherwise you'd do it, because you just have to. You just have to pay your credit card, so you find the time.

It's the next level down. Stuff that you want to do, and that if you do manage to do, would make you feel like a better human. So let's just allocate some time to it, and decide: be a better human.

I do this by blocking out an hour of my calendar every day.

This morning: boring documentation for my business

I swear the point of this post wasn't to promote these links, but it's too good an example not to use.

I have a Ko-fi and a Patreon that are scarcely used -- I'd rather you buy a useful product -- but that do generate some income. (If that's you, thanks!)

Each of those connects to one of two PayPal accounts, and/or one of two Stripe accounts! And each of those accounts has settings for when and if it automatically pays out to a bank account, and if so, which one.

So when Lucy, who keeps an eye on our finances, asks whether we have any spare Patreon money and how she might get it, and yet again I scrunch up my face and say … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ … then, yeah, it's time to trawl those sites and just write it down.

Oh my god that sounds boring!

RIGHT? Riiiiiight. Really really tedious. And so I look at that task and I think, ha!, like I'm doing you today. And so months go by, and every time Lucy asks me, I still just dunno.

It's kinda pathetic.

So. That's what I did this morning. I took about 45 minutes and I went through all of those sites and at 13.22 Accounts that deliver income and 32.13 Stripe in my SBS I wrote a bunch of notes that link to each other that explain the situation.

And I feel like a better human for having done so.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.