Opportunity Planning

Continuing on with bucket lists... and I have.

My "thinking time", which I actually enjoy doing, has become the daily bus trips or occasionally a brief period snatched during the day. It's really simple. I write lists, that are not really lists, in a book and see what I can do of them. They're not really lists because they are more just 'things I would like to do if I get the opportunity' rather than 'things I must do or my life is bad'.  A very important mental distinction. The key thing that I am doing is in that in writing them down, I'm a) identifying these things as opportunities I would like to take if I get the chance b) identifying the time/space slot at which I am most likely to get these opportunities c) thinking through a little what is involved in trying to get these opportunities done d) even if I don't get the chance to take this opportunity in that time/space I've at least thought about it and will try to slot it in another time if it remains as something I continue to want to try to do.

It goes like this; I open my book (yes, a dead tree product with an implement for manually making marks), and I write some simple 'lists' about opportunities I might take during that day. All this exercise helps me to do is identify potential points at which opportunities to do things might happen, and which particular opportunities have a priority for me at the moment.

So for example here is Thursday's opportunity planning under their respective headings written on the bus in the morning:
- Work

• Cluster Actix
• Cluster Radioplan
• Check Natfly special event
• Prediction Tocal special event + area checks

- Lunch

• Cable for phone/Kindle
• Present for Geoff - freckles
• Tea purchase
• cardboard for book covers
• ring kitchen person
• International money transfer

-After Work

• DJs for tops
• Bunnings outdoor items, tap

The items I actually did?

• Cluster Actix
• Check Natfly special event
• Cable for phone/Kindle
• Present for Geoff - freckles
• Tea purchase
•  International money transfer

 Extra things that I took the opportunity to do instead which I didn't plan for:

• Spent an hour talking through explaining congestion with Capacity Planning
• Working through some additional special event data.
• Lunch with Dad
• Dying my hair
• Raiding with guildies

Pretty happy with the bits and pieces I got to do. It was nice having lunch with my Dad - the opportunity popped up that morning and I grabbed it as higher priority. Similarly raiding with my guildies - mid week it's often hard for me to get raids in. Other stuff can get done another day and did. It's more that if it had fitted in to do as an opportunity I would have grabbed it as I'd taken the time to think about it as something I wanted to do.

It doesn't have to be done every day. It doesn't have to cover off every thing. Sometimes I will think about dinner on my way home and that stops me making dumb decisions about what to eat when I'm too hungry to think. It's fluid. It can include very short term, mid term and long term items. It's written down so I can flick back. And it doesn't matter if it's on an old list, I can just make a new list ready for the new immediate future.
 
If I'd actually done my opportunity planning on Wednesday instead of the Thursday bus trip I would have bought the Kindle cable then because I dropped in on a friend in JB Hi Fi at Wednesday lunch - who possibly would have even offered me a discount. I didn't think of it. Because I didn't plan it. And that was an opportunity missed.

Opportunies.

Planning them.

Or at least planning where then might fit in.

Thinking hopeful things and not so much focusing on things that are missed.

Worth it. 

The beauty of bucket lists

It's new years eve. A general inertia and love of my nice comfy apartment, cats and online company, as well as a nice supply of foodstuffs, means that I have zero intention of leaving this sanctum into the wild crazy that is the public on this night of nights. I suspect if I try I could hear the fireworks from here. If I walked for 30mins I could even see them. But no. Staying here. Pretending that it shall be a night of quiet contemplation, of higher thoughts, when really it's just the typical night in having fun with what I have right here.

But in some attempt to wave a stick at the occasion, if not exactly a sparkler... bucket lists. Things to do. Go, on, let's use the term that you *only* ever use around this time of year... the New Years Resolutions. Before that cynical shrug, think again more laterally of what such lists are. They used to really depress me actually. I'd carefully, hopefully craft such a list, and... very quickly they became a list of "things I have not done" rather than "things I would like to do". Particularly on Mondays. Doing such a list for a Monday is like writing a list of things that won't happen.

But anyway, idly reading one of those lifestyle newspaper articles about seven things that successful people do before breakfast the concept of lists came up again... And the penny dropped; it's actually not about the list at all... it's about mentally planning stuff that might happen, mentally working through situations and tasks. So for me, although I can jump into things and react, and chop and change, and decide and negotiate on the fly, there are times when I would just like to have time to think. There are particular tasks that I do throughout my day that I would find myself wishing I had had time to think about it. And it hadn't occurred to me until I read that article that I hadn't actually *made* a time in my day to think. I now use my bus trip time with a notepad and paper and writing big crazy lists of everything, not worrying that I will only get through bits and pieces, but just enjoying the thinking time as I break them down into little bits.

Couple the idea of lists as thinking time, with a Bill Gates quote:
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

And take into account that this is, (well it was when I was writing it), New Years Eve, and I will be treating my resolutions as a great big bucket list of thinking. Which is actually quite hopeful. What can I do this year? What would I like to do within the next ten?

A beginning

So a friend has casually mentioned a couple of times "you should write". I've mused over these passing comment from time to time over the last few months and today is the day. I enjoy forums, and the occasional banter in whip-fast net chat sessions or emails, so a blog seems a reasonable place to put a desultory toe.

And damn it, for a second I thought this blog tool didn't come with spell checking, but whatto I managed to spell "desultory" correctly. Small surprises for a Sunday.

I guess a framework about who I am is a reasonable thing to put in an OP. A box if you will where someone can say "Oh *that* type of person" before deciding to invest seconds of time. While it would be nice to be a special snowflake, I'm sure my experiences inform my prejudices, even as much as I would like to claim the ability to stretch to accept no matter my starting position.

So here goes the 'big facts' that I care to put in a blog: I'm female, single, I live in an apartment, I have two cats, a job in a large Australian company, I live in Sydney, I'm a bible-believing Christian who loves and values my gay and atheist friends because Jesus does too, and I spend a large amount of my spare time playing an MMO because it's cheap, convenient, interesting entertainment and someone is always around to chat to 24 hours of the day from all over the world.

I guess my main interest that I will probably spend talking about to the ether here will be in imagining a future working space with tech developments, spurred by my experiences in technology and spending so much time in an imaginative 3D space.

And now, I have a place to put those ideas. And to write...