I'm thinking at the 10,000-foot level today.
I ran out of cigarettes an hour or so ago, which gave me the excuse I needed to get out of the house for a little bit; I didn't go far, just down to Emerald City coffeehouse in my neighborhood (under the Sheridan red-line el stop, seen in the attached photo), but I suppose it's the effort to get out in this weather that counts.
I don't have a lot of pressing things to get done at the cafe today, so have been spending the afternoon instead taking a larger view of things in my life, thinking of the various projects I'd like to accomplish by the end of the year and in what order they'd be best tackled. Such musings, in fact, are a deliberate part of the "Getting Things Done" time-management system invented by David Allen, of which I'm an obsessive religious zealot; and Allen takes an interesting approach to it too, arguing that your long-term and short-term plans shouldn't be seen as two different lists, but rather one list seen from two different viewpoints. Allen compares the process to how we comprehend the earth and our surroundings based on what altitude we're at; how at ground level we're mostly preoccupied with how the immediate surroundings will impact us, while on a plane ride we're seeing the same terrain but with a much better sense of overall perspective, and without any of the pedestrian annoyances around that usually distract us from the bigger picture.
It's true that GTD as a daily process is designed mainly to help you take care of "ground-level" duties; as part of implementing GTD, though, Allen encourages us to occasionally spend some time at 10,000 feet as well, looking at how our current actions will be impacting our lives a year or a decade down the road. It's something I encourage everyone to do, in fact, regardless of whether they're implementing the rest of GTD or not; it's easy to get bogged down in the grinding minutia of our daily lives, I think, and it can be refreshing to occasionally step back and look at where all these small steps are taking you.
Of course, it's important not to linger too long at 10,000 feet either; if you spend all your time with your head in the clouds, after all, you'll never get anything done at ground level. That's what's so great about GTD, after all, especially for all the artistic dreamers of the world, of which I consider myself one -- it teaches us how to convert these lofty ideas into a series of actionable steps, so that we can actually get some of these projects going instead of forever remaining in our brains. That's why I encourage artists to try GTD out as well, on top of the corporate executives it's usually pitched to.
Okay, speaking of which, time for me to go home and get back to work. Farewell, O Cruel Winter! Hello, double radiators and websurfing in my underwear!
