Core Value: Accountability [January, 2011]

My work-related goal for this year:

Use Things software for my to-do lists on most days (4 or more) each week. Track how many weeks I meet this target.

Things is a Mac program for managing projects; Next Actions and other to-do items related to your projects; errand lists; phone-call lists; Areas of Responsibility within your life; etc. It's based on David Allen's Getting Things Done work/life management system. I started using Things over a year ago, but haven't been as consistent as I want to. I find that, when I get really busy, I start to-do lists, or jot down things I need to do, all sorts of places--note pads, legal pads, notebooks, Sticky Notes on my computer monitor, the little pad I keep in my purse, my Backpack home page, etc. I then have to decide whether to keep a list going (wherever I started it up) or transfer that list, or those to-do items, to Things. Before I know it, I have multiple lists, as well as errant to-do's scattered all around.

Things does a beautiful job of keeping all your lists in one place. It lets you move to-do items from one list to another, helps you track whether you did something, allows you to schedule a to-do, and more. As best I can tell, it's capable of anything I would ever want to do with to-do lists. Probably the best feature is that you can put work-related, personal, and household projects and to-do lists all together in the same place. I just need to use Things more consistently than I have been. I have a copy for my desktop Mac and an app for my iPad; and I can sync one with the other.

This goal fits the Core Value of Accountability, as described in the library's Strategic Plan, in that the Core Value asks us to "demonstrate commitment to accomplish work in a(n) ... efficient ... manner" and to "efficiently monitor progress on projects."

Now that I've put my goal on this blog, and publicly stated that I'm going to do it, I know I'll be shamed into doing it much more likely to reach my target this year.