I am by no stretch of any imagination a morning person. In fact, there are many mornings that I roll out of bed at my work starting time and head to my computer in my pajamas. Don’t judge. You’ve probably done it too. So when I recently started going back into the office a couple of days a week, I wondered how I had ever managed to do it every day. I realized quickly that if I was going to get out the door - or at least up before I had to start work - I would need to find a better way. I fell back to a really old way of doing things that I started when my daughter was an infant. This episode, number 87, is about how I did it….establishing nightly habits to set up an easier morning.

Links from show:

• A Tour of My OneNote Work Productivity System

Support me at Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LJEarnest

When I was a high school math teacher, I used to always ask my students to check if the answer they got made sense. I knew that this world takes advantage of people whose math skills are poor and I wanted to give them some tools to be able to cope. Today I want to talk about how simple math is very useful in life. This is Episode 86: Why It Pays To Math.

Links from show:

• Proof of 1 = 0
• Payment Calculator
• Changing Jobs: Let’s Do The Math
• Math For Grownups by Laura Laing

Support me at Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LJEarnest

A few weeks ago the young adult group at church did the service. The person delivering the message is a Navy veteran, a NASA scientist, and at the start of her civilian career. Her talk on “enough” got me thinking about the concept, and some later events played on it. So this podcast, number 85, will be on “enough”.

Links from show:

• The Earnest Life Episode 84: Tackling the Task List

Support me at Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LJEarnest

My task lists have become a problem. They’ve been growing steadily, and it is now not unusual for me to have 20+ tasks on the list as I start the morning.

It’s not a sustainable approach. Even though I am knocking a good number of tasks off the list each day, it still keeps growing. There are some days I look at the list and I cannot even fathom where to begin.

Today I will talk about my experiment with open, closed and hybrid task lists and the things I am trying to keep myself working. I’m going to call this Episode 84: Tackling the Task List.

Links from show:

• Boyle’s Law
• Getting Things Done* by David Allen
• Zen to Done* by Leo Baubata
• Do It Tomorrow* by Mark Forster
• Mark Forster’s other time management systems
• Oliver Burkeman’s Imperfectionist Email List
• Time And Attention’s Burnout Episode

Support me at Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LJEarnest

Filing papers leads to overwhelmed file drawers unless you purge them regularly. It’s not just papers, though. It’s also all the electronic stuff that you save, both files and emails. It’s easy to tell ourselves it doesn’t matter because of essentially unlimited mailbox and disk drive sizes. However, the more we shove into a cabinet, be it real or virtual, without ever cleaning it out, the easier it becomes to lose things and spend hours trying to find the information. In Episode 83 we will talk about the need for retention policies - and some ideas on how to implement them.

Links from show:

• IRS recommendations on retention
• Consumer Reports recommendations on retention
• Marie Kondo’s recommendations on retention

Support me at Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LJEarnest

The weekly review, made popular by David Allen in Getting Things Done, is supposed to help you look back and assess the week as well as plan the next week. I have done various forms of the weekly review for years, but the “review” part of it always slid away in the face of planning for the next week. Recently I made a list of questions that will allow me to do a look back with intention, so that I can assess what happened in the past week - and more importantly, what is outstanding and why. I’m going to call this Episode 81: My New Weekly Review Questions

Links from show:

• Get your copy of the list of questions

Support me at Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LJEarnest