SALTT is intended as a generic canvas for organising thoughts, ideas, and other aspects of life. Of course, I did have some intention to how I was going to use it while I was developing it, but I have let my actual use of SALTT evolve through use and experimentation. This is an ongoing process and so it is worthy of exploring in this blog.
Although the package is still in development, this is how I am finding that I am now using SALTT on a daily basis.
I tend to leave the graph running on my deskstop screen. I have blocked my day’s activity and two of the main blocks are in the morning, when I do my “World Class Work” and in the afternoon, when I do my “Lower Value Work” (see 5ac Review).
When I kick off in the morning, I first do a serach on “Urgent” as these are the items that are pressing and would be wise to do today.
I then search on “Today” which shows me what is overdue (in red), and what I have scheduled for today (in yellow); the things to commence and the things I have as works in progress.
Now, things can pile up, and there might be lots of stuff in yellow clamoring for my attention which I cannot possibly hope to get through in one day. So, I have to decide those items that I intend to do today, those that have some priority, and those that I can put off for another day.
The best practice would be to assign a specific date to those I can delay – then do them on their assigned date. But that takes mental effort. I take the lazy approach of simply resetting them using the “Do It Tomorrow” or “Monday” buttons. This is not ideal as, like a to-do list, item can roll over endlessly – so a feature will be needed to manage what to do about this accumulation problem.
I tend to work through the items I’ve scheduled. Sometimes they are complete or abandoned. More often, they are parts of longer projects and when I get bored, or can’t be bothered, I hit the “DIT” button. OK, it may be noble to plough through all the chosen items: I’m not that noble, but this way, at least this satisfies my awareness of where I am with things and what I am wanting to achieve.
Sometimes I add new items as they occur to me; sometimes I just add them at the end of the day. Because the screen is in front of me, I tend to review things on a regular basis, and do a review at close of play. This is a good time to look at the “Tomorrow” search to give me the impression of what I am going to be up to the following day.
The other search buttons: “Review”, “Unset” and “Done”, I don’t tend to look at as frequently, although it is worthwhile addressing all the unset items as soon as convenient. The “Review” search (at time of writing) is mainly for those items that “Can Wait” to be done in their own good time. A good point for reviewing is when I start running out of items to do today – though this is also a recipe for not getting around to doing things. Again, I have to decide whether those things are worth getting around to doing. The “Done” search is there to give me a sence of achievement.
Its Friday, so now I’m going to click the “Monday” button on my “Blog” node and see how things look then.
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