The Catalyst: My Decision to Move Forward

As previously mentioned, my past attempt at owning my own company was largely a failure from a business perspective, but a complete success from life lesson and business experience perspective. I know it sounds funny, but one of my fears when went back into the corporate world was that I would forget how to think. Believe it or not I was pleasantly surprized to discover just the opposite.


All I do is think! When I finally made the decision to close Unni Woodworks, I had every intention of settling down with a new job and then resurrecting a small scale shop at home for pleasure and the occasional "for pay" project. That didn't happen. Except for projects around the house, my woodworking tools never come out - no real desire. Instead, all I think and read about is business, success, corporate structure, sales, time management, marketing, Twitter...

Something's happened. I've discovered that my real passion is business and not woodworking.

Ok Joe, now what are you going to do with all this redirected passion? "I know, I'll take all these ideas rattling around in my head and plow forward, right? As well as get the yard ready for summer, install a patio and shed, go to a recital, cook dinner a million times, be an Aspie advocate for my youngest, plant a garden with my oldest, hang with the wife, help plan two birthdays, and - and - and..."

But how am I going to do all this? I really wasn't sure until I continued to see references to the same system over and over while searching around for time management help. Then I dug into David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) system and got his book. His premise of processing and filing everything from an inbox into a trusted system and then only acting on a project's "next action" enabling you to clear your head, really made a hell of a lot of sense to me.

I was very eager to get through the book and start being productive, but I had to make a choice "paper or plastic" no really, paper or electronic. David Allen doesn't advocate one over the other, but to just use whatever works. I was pretty sure I didn't want to use paper because I have enough crap around the house and I didn't want to add any more. So I decided electronic with one requirement. It had to be cheap or free. I had a regular cell phone and I wasn't going to spend money on a new one, so a mobile solution was out. The choice was made on what device, my computer, but now what type of task manager/to-do list/filing system. Again, cheap or free. So after a bit more reseach, I stumbled upon Remember The Milk - and it was free!! I even found a GTD blog entry that gave a step-by-step way to set up Remember The Milk with Getting Things Done in mind. Perfect!

I can't even tell you how I started to feel as I began processing all of my projects, ideas and tasks into the system. Corny and cliche I know, but a light growing brighter or a weight being lifted comes to mind. I don't know, I could actually take a deep breath and feel confident that I'd be able to manage things. In fact, the more I processed the more confident I felt. As time went on, I found it easier and easier to use the system and now everytime I get a new idea it gets processed and I feel confident that I can go back to it with a clear head when time allows and begin to work the idea.

This system is a work in progress for me - I'm certainly not perfect at it, but now I can't do without it. Now that I've been using it for a while I can look back and honestly say this was a major deciding factor in my decision to move forward...it was the catalyst.