The Weekly Review

In this episode, James talks about adding some active projects after declaring ‘active project bankruptcy’ and how quickly they stack up. Jean finishes a task just a bit too early for Christmas in July. Other topics include a fairly lightweight way to keep track of what’s in your medicine cabinet, the conundrum of where to store something so you remember where it is, and how well Charlie Brown and Totoro would get along.

Also, James mentions a game:

Early this year, Jean decided to step back from the classic weekly review made popular by the GTD system to create a process more tailored to what works for her. For no particular reason, her process is called the MEOW which could stand for My Excellent Organizing Workflow. On this episode, Jean reviews the steps of the Weekly Meow so far, and gets suggestions from James.

In this episode James belatedly sees the parallels between technical debt in a software project and what Jean dubs “organizational debt” in day to day life. James declares ‘active project bankruptcy’ keeping his trusted system in place, but clearing the slate of projects considered active. Jean talks about a box of mail that is a longtime source of her own organizational debit.

James gives us a recap of the in-person WWDC event in Cupertino and the fun stuff he got to do this WWDC week.

try! Swift Dub Dub

Jean consolidates her digital photo libraries while James finally gets off the fence and sends an email. James talks about his descision to take a year off from producing a LIVE near WWDC event during WWDC22 and writing. James also announces he will perform his ninth annual WWDC Week In Review song on Friday, June 10 at try! Swift Dub Dub, an online conference with free registration.

WWDC

Why is it that sometimes the simplest straightforward tasks don’t get done? James and Jean tackle that question. (Spoiler alert: we don’t have an answer.) Also, Jean recaps a book titled Wintering and how it’s influencing her approach to the summer of 2022.

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

In this episode Jean talks about a recent dog walking experience that did not go well. Jean and James compare notes about renewing Global Entry. And James realizes that a big part of mending fences is remembering they need fixing in the first place.

Apple’s announcement that the iPod will be discontinued gave us an opportunity to reminisce about our first iPods and how Apple got us to buy them.

This episode, James is recovering from a headcold and Jean gives some updates, including a scheduling snafu for renewing Global Entry. Conversation turns to physical mail and Jean’s new undesired habit of avoiding a one big pile of unprocessed mail by squirreling it away into many small piles of unprocessed mail in different locations.

This week, James and Jean talk about side gigs and contract jobs, and we look at how these temporary and sometimes flexible commitments affect our productivity.