I’ve not been writing much lately – the urge to express myself has sort of blown out of me like air from a floaty toy at the end of summer – but I am looking forward to BarCamp Seattle ’09, which will take place this weekend at the Adobe Conference Center in Fremont. Much like MindCamp last November, BarCamp is an unconference for techies, geeks, activists, journalists, and many others. It’s basically going to be a big camp for smart, motivated people.

My motivation is down a little bit this time around, for reasons that have nothing to do with BarCamp or the tech scene in general, but I’m guessing that when I arrive at 10 AM and get a whiff of the energy and enthusiasm of the other 200+ attendees, that I’ll get right into the swing of things.

I have a couple ideas of presentations that I would consider giving. One is on GTD – Getting Things Done – which most of you have heard of, and I know that some of you are devotees of the method. Another would be on …. well, I have another topic in mind, but am not going to share it until I decide if I want to give it or not. Hate to be so cloak-and-dagger, but there’s a lot going on under the covers that I’d rather not blab about with the internet public at large. Careful readers may be able to divine some of what has been happening lately, and how I’m feeling in general, but for the most part it’s boring and not worth public airing.

On a good note, work on my side projects continues to flow along. Programming, being one of those activities that can totally absorb one’s mind while doing it, is actually good for someone who has a lot to think about. A few hours can go by with nary a side thought. Speaking of which, I’m ensconced in a local favorite restaurant (Serendipity) with a Stella and am about to dive in….see you on the flip side!

Andre has a compelling post up about Someday/Maybe lists and in my opinion gets at the heart of a lot of the unconscious resistance to creating, reviewing, or updating the S/M during your weekly review.

My own bugaboo?  My list fills up with unresearched projects (#7).  Yes, I tend to use S/M as a place to put items I don’t want to make a decision about.  More accurately, I use it as a place to put things I don’t even want to think about in the first place.

What’s your experience with Someday/Maybe?  Could you implement any of Andre’s fixes?

I’ve gone to two of David Allen’s GTD Roadmap seminars in Seattle – once in 2006 and again last year. The first time I paid around $550 or so; the second time, since I was an alumnus, I got a 50% discount and only paid $275.

David’s returning to Seattle next week, but the price has gone up considerably:

We are offering an exclusive discount to our friends in Seattle, a 25% savings from the usual registration cost (regularly $995).

I’m not surprised the price has gone up, and as they used to say, the Roadmap is a bargain at twice the price. If you’re on the fence, you should definitely consider going (if they still have room). Very inspirational, yet very hands on and nuts-and-bolts.  If you’re new to GTD, attending the Roadmap will get your GTD efforts jump-started; if you’ve been doing it a while, it will help you understand the nuance and subtlety of the system.

I discovered a great term, coined by Terry Madeley in describing parts of his GTD system. A “duff action” is a Next Action in the GTD system that really isn’t actionable. Terry uses this example:

I’ve got into the habit of going out for a coffee, and sitting at one of the tables there scriblng all over my notes with any new actions I can think of, re-wording duff actions (“Investigate such-and-such”? — how exactly? what’s the next physical thing to do?) [...]

I like this term a lot, combining the feel of the words “lazy” and “daffy”. Nice job Terry! I’m going to steal this one.

An excellent post from Steve Borsch about how to contemplate the correct action before jumping ahead (or worse, jumping sideways or backwards with no plan at all). As he puts it:

What I try hard to do with this blog — and life in general — is to ferret out the meaning behind a person’s incentives, company/product direction or strategic announcement before going off half-cocked to write about it and/or get involved in conversations. Connecting the dots, if you will.

Read the post, but in summary: (1) Meditate. (2) Shut off interruptions. (3) Don’t overextend your attention.

Read it all here.