Building a Personal Operating System

I've been enjoying reading over the past few weeks, both for pleasure and for education - not that education and pleasure are mutually exclusive of course!

Having started August Bradley's course on building a personal operating system with Notion last week, I chose a book from his recommended reading list and started it yesterday. It's called Thinking in Systems: A Primer, by Donella H. Meadows and it's very good.

I've tried many different personal operating systems to help me achieve my goals, but have never really understood how to plan for the weak points. I tend to have an 'all or nothing' character, so I'm either merrily ticking off my habit tracker every day or not ticking it off at all on any day. I've tried bullet journalling, OmniFocus, GTD, Things, Streaks. They all have the same problem - me!

What I like about August's course is that its fundamental focus is on systems with flexible software that you don't have to try and shoehorn into your personality. He's just put up his Notion template, which I haven't duplicated to my own Notion account yet or even really looked at. I'm a little hesitant to do it because it will have that 'shoehorn' feeling, but I'm pretty certain that the course will teach me not only how his system works, but how to change it to fit my own goals and aspirations.

I'll be diving into his videos over the weekend, while keeping my all-or-nothing character in check so that I don't get grumpy when my daughter needs to use my studio to record her audition pieces. To that end, part of setting up my own personal operating system will have to include a way of adding flexibility and the expectation of distractions. It's probably more of a Mindset issue, the idea that what I call distractions are actually distractions, or if they're just life encroaching into my unrealistic expectations of myself. So not over planning will be important, and also being able to focus for fixed periods of time and plan for that by not picking up my phone when it buzzes and by actually communicating with my family in a nice way that I'm unavailable for this chunk of time.

I'm really looking forward to this!

Mindset

Oh, and speaking of Mindset, I've also started another of August's recommended reading books, Mindset, by Carol Dweck.

So far it's okay, but not really telling me anything that I didn't already know. Still, I'd never really had it explained to me before by someone else so I think it will be helpful in the long run.

It talks about the growth mindset vs the fixed mindset and I think my characters has elements of both, but probably tending towards more growth than fixed. I'm sure I'll be able to use what I learn from this book to tweak my personal operating system and make allowances for potential points of failure.

Or will it end up being Yet Another Course that I've spent money on and changes nothing? Again, I refer you to Mindset! I think I've got this!

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