Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

The other day I was adding an item to my to-do list. The purpose of this list is to keep track of the things in my life that I'm interested in investigating or need to do or get to finish a project. My to-do list is like those of most of my fellow travellers, unending, unrelenting and never completed. As I tick off a completed item, three more get added and the list grows.

Given some spare time and to be honest, who has that, I am just as likely to find an item on my to-do list that was put there yesterday as an item that was put there 10 years ago. Seriously, as I migrate from platform to platform, my to-do list comes with me and it still has items on it that haven't been done in a decade, let alone describe what project it was for.

Of course I could just delete items older than x, but deciding what x should be is a challenge that I'm not yet willing to attack.

Anyway, I was adding an item to the list when I remembered seeing something interesting on the shed wall of a fellow amateur. There were two pieces of printed paper with a list of to-do items on it. Looking pretty much like my to-do list, except for one salient detail.

Each to-do list was for a different project.

At the time I spotted it I smiled quietly to myself and thought, yep, keeping track is getting harder for everyone.

Bubbling away in the back of my mind this notion of a to-do list for a single project kept nagging at me. Yesterday it occurred to me why it was nagging.

If you have a to-do list for every project then once the project is done, the to-do list is done. Not only that, the items on a project to-do list don't really grow in the same way as an unconstrained to-do list does.

It also has a few other benefits.

The sense of satisfaction towards completing a project is amplified as each item is ticked off and ultimately the project is done.

I'm sure that project managers already know this, might even have a name and a process for it. No doubt there are aspects that I've not considered, like for example, the never ending range of projects or the trap of a miscellaneous catch-all project, but I'll cross those bridges when I run into them.

As of right now, this gives me an improvement on my stifling life to-do list and it brings great satisfaction when I can tick off a whole project.

No doubt you've gotten to this point wondering what this has to do with amateur radio?

If it hasn't occurred to you, consider what's involved into setting up a portable power supply for when you activate on a field-day, what you need do to get logging working, what needs to happen to get ready for a contest, what you need to do when you're selecting your next radio, how you're going to prepare for the park activation next week and so-on.

If you have insights into this, feel free to get in touch. cq@vk6flab.com is my address. Speaking of me, did you know that "Foundations of Amateur Radio" is a weekly podcast and that we're up to episode 285? If you haven't already and you're itching to get your hands on even more content, before episode 1 there was another podcast, "What use is an F-call?"

It has 206 episodes and other than the name and my youthful self, the content is more amateur radio. If I've done everything right there won't be much in the way of overlap in those 491 episodes, other than the same unrelenting quest for new and exciting things to do with Amateur Radio, but then you already knew that.

Now where's my podcast to-do list?

* Tell you about "What use is an F-call?", tick. * Tell you that I'm nearly at 500 episodes, tick. * Finish recording this episode, tick.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

• This article is the transcript of the weekly 'Foundations of Amateur Radio' podcast, produced by Onno Benschop, VK6FLAB who was licensed as radio amateur in Perth, Western Australia in 2010. For other episodes, visit http://vk6flab.com/. Feel free to get in touch directly via email: cq@vk6flab.com

• If you'd like to join a weekly radio net for new and returning amateurs, check out the details at http://ftroop.vk6flab.com/, the net runs every week on Saturday, from 00:00 to 01:00 UTC on Echolink, IRLP, AllStar Link, Brandmeister and 2m FM via various repeaters, all are welcome.