The idea of David Seah's system is to guide you gently into doing more things that 'grow your business' (or career) each week, by awarding you more points for doing those important tasks, rather than the piffling drudgery that you have to do every day (though you get a small number of points for those too). Being aimed at geeks, the reward is to pencil in a little bubble next to the appropriate point score for each day, then count up your total points for the week. That might not sound like your idea of fun, but I'm getting a sad little buzz out of it. The results are already interesting.

I have two main problems with getting through my work^1^:

That's where this system really comes into its own. I can keep a constant check on whether I am actually progressing the important things, and at the same time, reward myself for work on moving forward one of the difficult and important next actions, even if I haven't been able to tick the checkbox and mark it as done on that day. Balancing research and teaching is notoriously difficult, and I also see this as a valuable check on that particular tightrope act.

Of course, I had to change the descriptions of the points-worthy tasks a bit to make it more relevant to my own situation, but it still works well. In fact, re-writing the descriptions was quite an interesting task in itself.

^1^ Well, OK, a lot more than two, but I'm trying not to depress myself too much. ↑