Alright, so today I wanna talk about my little experiment with something called the “Kelly Glenn” approach. I bumped into this name, Kelly Glenn, a while back, I think it was on some old forum, someone mentioned it as a way to get a grip on, you know, just daily stuff and maybe bigger projects without all the fancy software everyone’s pushing these days.
My First Look and Getting Started
So, I was curious. The way it was described, Kelly Glenn wasn’t about complex charts or a million notifications. It sounded more like a back-to-basics thing. I figured, why not give it a shot? I was kinda drowning in my own to-do lists that never seemed to get shorter. So, the first thing I did was try to find some solid info on it. Wasn’t easy, let me tell you. It’s not like it’s a mainstream method. Most of what I found were bits and pieces, almost like a philosophy rather than a strict set of rules.
What I gathered was this Kelly Glenn idea revolved around a few core things:
- One major focus: Like, pick one big thing for the day, or for a project phase.
- Physical noting: Writing stuff down by hand was apparently a big part of it. Supposedly helps it stick.
- Reflect and adjust: At the end of the day, you were supposed to look back, see what worked, what didn’t, and tweak for tomorrow.
Seemed simple enough, right? So, I grabbed a new notebook and a pen I actually liked writing with. That was my high-tech setup for the Kelly Glenn method.
The Nitty-Gritty: Trying to Make it Work
Okay, so Day 1. I sat down, notebook open. Picking that “one major focus” was harder than I thought. I mean, my brain usually juggles like ten “urgent” things at once. But I forced myself. Wrote it down. Then I tried to list out the smaller steps for it, again, by hand. Throughout the day, I tried to keep coming back to that notebook instead of just reacting to emails or whatever else popped up.
The first week was… well, it was a bit of a mess. I kept forgetting to check the notebook. Or I’d write down the one big thing, then get sidetracked by a dozen “smaller” emergencies. The “reflect and adjust” part at night? Sometimes I was too tired or just plain forgot. I also found that just writing things down didn’t magically make them happen. Shocking, I know.
I almost gave up, thought it was just another one of those things that sounds good on paper but doesn’t really fit real life. But I told myself I’d give it a solid month. So, I pushed on. I started to make little tweaks. For instance, instead of just one major focus for the whole day, which felt too rigid for my kind of work, I’d try to have a major focus for the morning, and maybe another for the afternoon. Still keeping it limited, though.
What I Actually Figured Out
After a few weeks of consistently trying to apply this Kelly Glenn way of working, or at least my interpretation of it, some things started to click. The physical act of writing things down did help, a bit. It made me slow down and actually think about the task, instead of just adding it to a digital list I’d never look at again. The “one major focus” idea, even modified, forced me to prioritize. I wasn’t necessarily getting more done in terms of quantity, but the important stuff was less likely to get buried.
But here’s the kicker: Kelly Glenn, or whatever you want to call this stripped-down approach, isn’t a magic system. It’s not gonna solve all your problems. What it did for me was highlight how much I was relying on being busy rather than being productive. It forced a bit of mindfulness into my workflow, which was something I didn’t realize I was missing.
You know, it’s like all those productivity gurus out there selling complex systems. Sometimes, the most valuable stuff is simple. This Kelly Glenn thing, for me, wasn’t about following some rigid doctrine. It was more about taking the core idea – focus, deliberate action, reflection – and bending it until it fit my own chaotic way of doing things. It’s still a work in progress, mind you. Some days I’m on it, other days the notebook just gathers dust. But the attempt itself taught me a lot about my own habits and how I actually work, not how I think I should work. And that, I guess, was the whole point of the exercise. It’s not about finding the perfect system, it’s about finding what makes you tick, even if it’s a bit rough around the edges.
