decisionhelper

i've finally managed to do something i have been wishing for for a long time. i wrote a program (well 3 seperate simple linux bash scripts that i call program but of course this is as ghetto as it gets) that decides for me on what to do next.

until i started playing with this i had no idea what a crazy overcomplicated maze my decisionmaking process is.

see i noticed that i like to spend way too much brainpower on finding completely meaningless afterthoughts, which kind of keeps me using my brain and deepens my understanding and broadens the range of my analysis but then i focus so much on tiny differences that i lose sight of what i was actually about to do, which is trying to decide what to do next; searching for more little advantages and tiny synergies that just waste my energy and make me feel exhausted for accomplishing nothing.

first script helps me automatically create a textfile in a specific folder. i give the thing a name, i assign it a priority value between 1 and 9 and a rough estimate how many minutes it will take. the txt gets created, opens automatically and i can write notes underneath the few variables i assigned at the top.

second script is where the magic happens. when i execute it, the script asks me how many minutes i have time. lets say i have 18 minutes until i have to go somewhere. it then searches through all the text files what i wrote into the MINUTES variable that takes 18 minutes or less (without including those that take longer). so now i have a list of txt-files that are within the time i have. the files appear on the list as many times as i have set in PRIORITY; this means something with priority 2 will appear twice on the list. now from this list one txt files gets randomly selected and this txt files opens for me in my default txt editor called kwrite. this way the more important things have a higher chance of being picked.

the reason this is genius: i circumvent my awful decisionmaking process. i can just say GIMME ONE! and POOF instantly one file opens and i can work on it.

third script is when i am done with a txt file and i want to remove it from the pool, the script just asks me it's number (i just have a counter that goes up so that each txt i create has a unique number i can search for), i write the number, the script finds the textfile which has the number and moves it into the completed folder itself without me having to juggle files.

this is exceptionally convenient to use because i found a way to execute these scripts from my desktop-gadget. see the three buttons on the bottom left? (plus sign, playbutton and red x). i might change the playbutton into a dice symbol but this is wonderful convenient.