J.D. Moyer

science fiction author, beatmaker, against fascism

Category: Getting Organized Page 1 of 3

2025 Recap (Spreadsheet Breakthrough)

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On January 2

In Getting Organized, Metaprogramming, Relationships

Looking back on 2025, the most significant thing I did was create a spreadsheet.

Sounds underwhelming, for sure. But this spreadsheet was unlike any other spreadsheet I’d ever created, and I’m someone that LOVES spreadsheets. I make lists, track fictional characters, outline plots, plan my life, etc–all with spreadsheets. And this was a sort of planning spreadsheet, in a way. But for me, a new approach.

On this particular spreadsheet, each row represented a month, while each column represented an important life category. Fiction writing, music production, home improvement, dates with my wife, activities with my kid, going out/visiting friends, health, etc. If I wanted to track it, I created a column. The 2025 spreadsheet had twelve columns in all.

I then filled out each cell with planned or desired activities and events, setting the text to bold if/when they actually occurred. Below the month rows, I filled out spaces beneath the columns with yet-to-be scheduled activities in each category.

For the first time, I could see a picture of the year in terms of my actualized values and priorities. I could see which categories were getting neglected, which ones might be a bit overcrowded.

And as a result, 2025 was the first year where I felt like my social life was “back”, fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. That felt good.

What Was Actually in the Spreadsheet?

The social activities were my peak experiences last year. Hosting a couple great parties, wine nights with the boys, starting a new D&D campaign, going out to some club nights and concerts, dates with Kia, dinner parties with friends, etc. I feel blessed with family and friendship.

But I also had some professional success. I started a new consulting company, JD Moyer Solutions LLC, and made bucketloads of money. Which is good because I live in the most expensive city in the world and pay for the most expensive private school (because nothing else worked). Mark Musselman and I released some electronic music which I think sounds extremely nice (Dream Wave, By My Side, check out our Bandcamp), I worked on a bunch of new Jondi & Spesh tracks, and I started my most ambitious novel yet (Saint Arcology, the San Francisco version, which precedes the Mumbai Saint Arcology, which will be Book 2).

But it’s the social stuff I’m most proud of, and remember most.

What were your 2025 highlights?

 

What I’m Doing to Stay Organized in 2024

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On April 14

In Getting Organized

We recently moved to a new place in San Francisco, which created a cascade of to-do items. The move coincided with the death of my mother-in-law and our daughter starting a new school–three big life changes at once. It’s been a challenging time, but I’ve managed to not drop too many balls, even in the thick of it. Here’s a quick overview of the tools and systems I’m currently using to keep track of everything.

Operating Systems, Calendar and Contacts

My main computer is currently an iMac, but I use a Samsung phone. Fortunately, MacOS and Google play well together. Google Calendar and Contacts synchronize well with their Mac counterparts. I remember the bad-old-days of manually deduping contacts after failed synchs (looking at you, PalmPilot, and you too Now-Up-To-Date Plus). The only contacts I handle manually are a csv file of addresses for holiday card mail merges.

Task Management

I started using the free version of Todoist a few years ago, and now I’m happily a paid subscriber. I haven’t found a better option for handling repeating to-do items, subtasks, and task sharing, all with an intuitive interface and perfect synch between phone, desktop, and web.

The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to get Google Assistant to add a task in Todoist–something I’ve tried to do a few times while driving. Anybody know how to do this?

File Management, Backup, and Synch

All of my personal, writing, and music files are on my iMac, which I backup to external hard drives, Dropbox, and Google Drive. I get by on the free version of Dropbox but I pay $2/month for extra storage on Google drive, which I use to backup and deliver large music and database files.

The only exception to that is photos, which I take on my phone and backup to Google Photos. I gave up on Apple’s photo management years ago–it’s just too weird and unwieldy.

Notes

About a year ago I abandoned Evernote and switched to a combination of Google Docs and Google Keep. We use Google Docs for shared notes like shopping lists and I use Google Keep for personal notes. Keep is very primitive, but it synchs flawlessly. Evernote suffers from feature bloat, note duplication while synching, and relentless upgrade notifications. I still use it to reference an occasional legacy note, but I’ve pretty much given up on it.

I would only ever use Google Docs for notes and other temp docs. My friend’s sister lost an entire novel on Google Docs (or possibly Google Drive). Google’s tools are cheap and convenient, but they’re constantly deleting data, features, and even entire products and services with little warning or recourse. That’s just how they roll.

Money

For years I used Quicken and entered or downloaded every transaction. This worked great for account reconciliation and taxes, but was a subpar system for planning future cash flow.

Now I just use spreadsheets. I use a Google Sheet that pulls stock prices to track investments and sector percentages. For cash flow I use an OpenOffice worksheet with a block of income and expense categories that I copy and paste into each month. At the end of each month I reconcile the amount with my actual checking account balances. It’s a simpler and messier system than using Quicken, but I can quickly see what the next month is going to look like (and if I need to move money).

For taxes I just download a csv from each account for the entire year and categorize the expenses manually.

Goals and Plans

For years I set annual goals, but recently I switched back to a “one goal at a time” system. I keep a big spreadsheet of what I call “life purpose projects” with different categories (health, household, financial, writing, music, etc.)–basically everything that I’m working on. But then I designate ONE main thing that I’m trying to accomplish each quarter. In 2024 Q1, for example, my main goal was to complete and revise a rom-com script (which I did…more to come on that topic).

I also track monthly and annual big-picture to-do items and targets related to work, money, travel, etc., but it’s been clarifying to have a singular “goal” with a defined timeline.

Paper

Most of my bills and statements are paperless, but I do keep some physical receipts, and there are always a few bit of important paper to keep track of. I limit myself to a single file box, which works pretty well. Everything else gets shredded.

Physical Objects

Okay that’s too big of a topic–I’ll save it for another post!

I’d be curious as to what you use and what you no longer use to keep track of it all, feel free to comment below.

Emotional Labor and Invisible Household Work – A Male Perspective

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On October 9

In Culture Rants/Shares, Getting Organized

I recently read Gemma Hartley’s piece Stop Calling Women Nags–We’re Just Fed Up in Bazaar. Hartley’s article about emotional labor and the unacknowledged work many women do in terms of managing household relationships, logistics, and schedules has been widely read and shared in recent weeks, with many couples reporting breakthrough conversations with their partners regarding the division of labor and responsibilities.

In short, many women end up managing a household by default, and are frustrated when men offer to “help” because why is it their job to manage the household in the first place? While some couples consciously choose to divide labor into “earner” and “household manager,” in many cases women end up getting stuck with both earning and primary household management roles, and that can lead to a great deal of resentment.

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Things I Regret KonMari’ing

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On December 7

In Getting Organized, Lifestyle Experiments, Nonfiction books

Where did you go, little Peavey 8-track mixer? I miss you!

Where did you go, little Peavey 8-track mixer? I miss you!

About two years ago I wrote about applying the KonMari method to my stuff. Since then I’ve had time to reflect on the process. This is a quick update on my post-KonMari insights.

Regret

There are a few items I regret getting rid of. This is something Marie Kondo does mention in her book, but maybe underemphasizes. For me, the list is as follows:

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How To Organize and Prioritize Your Family Calendar

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On July 10

In Getting Organized, Parenting, Relationships

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Last week we narrowly averted a collective emotional meltdown encompassing three generations of our family. The issue was a schedule conflict in our daughter’s schedule, and how to resolve it. The schedule conflict occurred *despite* everyone involved thinking they had done everything right, following the correct procedures, and “checking” with everyone else. The main problem was that our shared scheduling system sucked.

A family meeting and a compromise calmed everyone down, and we avoided a full-on crisis. Still, it was time for a new system.

The Old (Bad) System

Parent One enters things in the shared family Google calendar, which we both subscribe to via Calendar on our Macs and the built-in Android calendar app on our phones. Parent Two coordinates childcare with various grandparents.

Parent One “confirms” new family dinner date by waving text message in face of Parent Two, who is drinking wine and playing cards. Parent Two says “Fine — looks good.”

Schedule conflict surfaces on day of both scheduled events. Parent Two informs Grandparent One of schedule conflict. Grandparent One is not pleased, having previously scheduled playdate with friend of Child (and double-checked with Parent Two regarding time of playdate). Child is in tears because Child was looking forward to said playdate (and has little control of own schedule and parents keep changing it).

In the end we worked it out, but we realized we need a new system.

The New System

Child has own dedicated Google calendar, which parents edit and grandparents can ALL view.

Considerations

While the system change is relatively simple and straightforward, a lot of thought went into it.

  • For parents fortunate enough to get childcare help from grandparents (we’re very lucky in this regard), it’s important for parents to respect the scheduling considerations of their own parents. It’s reasonable to provide grandparents (and other regular childcare participants) with the “big picture” on your child’s schedule.
  • A physical “main calendar” in the kitchen is great for the nuclear family, but it doesn’t do much for the extended family. Shared digital calendars with different view permissions are a necessary complexity for a complex extended family.
  • A single “joint” calendar is fine for a couple scheduling dates, but it isn’t sufficient for the entire family when children start having their own engagements.

Calendaring and Kid’s Feelings

A big “a-ha” moment for me was during our family meeting, our daughter was expressing exactly why she was so upset about the change of plans. It wasn’t only that she was looking forward to the playdate herself, but she actually felt a sense of obligation to her new friend, who she had promised she would “buddy-up” with to reduce her friend’s anxiety about her first session of a martial arts class. In short, my daughter didn’t want to flake! I really felt for her at this moment — I remember being seven and having very little control of my own schedule. It seemed that adults would sometimes change things on a whim, with no regard for my feelings.

Sometimes work or other adult realities trump the feelings of children, but it’s important for parents to remember that children have complex emotions that impact them even more than the emotions of adults — they haven’t yet fully developed the self-regulating capabilities of the frontal cortex.

How to Resolve Conflicts?

There are different ways to resolve scheduling conflicts.

  • First on the “main” calendar wins.
  • Paterfamilias or materfamilias — the dominant head-of-household or schedule boss “puts their foot down” and gets their way.
  • Values-based approach.

Of these, I’m a fan of the third. By “values based” I mean the values of your family in particular. What does it mean to be a member of your family?

If there is a schedule conflict, which event supports the highest held value in your family? Friendship? Earning money? Keeping up appearances? Winning at sports? Once the underlying values behind a choice are revealed, a “difficult” choice may become much easier to make.

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