Everyone Talks About Getting One

so few ever do.

I've put so much of my blogging time into visiting ROW80 peeps and working the Spring Fling assignments inthe last couple of days, this will have to do as a post for today.  It speaks to the goal setting that has been so much on my mind for over a week now.

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Chaos Manager

My Hard Drives are Filling Up

Chaos Manager:

'via Blog this'

I have begun to tackle a huge, looming, intimidating problem.  Taming the chaos in my computer files on both the netbook drive and the external drive that was once my laptop drive.  The old laptop drive will provide me with 37G of backup space once I get the stuff off of it that I want to salvage and reformat it.

I began that task today and while I was wading through the files on the ex-laptop drive I came across my Chaos Manager 2 program and files.  I was once so dependent on this I don't know what took me so long to get it figured out if/ho wot use it on the netbook and if/how to have all the data transferred from the laptop drive to the netbook drive in usable format.

I figured it out. And am so pleased with that development I'm not too disappointed that I made so little progress wading through the files deleting only 1G and salvaging three applications, a dozen or so files and several zip folders that were Ed's that can now be transferred to his laptop.

Below are a few screenshots of Chaos Manager.  It is freeware and so simple to use.  Will run on a thumb.  Can synch between computers (that's new with the update I just downloaded) it also has a pocket pc version.  It has a nice calender and calculator which I have really missed.

Chaos Manager 2 Calender

But what I missed the most was the quick way to drop links and short snippets of text I find while browsing--yes, WhizFolders does this too but Chaos Manager has a much smaller footprint and its quicker.  I used to put stuff in Chaos for later trasfer to Whiz when I had time to give thought to the best Whiz folder and topic for it.  I would also use the  notebook for pasting stuff I wished to rid of incompatible formatting so I could take the plain text into whatever text editing platform without having to clean up a mess.

Chaos Manager 2 Notebook with RTF

One of the great things about the notebook is that it automatically recognizes links and makes them active.  I used to use it for that a lot before I had Whiz and I still haven't rescued some of those links off Chaos and put them in my Whiz Web Map.

I also use the notebook for HTML tip sheets and I'm pleased to find those again.  I was having vague memories of having those code snippets available for quick copy/paste but could not place where.  That's probably because I have more in Word or Notepad text files on the laptop drive.

Chaos Manager 2 Transparent

Chaos Manager 2 has a setting that makes it go trasparent when not the focus.  It also comes packaged with skins so you can have your favorite color scheme.

I highly recommend this freeware ap.  I have loved it since 2004.  Before my laptop BTW.  I just remembered I had to go through transferring it from the PC to my new laptop in late 2005.  How did that slip my mind?  That would have alleviated the anxiety over getting it all transferred to the netbook and I'd probably have got it done the same time I transferred my other priority files.

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Chandler: The Note-to-Self Organizer

Chandlerproject.org

I'm always trying out aps to help me organize my time, my to do lists and my mind.  Most are complete busts but Chandler is closest among those that provide calendar functions, assigning date and time, alarms, separating urgent from it-can-wait, and one of my must haves--allowing links to web and computer folders and aps to be associated with tasks.

Chandler is an open source project and has just recently provided 1.0 rendition which indicates it is out of its infancy.  I had high hopes on seeing the screenshots on their site and reading the testimonies of users.  So I downloaded it last night and spent upwards of six hours inputting tasks.  Though it has the ability to import from some other aps like Google calendar and outlook that was of no help to me as my to do lists are in my head, in my WhizFolderDeluxe note taking ap and in my email inbox.

The problems I encountered were not so much the fault of the application's ability to do the tasks I need of it but rather the fault of my eyes and the fact the program has compatibility issues with Windows platforms newer than XP.  Maybe if I wasn't working on a netbook  with a screen whose default font is the size of a mustard seed the vision issue would be moot and I hope in the future they develop an RTF for the notes so I can enlarge fonts, though that wouldn't help with the font in the menus and sidebar.  I assume the compatibility issue with Windows 7 will also be addressed in future builds of Chandler but until it is I don't think I can trust my data to it.  FYI if you are using Linux or Mac Os X you might be in better luck.  As is often the case these open source programs have fewer compatibility issues with those platforms than with Windows.

There was another irritating issue I hope they resolve in the future.  The alarm pop up dialog box causes the cursor to freeze and move like molasses over ice so your work is interrupted while you wait until you can click it away.  Maybe that is one of those Windows compatibility issues.

I also would prefer not to have to type in the date and time especially with those teeny fonts and I've worked with aps and online forms that provide the little calendar for selecting the date and  little popup lists of times to select.  I imagine Chandler will provide that eventually.

And a minor irritant tho minor as a mosquito bite is compared to a wasp sting is the presence of a demo file aka Cllection called US Holidays which they made read only and disallow delete and it is cluttering up my dashboard with two years worth of past holidays in the Done section.  Tho it is may be nice to have the reminders show up in the Now and Later sections as the holidays approach and pass, it is irritating I can't write notes in their note section regarding personal plans for that holiday and it is irritating I have to create a separate Collection called Events to collect Bdays, Anniversaries and other occasions which I would just as soon have grouped in with Holidays and also be able to add non US Holidays.

But since the calendar function--assigning date and time to a task so they are automatically prioritized by the program, moving into place at the appointed time--is the only function my WhizFolder does not provide while also having a smaller footprint, faster opening and closing, font size control and no Windows compatibility issues, I guess I will be sticking with it.

Screenshot of my Whiz Master Task List Outline Collapsed

That task list with all it's nested hierarchy opened is approaching a mile long.  I exaggerate.  Slightly.  Maybe.

I've been fiddling around trying to implement David Allen's Getting Things Done method since last February.  Chandler was the first ap that came close to automating the prioritizing task that I now do manually with Whiz--moving task topics out of the To Do Queue and the Daily/Weekly/Monthly sections into the Today/This Month/This Week sections.

Before you go away thinking that I'm totally dissing Chandler, rest assured I'm not. I wouldn't have bothered writing a review if I'd no admiration for it at all.  If not for the compatibility issues I'd be using Chandler in conjunction with Whiz for prioritizing the upcoming two or three months.  And if I were working on a project with a team or even trying to coordinate schedules and tasks with a family Chandler can do things no other small p project manager can do: It can share data with others and synch data between platforms.  I can imagine how helpful that could be for a couple raising a family, for partners in a small company, or for a community organized event.

Chandler is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

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Lifehack

This past week has had the theme of 'Getting Back in the Game' for me. As I've said here before I've been working at breaking obsessions and habits by replacing them with preferred ones. I've also been fiddling around with the Master Task List I created while reading David Allen's Getting Things Done. It was and still is a seedling compared to the ancient banyan tree I imagine it will become once I've followed Allen's advice to get EVERYTHING into the list. I've only got maybe 10% of my planned projects represented on it as yet.

I realized after only a day or two of working with it that I could not wait until it was complete to start using it and that creating it on the go might even help me make it more efficient as I integrated its use into my routines. But because it is still so incomplete--with only some projects represented--my use of it has been hit or miss. Most of both July and August saw it lying fallow as I stopped using for the three weeks I was at my Mom's and did not pick it back up until several days ago after stumbling onto this website that got me all motivated again.

Lifehack is a group blog on the themes of productivity, communication skills, lifestyle tips, management of time and money, and uses of technology to aid all of this. I've been browsing on it for a week now and have 'liked' it on fb to have updates in my face constantly.

The heat finally lifted in southern Oregon today. And what did I do with the sudden surge of energy and ambition the milder temps afforded me? I spent the morning and afternoon--seven hours all told--purging and rearranging files on my netbook.

I rid my hard drive of over 20G of fluff. Podcasts long ago either watched or forfeit, duplicates, old drafts... I spent the bulk of that time in the itunes library and my Ebooks library. I have barely scratched the surface of even those two area and they are as postage stamps to posters in ratio to the rest of the files awaiting similar treatment.

Altho the still unwatched podcasts might trump in gigabytes the rest of the files put together, the rest of the files are many and small and nested and rife with redundancy cloaked by different file names that can't be discovered without opening both files and comparing them side by side. The image files are especially prone to this disorder.

It is because of this chaos in my files that I have been so negligent about backing them up regularly. One of the things I am aiming to do is identify files that are probably never going to be altered again and back them up to thumbs or CD-RW or the external drive which was once my laptops hard drive. Those I still require easy access to I will keep on the netbook but in folders that I will treat as read only. That way I will be able to ignore them when it's time to back up active files.

Speaking of which, I've still not gotten all the files I want off of that laptop drive and that prevents me from wiping it and claiming all 30+ gigs on it for backup and storage so that is yet another aspect of this file management project.

My netbook drive had 220 gigs available when it was new 20 months ago. It now has 87G free. It was seeing the 65G free this morning that nudged me toward doing something about it. But even all of the file fiddling I did today duplicated every day for a week isn't going to keep that number above 50 for long if I son't start either watching or forfeiting the news pod videos I've been downloading 25% faster than I've been watching them since January. They are 200 MB a pop.

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Tuesday To Do Lists

Well this week I need to paste a big fat FAIL on my to do list.

• Work on GTD todo lists in Whiz Master Task List -- 1% or less
  
• Read chapters 4-6 in David Allen's GTD -- 10%
  
• Change bedding -- 0% (TMI)
  
• Wash bedding -- 0%
  
• Sort/organize one jumbled or junk box, drawer, shelf, cupboard, or closet area -- choose one that will make the most difference in immediate efficiency or productivity -- 0%
  
• Clean out Gmail inbox -- 200/2500
  
• Clean out MSN inbox -- 0%
  
• Make bib slips for first time library books from July to present. -- 0%
  
• Begin fringe work on bamboo baby afghan -- decide on method of attaching by experimenting with the stitches; cut several hundred white and 100 or so of each of five pastels; attach several inches of fringe pieces in time for picture for Thursday's baby afghan progress report. -- 0%
  
• Read 100+ pages in Take One Candle Light a Room -- 10%
  
• Begin work on review for City of Tranquil Light -- prepare bib info, cover image, author info and relevant web links; make notes on thoughts for review; collect quotes -- 5%
  
• Begin work on review for This Year You Write Your Novel -- see above --
  
• Get on mini-tramp at least every other day, increasing time on as able (currently at 15 min; goal of 30 min). graduate from standing to stepping if possible. -- 0%
  
• Read 100+ pages in Blogging for Dummies -- 0%
  

Where time went:

• Headache (for most of every waking hour)
• Daily Posts
• Spending time with library books going back or overdue (text & audio)
• Spending time with library books coming home
• Watching library DVD almost or over due
• Watching Netflix DVD
• Watching Netflix streaming esp the movies in my queue about to stop streaming
• Listening to news pods
• Surfing blogs
• icanhascheezeburger.com
• Daydreaming
• Dreaming

The list remains essentially the same so I won't even bother to recreate it.

Except David Allen's Getting Things Done had to go back to the library yesterday. I can continue work on the lists based on the concepts I grasped and notes until I can get another copy. The library system has three circulating copies and all three were checked out in the last week so it could be a month or more. But I have just sent for the audio book of Allen's Making it all work: winning at the game of work and the business of life. Unabridged 9 hours. I can listen while crocheting and get two things done at once. :) But I probably won't have my hands on it before next Monday so no point in putting it on this week's list.

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Tuesday To Do Lists

This is a followup on last Tuesdy's post. In an attempt to hold myself accountable I'm going to make this a weekly thing. Maybe not indefinitely but at least until I gain some momentum on these habit changes. After a few weeks I'll evaluate whether it is making a significant difference in my productivity and decide whether to continue. But if anyone is interested in joining in and making this a meme let me know.

I'm starting light with my expectations as am still recovering from a nasty virus. The focus is on some high priority tasks that meet one or more of these criteria: prepare self and environment for future productivity in creative projects; improve health and stamina and mood; tend to time sensitive commitments

Last week's todo list w/progress report:

• Make todo lists (ala David Allen's GTD) --made much progress in several hours of work on this (see last Tuesday's post for info on Allen's book and his method for organizing time and effort for stress free productivity)
  
• Laundry -- sorted on Saturday; put thru machines Sunday night and Monday morning putting away as they came out of dryer. Ed helped a lot.
• Organize desk -- spent several hours at this spread over several days. Much progress but long way to go
• Organize sewing/craft stuff -- ditto
• Begin fringe work on bamboo baby afghan -- nothing accomplished as it hasn't been safe to get it out with all the disruption in the room during the laundry and organizing tasks
• Begin cleaning out the 1000s of emails in my Gmail and MSN accounts -- had planned to devote the weekend days to this but then we lost internet from Saturday morning thru Monday afternoon
• Begin making bib slips for all first time books checked out since last June -- ditto; need access to library's online catalog and my account for this task
• Finish City of Tranquil Light -- didn't finish but made significant progress. In fact I read over 100 pages last night and that is the fist time since late last fall that I've been able to read for that long in a regular print book. I don't think it is a coincidence that I started using a pair of reading glasses I found while reorganizing my desk area last night, slipping them on over my bifocals in place of the clip on version I'd been using. After several hours of amazed use I took a closer look at those clip ons and realized that what looked like fog or fingerprint smudges was actually a fine mesh of teeny scratches. So relieved that my eyes had not deteriorated as much as I'd begun to fear.
  
• and Write Review -- see above
• Finish This Year You Write Your Novel -- didn't finish; did advance bookmark
• and Write review -- see above

So this week's list will look very similar:

• Work on GTD todo lists
• Advance bookmark in David Allen's GTD w/attention to clarity on defining tasks vs projects and which type of list best suits which tasks.
• Change bedding
• Wash bedding
  
• Fine tune desk area by using it and changing what doesn't work
• Fine tune sewing/craft stuff organization
• Sort/organize one jumbled or junk box, drawer, shelf, cupboard, or closet area -- choose one that will make the most difference in immediate efficiency or productivity. i.e. Last night I finally unpacked the shoebox of office/desk stuff I took with me to Longview last summer which is one less box taking up space in my desk area but now I need to organize the three drawers I unloaded all the paperclips, post-its and pens etc into to save time and frustration when I am in need of one of them; or pair up good socks and toss those with dead elastic and/or holes to cut 10 to 20 minutes off getting ready to go out. (will sandal and flip flop weather ever arrive?)
  
• Begin cleaning out Gmail and MSN inboxes (lets specify with measurable and actionable tasks doable in 30 minutes or less: deal with newest 50 and oldest 50 for each every day until done. So won't be finished by next Tuesday but it is a realistic goal and actionable as David Allen would say.)
• Begin making bib slips for first time library books from July to present. (lets specify as above: tend to the oldest batch first and work forward at a pace of one batch per day; also tend to latest batch (Sunday's) and then stay current going forward.
• Begin fringe work on bamboo baby afghan -- this too needs to be broken down into actionable tasks: gather all end pieces from finished balls of thread; decide on length of fringe and number of threads by experimenting; decide on method of attaching by experimenting with the stitches; find or make right sized card to wrap thread for making fringe pieces; cut several hundred white and 100 or so of each pf five pastels; attach several inches of fringe pieces in time for picture for Thursday's baby afghan progress report.
• Finish City of Tranquil Light
  
• and Begin work on review -- some actionable tasks that can be done before finishing book: prepare bib info, cover image, author info and relevant web links; make notes on thoughts for review; collect quotes
• Finish This Year You Write Your Novel
• and Begin work on review -- see above

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Tuesday To Do Lists

Putting 'Making 2do lists' on that do list might look like a funny but it's not really as I make clear below.

As I continue to recover from that virus and motivation and ambition return, I begin to consider all the things I need to do. Things neglected while I was sick. Things neglected while I focused on the baby afghan. Things neglected while I focused on the holidays. Things neglected while I focused on NaNoWriMo last November. Things neglected while I was away from home last summer.

Basically the last seven months have been one long taskus interruptus that has left so many projects in disarray, on standby or lost in the memory holes that I feel anxiety attacks approaching whenever I begin to think about it.

But reading David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity this month is giving me hope and I'm about to start applying his advice.

He doesn't advocate the traditional daily to do lists though. They require too much rewriting of the tasks as you relist repeating tasks and move the undone items from one day to the next. This is also demoralizing.

What he recommends is a project list that includes every thing you want or need to do today or in the future. And he really means everything. He believes the stress associated with that sense of too much to do comes from holding too much in our mind's limited short-term memory.

In order for you mind to let go of the lower-level task of trying to hang on to everything, you have to know that you have truly captured everything that might represent something you have to do, and that at some point in the near future you will process and review all of it....you need to collect and gather together placeholders for or representations of all the things you consider incomplete in your world--that is, anything personal or professional, big or little, of urgent or minor importance, that you think ought to be different than it currently is and that you have any level of internal commitment to changing. pp25-26

The projects are then broken down into actionable tasks and 'next actions' lists are kept. He defines a project as anything with more than one action task. Where applicable these tasks can be assigned due dates or do by dates but only tasks with hard and fast date/time requirements should be put on the calendar which is reserved for appointments and tasks that have no time flexibility such as making a call on Friday evening to someone who is in meetings all day and will be leaving town the next morning. Or more relevant to my todos: renew/return library items anytime (date due).

So as I begin to tackle my neglected tasks this week beginning that master todo list is one of the biggies. But in order to be more efficient as I go forward I need to clean up the mess I made over the holidays and while sick by not putting things away properly. Hence the organize desk and sewing stuffs on that list in the LOL pic. And I'm still hoping to get the baby afghan ready to give to my niece by the end of February and since the row work is done it is at that stage where the project tasks I enjoy are complete and only the pesky finishing touches are left so I must stay after myself on this one.

What I might add to this week's tasks:

Finish reading City of Tranquil Light and write review
Finish reading This Year You Write Your Novel and write review.
Begin making bib slips for all the first time library books brought home since July.
Begin cleaning out email inboxes of the nearly 4000 (gmail) and nearly 2000 (msn) items accumulated since last July.

The library book bibliography slips include those books checked out on my sister's card while I was in Longview in July and August as well as all those checked out since my return. We're talking several dozen at least. But it is not as bad as it sounds as this project involves a lot of cut/paste from the library catalog to my WhizFolder Reading Journal file. Tedious but not as tedious as writing out by hand on 3x5 slips as I used to.

As for the email inboxes that is also a series of mouse-click tasks for the most part as I will be deleting much no longer (if ever) needed and moving the rest to folders or labels and making note of any tasks still associated with them.

OK. That's enough for one week as I do tend overestimate my energy and underestimate the time tasks might take. I will follow up next Tuesday with a progress report and a task list for the next week.

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One Step at a Time

Have been reading David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. I'm beginning to envision a future not too far off in which completing one of my novels will be as doable as completing an afghan such as the one I'm currently working on.

Since I continue to work apace (nearly) on the baby afghan, I continue to see the daily progress and the end product gets clearer and clearer as the stitches accumulate.

I was already thinking how nice it would be if I could make similar progress to that of the afghan on my stories, blog improvement, other needle/hook work, research and the myriad other projects I got going or want to get going on even before I picked up this book. Now, after reading less than fifty pages I'm beginning to see what I was doing right (so far) with the afghan project and how those behaviors can be translated to other projects.

Some of those 'doing it right' behaviors:

• I had a clear idea of what the finished product was and what each interim step consisted of.
• I had a deadline and knew how to spread the daily quotas of work somewhat evenly across the days available.
• I had the supplies I needed.
• I had a work-station conducive to the work.

Allen says that most of our stress is caused by trying to keep too much information in our memory and like a computer with overloaded RAM we will start malfunctioning.

His solution is to collect all of our To Dos--100%--in easily input and retrievable and regularly reviewed filing systems whether notebooks, PIMs, electronic or paper. And in those systems the outcome of each task/project should be made clear and each action/step toward that outcome defined as well as each dependency--tasks whose completion must precede the start of other tasks.

So far all I'm doing is picturing in my mind what such a list will begin to look like and it is quite daunting. But I realize after four weeks of steady progress on the afghan that what is missing in order to see similar progress on other projects, including the novels, is a clearly defined list of 'next actions' so that whether I find an unanticipated free time block or set designated ones, I will have a specific doable task to apply my attention to and be able to not fret over all of the yet-to-do tasks for I can be confident that each of them will have their appropriate turn.

Just as I don't need to fret about iteration 14 of the ten row pattern in the afghan while I'm working row 5 of iteration 11.

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