Monthly Archives: July 2006

New Server

The blog has been moved to a new server. Things were a little wonky for a while, but now they seem okay. Let me know if you have any problems viewing the site / commenting / whatever.

Daily Work Log 2006-07-26

I’m doing these (10+2)*5 work dashes, and trying to do a minimum of four per day, which I thought would be an easy minimum. Instead, it’s been a rather difficult minimum to maintain. When I try to set aside solid, 1-hour blocks to work on things, I realize how many little things interrupt me and require my attention throughout the day.

I really want to make that 4-dash minimum every day. I actually thought that 6 would be a good number per day, but that now seems outlandish.

I was at work for 10.5 hours yesterday, I worked on lab stuff all day, and yet I was only able to get in four dashes.

I find this intriguing. Is that spelled right?

…

Day went by in a whirlwind. Had a hard time concentrating. Had to shut all the machines down in lab due to impending scheduled power outage. Out of here for the day.

Managing Hard Copies of Articles

I’ve given up on keeping papers for reference in manilla folders labeled with the project name, as advised by The David. That works fine for small amounts of paper, but when one has stacks of article copies 500 or more sheets high, it just doesn’t cut it any more. I consulted Molly , who seems to have a pretty good handle on hardcopy management, and she advised me thusly.

She uses 3-ring binders to hold the relevant papers, broken up into multiple binders when needed, for things she’s currently working on. They are clearly labeled in large-face type. More extensive references are kept in little file boxes, using alphabetical hanging files. I’d say the file boxes are about large enough to hold two or three reams of paper. They’re something like this, but nicer. I think she gets them from the University book store. I’m in the process of moving my ever-growing collection of papers to such a system, starting with the file folders.

Hard-Copy Checklists

I’ve mentioned before how good GTD is for getting back on track after an absence, a vacation, or even a weekend. However, sometimes I just lack the momentum to get going the correct way. It’s not my work management that directly suffers. Actually, it’s usually things like my chores at home, or making time to meditate before or after work. These little things fall by the wayside, and their lack of doing slowly adds up to some kind of dysfunction.

In order to combat this sort of off-sliding, I have returned to something that’s always worked for me. Hard-copy checklists. And I’ve returned with a vengeance.

Taking a page from Ben Franklin, I fired up OpenOffice Calc (stay away from Excel, folks), and created a checklist using a spreadsheet.
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