Hearing shouts and murmurs from beta testers has caused me to look seriously at what information there is about Scrybe. Yes, it looks quite interesting and yes, I really want access to try it out.

So many tools (in particular, Zotero keeps improving, but it lacks good calendar and task capabilities) get a few things right, but I can’t use all of them. Scrybe looks like it might have an inordinate number of quality characteristics…

I use a couple of tools to keep myself somewhat organized. Besides a general methodology (David Allen’s Getting Things Done), the most important tools are:

• a good task management tool (I use My Life Organized)
• a good desktop search (Copernic)
• and a tool for keeping notes, web clippings, etc. (Evernote).

These three tolls help keep ideas and tasks organized and make it easier to find information in files. But file management is always an issue, primarily because of changing locations… I reference a file in a note and then the location changes because I move the document to an archive or external drive or new folder and the reference is useless. Searching helps, but ideally I could create shortcuts that actually work (Windows shortcuts are not recognized by many tools).

Until recently, I had no idea that Windows had the ability to create and use “hard links” similar to those available in Unix.  To simplify, in the world of Windows, hard links to files are called hardlinks while those to drives or directories (folders) are called junctions. Both are explained– simply and then in depth– in this shell-shocked article as well as in Wikipedia.

Simply put, junctions (which I find most useful) are like Windows Shortcuts but they actually work.

Read the rest of this entry »

Procrastination is a funny thing. It’s just a label, but people treat it like one of a physical pair of binary options: break down the time you have to accomplish a goal into hourly chunks, examine how you spend them… if they contribute towards the goal they are work hours, if they do not they are procrastination hours.

What about thought and contemplation? The subconscious is powerful and the world is rife with homespun advice about letting things simmer, putting them on the backburner, finding the answer by not looking for it, etc. Writers are taught to end a writing session with an incomplete sentence or scene so that it’ll tick in their subconscious. I try to go to sleep with a few lines or an idea for a poem on my mind, confident that the night will bring a solution to mind.

That being said, there is a lot of real procrastination going on (at least as much in my life as anyone else’s). In my case it’s primarily a function of realizing that I work better (and do better work) under the pressure of imminent deadlines. Everyone has their reasons. That Sage’s post above has a lot of truth to it doesn’t mean it can’t also be used as a rationalization for not getting things done. It’s up to each individual to assess and adjust and– in the end– they alone have to live with themselves, so they should have the most interest in figuring out when they are procrastinating and when they are doing something that just looks like it.

A Not-To-Do List

Today is the day you start your project. Wake up. Make your coffee. Sit down. Get to work.

I should be that simple. Wake up and get to work. But there are many distractions. Mental and otherwise.

This is a not-to-do list. You don’t need to check anything off, because these are things YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO.

Like Jon Udell, I’ve been surprised at the low-key response to the NYT article on life hacking, interruptions and the concept of ‘continuous partial attention’

The information ecology we live in is immense, diverse, and demanding. I’m skeptical that our young students are really any better at dealing with an interrupt-driven lifestyle than we are except in the sense that they have more practice with it. I don’t believe that our brains are evolving (at least not that rapidly) to handle interruptions and multi-tasking. Pretending that they are is misleading, making it sound as if concentration, contemplation, and conscious effort to create better environments– the core of life hacking– is something that we don’t really need to worry about. In fact, we probably need to worry about it more than ever before.

I’m intrigued by a couple of Jon’s other points. In particular, when he writes:

“Regulating the demand on our attention is what we crave, and technology has so far supplied few of the options that science fiction and classic concept videos have conditioned us to expect. Devices are on or off. Channels are open or closed. The vast middle ground between those two states remains largely unexplored.”

I have to wonder what that would look like. Are we talking about filtering? Intelligent agents? The connectionist concept of neural networks and tuning into the closest, filtered nodes?

A fundamental concept in social networking that works (thus far) is the principle of self-interest. So far, the tools that work do so because they capitalize on our selfishness and desire to meet our own needs. If we are going to figure out how to work the other way (Udell’s “enlightened self interest”) then we have to figure out a way to make that obviously valuable… whether it be in actual dollars or, more likely, the social/intellectual currency half of the virtuous circle.

[ruminate social+software attention life+hacking life+hacks life+hackers]

The science of interruptions, life hacking, and software

I’m still debating: is it necessary to switch to Mac OS in order to achieve greater gains in productivity?

[ruminate lifehacking gtd]

NextAction is a To-Do list tracking tool that uses the Getting Things Done methodology. Like the TiddlyWiki software I mentioned in an earlier post, NextAction is a self-contained Javascript/AJAX tool that can run locally from your computer or flash drive. Paired with TiddlyWiki, this might be the ultimate in low-overheard, portable productivity…

[Ruminate GTD]

Lifehacker (which I read religiously) just pointed to a thread about how to control the amount of time children spend online and watching television. They quoted from a system they found “fun and interesting” and I thought “hey, that’s familiar.”

Then I realized it was me– it was a quote from an email I’d sent to the 43Folders mailing list (another great productivity resource). Whatever will I do with my newfound fame?

I’m still unsure how well these tools will handle removable media indexing (I store the majority of my working documents on flash drives and I’d like to index CDs as well), but Copernic Desktop Search 1.2 now supports Firefox too! Score another for the good guys.

Between this and the newly Firefox-grokking Onfolio I just wrote about, I may finally be closing to having a system for research and collection that is actually useful!

A few observations about David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) framework for organization:

• It works. It’s simple, and it may well be nothing but an amalgam of other systems, as my skeptical friend Link seems to feel… but it gets rid of most of the artificial “fluff” I’ve found in other system and the tyranny of hierarchical, prioritized lists, which become a kind of organizational quicksand. Instead, focusing on capturing idea without stress, instilling confidence in finding information, and letting me determine natural priorities within defined contexts for actions works out to be a real winner. It is likely that any of these popular systems can work, one just has to find that which is most suited to the way they think. GTD is it for me– and apparently for many others.

• To really succeed you have to take a day (or two, or three) to completely make the change over to the GTD way of task management. I’ve been feeling pretty good about the positive changes I am making, but it is also pretty clear that trying to ‘ease’ into it is just a way for me to put off some of the harder tasks of quantification and collection.

• GTD addresses– in a natural, comfortable manner– how to manage and approach projects and actions. But it doesn’t do those actions for you. At some point “the rubber has to hit the road” and that’s usually when my old friend procrastination settles in for a long, distracting visit. I wonder about the psychology of procrastination and why people do it. It’s not just me, and judging from others it isn’t about being too smart (or too dumb), nor is it really about laziness. Is it fear? An addiction to the adrenaline of pulling things together frantically? Is it about stimulating that part of our brain that works best with near panic?

• You don’t have to join a cult or buy any products beyond the book. In fact, it’s probably best not to because:

• It is easy– way too easy– to get caught up in the technology of getting organized. I could spend the next year tinkering around with my PDA, haunting the GTD forums, and coming up with new and ever more efficient way to organize paper and folders. If that’s not the antithesis of getting things done, it has to be pretty close. As a certified geek I fall into this trap all the time in many areas… it isn’t just this area. But in this area the consequences of getting wrapped up in the method is that there can literally be no benefit at all from one’s effort!