Messages

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: The Power of Personal Organization: A Great GOE Example

« on: October 24, 2006, 09:02 AM »

we might dress before we showered, or have our breakfast before brushing our teeth ...

-KenR (October 22, 2006, 11:29 AM)

wait... aren't you supposed to brush your teeth after you eat?

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Goal Enforcer: great time management software find!

« on: October 24, 2006, 09:00 AM »

looks a lot like mindmaps cut for time management.
I'm using mindjet mindManager and loving it.
Will give this ine a try!

-urlwolf (October 22, 2006, 02:25 PM)

urlwolf, aren't you supposed to be on an app fast for 30 days? 

It does look like a very nice app though. Might have to give it a try.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: PhinisheD

« on: October 08, 2006, 08:14 AM »

When I started lecturing the real me was wetting myself somewhere far, far removed from the classroom while "instructor-me" crashed and burned in a pyrotechnical display of chin into chest mumbling and abstracted shuffling of lecture notes that I could not read because I had tried to cram so much onto a piece of paper that the text was minute...

-Darwin (October 07, 2006, 04:38 PM)

Oh wow. It's going to take me a while to forget that image. I have totally been there. It's a very uncomfortable place to be.

I had two epiphanies: the first during my first year of lecturing when I started using powerpoints - what a crutch - and the second when I weaned myself off powerpoints during my third year. Just a random thought, and possibly one completely irrelevant to you, but in addition to the above, my use of powerpoints was more as a crutch than an aide and the more I tried to use them effectively (i.e. as something to augment what I was saying rather than letting the slides say it for me) the more of a crutch it became. Throwing down the crutch and staggering on by myself, so to speak, really gave me confidence and even when I'm lecturing on material that is way out of my area of specialisation, I don't really feel very stressed about it anymore.

-Darwin (October 07, 2006, 04:38 PM)

I have realized that the third week of classes. The powerpoints were getting very boring. I was bored, the students were bored, and I was just not having fun since I was trying so hard to get through the material. I have let that go now, and only use the PP to have maps or actual pictures they can relate to. This has also freed me from the linear approach to the topics. I am more likely to jump around my notes rather than force myself and my students to do the linear thinking.

I am still rather frustrated at the whole thing. Last week we watched a very powerful and intense film. The discussion definitely did not go according to plan, and students left feeling rather frustrated at how it ended. In order for me to do damage control, I might have to cancel one of the readings for next week, which I really don't want to do.

This teaching thing is going to take some getting used to, that's for sure. And, I'm spending so much time getting ready for class that I'm not devoting as much attention as I need to my studies, which is not a good thing.

Better time control! Better time control! Better time control! Grrr.. When will I learn that??

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: who dares wins - my challenge to you.

« on: October 01, 2006, 08:48 AM »

Okay, here's a question....

I can grok the 5 minute activity. I can also grok the 5 minute might turn into something else. But, if you're trying to be organized and be able to master your schedule, how can you schedule anything else if a 5 minute task might turn into a half an hour or two hour venture? It's easy to get sucked into these types of projects...

make yourself a checklist with each day listed or use a calendar. then find 5 minutes each day to work on it. 

-mouser (October 01, 2006, 08:34 AM)

I've actually just sat down to come up with a morning routine checklist of things I have to do every morning. My goal is to stick to that every day for the next week. It will include the 5 minute dreaded task as well.

Thanks for renewing the challenge, mouser. I think that's a great idea. I think the resistance to having a deadline threw me off, so it's worth taking up again.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: who dares wins - my challenge to you.

« on: October 01, 2006, 07:38 AM »

how did everyone else do?

did anyone not manage anything at all?

-nudone (October 01, 2006, 03:43 AM)

Worked on it the first two days after the challenge, and then kept doing the "I'll do it later", and "yeah, I'll get to it tonight, I have more pressing things to do". Before I knew, it was Sunday, and the huge pile is still there 

I did, however, realize that part of my problem is that when I have a lot to do, I go on auto-pilot, and in a way I "check out". That makes what I'm doing completely mindless, and I disconnect from what I'm experiencing, and what works better for me. That goes for procrastination as well as work. I think mindfulness, being aware of the task at hand, is very significant, and might be key in actually making decisions about what to do at the moment.

Not sure what to do next.... I have a list of tasks as big as my head from last week that I didn't get to. I am having a very difficult time managing all the schoolwork I have to do. I like app's idea above about locking myself in a room until I work on X for Y hours. But, like jgpaiva above, most of my work is on the computer.

Ah well.... I'll keep trying different things, until something sticks. That's what this experiment is all about, no?

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Suggest Questions for our interview w/ Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow Author)

« on: September 28, 2006, 06:58 AM »

it's not up yet - will be up in october.

-mouser (September 28, 2006, 06:21 AM)

Ah... Thank you muchly!

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Suggest Questions for our interview w/ Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow Author)

« on: September 28, 2006, 06:18 AM »

Did I miss the interview, or has it been posted somewhere?

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: who dares wins - my challenge to you.

« on: September 26, 2006, 09:05 PM »

time to ask: how are you doing?

anyone not tried to tackle their chosen task yet?

-nudone (September 26, 2006, 12:58 PM)

Oooh! Thanks for the reminder. I nearly forgot since i had to run out so early out of here. Doing 5 minutes before I go to sleep.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: PhinisheD

« on: September 23, 2006, 04:13 PM »

phdcomics is awesome! In my department we printed a bunch of them out and posted them around the walls. They keep us real, ya know 

Do you happen to know of any mailing lists or boards for new faculty who are also grad students? Although I taught a previous course, I feel completely incompetent in this one. There's a huge sense of insecurity that I never had before, and I think the kids are picking up on it, and I don't like that. So I want to find out if others have gone through that, and how they handled it.

I was ABT (for MA) for 6 years, before I kicked myself, and finished 160+ pages in 10 days! I just had to line everything up perfectly so that I didn't worry about anything except writing. I'm hoping I can do that again for my dissertation (which will hopefully be in two years).

Okay, back to reading with me.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: who dares wins - my challenge to you.

« on: September 23, 2006, 02:15 PM »

End of September, eh? Hmmm... okay. I'm in! 

I have a gigantic-falling-over stack of papers from journals that I've had for years that's sitting on my dresser. I have to just clean it up. Toss the ones I don't want, scan the ones I want to keep but won't be accessing anytime soon, and file the ones that I think will be useful to me in the near future.

If I do manage to do this, it will be a miracle. It's been sitting there taking up space for the last year, and I've been procrastinating on it. So.... I want it to go!

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: PhinisheD

« on: September 23, 2006, 02:12 PM »

This website has managed to make me keep my sanity for the last 10 years! It's amazing! And the best part of it is the "Daily" section where people post on what they're going to do for the day, update, and get and offer support to all those who are also working.

Believe me, at 3:00 am, to see someone being empathic and responding and offering support when I post "I hate my dissertation, and I never want to work on it again!", is just amazing.

Anyways... if anyone is a graduate student, that's a great site to know about.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - WEEK TWO ASSIGNMENT (SEP 5, 2006)

« on: September 17, 2006, 11:18 AM »

welcome Lilly!
I also have no use for the tickler stuff.

I've been using an index card approach lately and i like it.  based on gtd.

what i've been doing is i have sections for "TOMORROW, WEEK, MONTH, LONGTERM" so that each day i go grab the stuff i PLAN to do the current day and bring those cards up front.  then i put stuff for tomorrow in the TOMORROW section, and file others into week, month, etc. 

-mouser (September 16, 2006, 10:10 AM)

I am going to try that and see how it goes.

I also have to say that whoever recommended "Instant Boss" is a godsend! I had no idea that my ability to gauge time (2 minutes break and 10 minutes) is so off! It's amazing! I'm giving it a try today, and already I'm really stunned at how off my internal clock is. No wonder I keep wasting so much time faffing around! Yeesh!

This software is definitely a keeper.

And, lastly, thank you for the welcome! I'm very excited to be here.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / A latecomer to the experiment, but not to GTD

« on: September 16, 2006, 10:05 AM »

Hello all,

I just discovered this site. It was mentioned one of the mailing lists I am on.

I have been "trying" to use the GTD system for over a year now. I can never seem to make it fly, however. I am overwhelmed with my index cards full of ideas (the initial braindump), and I always seem to have something more urgent to do than to process cards. I just uninstalled the GTD Outlook plug-in because it was just not working for me. I'm going to give Clear Context a whirl, and see how that goes. I also just downloaded the "Instant Boss", so we'll see how that goes.

There are a lot of elements that I don't like with GTD (tickler file, the waiting on, etc.), but I always figured that I would come back to doing them. I think, after fighting with things for the last year, I realize that if it's not immediately in my face, I won't do it. Having an incredibly limited attention span will do that.

So what I've implemented so far is the Zero-Inbox (although there are still things in the @reply folder that I haven't touched), and the Hipster PDA.

I'm really looking forward to this experiment. I had already done the Week 1 assignment, and although the Week 2 was supposed to be completed by yesterday, I'm going to try to do that right now (since I have a year and a half to draw from), and go from there.

Thanks so much for this experiment. Just reading all the posts this morning has gotten me motivated, and I'm looking forward to more of it.