Penguin Girl

I have half a mind to suspend posting until after May 9th, but knowing that I must post here will help give me some frame work to stay on track. I hope.

Continuing along the lines of last week’s post, though definitely not as well planned or edited, today I’ll attempt to write about what I do to break down a complex project.

1) I set frequent deadlines. I may blow past them with nothing done but the fact that the deadline existed in my head is enough to trigger some thought. Sometimes it actually is enough incentive for me to complete something. My opinion is that some progress is better than no progress and one does not need to block large chunks of time to make progress on a project. It’s possible to do decent work in five minute snippets as opposed to five hour chunks. Thought on a project counts towards work on a project.

2) During a review session of my life (these should theoretically happen weekly but I’ve gotten lax with my scheduling recently) I just write down whatever comes into my head to create my “next-actions” or “baby steps”. This is considered a draft and is rewritten later. Sometimes the list making degrades into doing and if that happens I let it. If order matters I’ll try to order them. If order doesn’t matter and I’m completely overwhelmed I actually write them on bits of scrap paper and pull one out of a hat to determine how to start.

3) When writing down the tasks related to a project, I try to identify things that I can do in five minutes or less. It helps if I get distracted or if I find myself with only a few minutes.

4) I reward myself. It’s all about self-bribery. It doesn’t have to mean something that costs money, it can be 5 minutes of knitting (or a row) or reading a few blogs, or another chapter of reading.

In knitting news I finished both my socks and the shawl. I haven’t taken the socks off since I put them on to take the photos this evening, the heels aren’t perfect because I can’t count but that’s ok. The shawl is currently blocking.

* I was pretty clueless of popular culture throughout my childhood. I owe my few pop-culture references to some great high school teachers who happened to introduce me to life outside classical music. One teacher (honours trig), Mr M, would play us songs on the day before winter break that included our names. The first day of class he started singing “Penny Lane” and I had NO idea what he was talking about and was very happy to finally hear it. Kinda funny now.. but I should disclose I’m still quite clueless on movies.. mostly because I prefer the book. I DID see Star Wars when it was re-released (and now own a DVD set) but that’s about it. In a conversation just assume I won’t grok the movie reference.

I’ve written on this topic before, and don’t really mention much about it anymore. Information overload on this topic is common and it’s (in my opinion) often overdone on the “interwebs” and doesn’t help anything.

What am I planning on writing about? I’ll pose a question first and provide the following disclaimer that this post isn’t as maturely developed as I wish. (as always)

Beyond cult followings, successful book and further marketing/branding opportunities, what are the main similarities between FlyLady and GTD?

I plan to focus on one today, leaving the others for another day.

1) Set time goals
2) Break tasks/projects down based on routines or context
3) revisit the big picture often.

and

4) WRITE IT DOWN.

Two more quick things:
1) My name isn’t really Penny, it’s Procrastination Annie.
2) “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” ~ Parkinson’s Law

In the past, I worked dashing desperately to a finish line just as time ran out. This sort of pressure is still one I seem to prefer, but I have found if I work like that then I do not think about the big picture or pace myself so that I am not overwhelmed by the vast amount to accomplish.

By setting time-based goals (”I will accomplish thing X by time Y”) I give myself mini-deadlines so I can work under the pressure I seem to prefer. In breaking down tasks by routine or location I do not need to take time to figure out what to do when I could be working on it instead. I also do not waste time by attempting to complete something when and where conditions aren’t optimal. I’m frequently and most importantly routinely revisiting the big picture so that I can revise tasks to see how they most appropriately fit into my goals.

How do I track time if I rarely wear a watch? I’m spoiled by living in NYC. There are ample places for me to check if I’m not in front of a computer (which I try not to be, an odd habit for a computer scientist). I find the time on the metrocard balance machine, muni (parking) meters, and receipts from purchases if the store didn’t have a clock. Additionally I often track the estimated time by employ that wonder of wonders phenomenon: time shifting by way of my wonderful iPod. Most of the podcasts I listen to are of similar length for each episode of a certain show. For example, I listen to a BBC production called “Documentaries”. On average it’s 20 minutes. I let them queue up and listen to them when I’m straightening a zone or taking a (deserved) knitting break. When the time is up, the time is up. Alternatively I use a kitchen timer.

It’s remarkable how much you can get done when you are focused on ONE task and have a short deadline (it’s amazing how dinner comes together from nothing in the 20 minutes before E walks in the door). My desk had a scary pile of doom (papers, drafts, books, the socks-i-am-still-not-speaking-to) and I set myself five minutes with New Classical Tracks and I sorted and purged it all.

It’s also amazing how much gets done when two evils are turned off: the television (E has it blaring right now as he does his school work, how he does that and still gets A’s I don’t know) and email. I am not a phone person so that isn’t even on my radar screen. I would mention IM and Ravelry and things, but I haven’t logged into IM in probably a year and I try to limit my time on Ravelry [though I must say that the new experimental pattern search really really rocks my world].

I hope as the academic phase to my Project winds down that I am able to write up what I did (and didn’t do) and how that worked (or not) to get it all done.

Some administrative stuff:
The project is due on the 9th of May, 2008. I have a few weeks off before returning to campus for a summer course. I’m not yet sure how that break or the new course schedule (t/r 6:15-9:25pm) will affect my writing here.

There will be no posts on 19, 20, and 26 April due to pesach. I’m not yet sure about the 21st or 27th. My hope is to post on those evenings.

Wow. What a week, busy and very inspiring. I’ve had great business and personal interactions; I’ve worked on some great knits (I bought buttons today and want to finish both pairs by tomorrow, I need to find time). Overall, I’ve been quite busy and scattered in what I have to do. Which makes sense. It goes along with how I’ve set my life and my work.

Thus, I want to briefly write ineloquently about how remember the milk is working for me. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh how spoiled I am having complete run of the Uni library system. It sort of makes me happy that my program is not yet in full swing so I will have some extra time to play and read. While doing research for a paper last term I ventured into the Fine Arts library to look into some journals which were not accessible online and a few other resources. While there, I found this wonderful journal, Textile History which is published by Maney.

In Volume 37, Number 1 (May 2006), starting on page 38 there was a delightful article “A City in Search of Yarn: The Journal of Edward Taylor of Norwich, 1817″ by Gillian Cookson. I had said when the semester resumed I would read this article. Wow! I wish I could go to the archives of the Norfolk Record Office and read through all of it. I have a weakness for journals, and this was such as delight as it also includes several drawings by Mr Taylor of Halifax and other locales. If you can get your hands on a copy of this journal, I highly recommend it! (I can’t provide it due to copyright restrictions).

Volume 37, Number 2 (November 2006), starting on page 149 has an article “Knitting, Autonomy and Identity: The Role of Hand-Knitting in the Construction of Women’s Sense of Self in an Island Community, Shetland c. 1850-2000” by Lynn Abrams. Once I read it I’ll let you know my thoughts!

I read a ton, I think that may have been established here. :p In addition to all the books, most of which come from the library due to budget and space restrictions these days, I have subscriptions to more magazines and newspapers than I can possibly read. I’ve been slowly catching up on the backlog. I am also a member of the IEEE, with membership in the Computer Society, SSIT, and WIE. All of these give me even more to read. I was recently reading the January issue (Vol. 40, No. 1) of Computer and inside there were two articles which intrigued me, An Information Avalanche by Vinton G. Cerf and The Computing Profession and Higher Education by Neville Holmes. Mr Cerf’s abstract neatly sums things up, “we must harness the Internet’s energy before the information it has unleashed buries us”. Mr Holmes further reminds us that “the computing profession needs to focus on working with other professions”. True. True.

…

I finished a bunch of books this past week. They were Stacks books, but not my stacks, sadly. I don’t think I’ll succeed in finishing my challenge before the end of January, but by cleaning out these library books, I hope to have made a good start.

I read a bunch of buzz-word books: Ready for Anything by David Allen, a Harvard Business School “Pocket Mentor” Managing Time, Greg Brue’s Six Sigma for Small Business. Well, here is a Dilbert on 6 sigma, which pretty much summed up my impressions of lots of these things. What bothers me about these programs (and many other things in life) is when people just accept them and apply them without thinking if they really are the best thing out there for them. I think I’ll leave the rest of my thoughts for a Thursday tools post (perhaps this week, perhaps next). I’ll preview by saying I am now looking at some of this in a new light.

The last group of books deal with magic. Most of my fantasy reading lately has had strong female characters and some use of Magic. I was quite clueless on this subject and last October I picked up The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft, Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting and Other Womanly Arts … Complete In One VolumeBy Zsuzsanna Budapest and Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition By Ruth B. Bottigheimer. I won’t pretend that I grokked all of either of these books as the subject matter in both (feminist spirituality and Straparola, Italian literature, Fairy Tales) is quite new to me, but wow. I think that Z Budapest presented a very good introduction to the Dianic Tradition. I definitely think that much of my recent reading makes more sense now. The Straparola work was a random volume pulled from the Uni stacks and I forget exactly what led me there, except I think it was in doing some NaNoWriMo research I wanted to learn more about Fairy Tales. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t until I read this volume), Straparola is famous for Puss in Boots among a few other tales. It was interesting and once I clear my to-read shelf I’ll allow myself back in the stacks for more random fun. (Maybe I really should go to library school. *sigh*) A friend, L, alerted me that Aerie: Book Four of the Dragon Jousters by Mercedes Lackey was published and available at her library system. I started haunting several branches of mine and on Wednesday came home with my Friday night read. It was good. I’m sad the series is over, and it ended differently than I expected. I was about to write that I wonder what she’ll write next and I went to her website and discovered this. I guess it means I should really read Men of Tomorrow : Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones and charge up my iPod. ;)

I wasn’t going to start with this post, but today seems a perfect day for it..

I frequently hear from people “I don’t have time to do X Y or Z”. I don’t have time to organize. I’ve already wasted today but I’m going to sit here until I get something done. I don’t have time to do time management. I’ve read Getting Things Done; I’ve done flylady; and I recently read this NY Times article, "Saying Yes to Mess". A good friend, David Seah, has great ideas on how to track time and projects. Lifehacking of various sorts is a big deal these days. (I’m not going to link to the myriad of sites, please just use google). Time Management is a buzz word. GTD is a buzz word. There is no one solution for everyone. Don’t feel bad if you don’t get all of one method. Mix and match. Find what works for you.. and remember, the system you choose might work in one area in your life and not in others.

So what to do when you fall off the band wagon and FEEL like you aren’t getting anything done? The following are some tricks and tips I use. Next week I hope to have a more coherent post and expand upon these and look into how I somewhat survived last semester (at the expense of burning some networking bridges and contacts) and what I hope to change for the spring (with a course schedule that is yucky. T & W… which might very well mean that W gets less attention than T due to all of us working…

• Don’t beat yourself up. Life moves on. You move on. If you keep thinking about how much you didn’t get done you won’t have any thought cycles for doing things.
• Get out and take a walk. I think this solves all of life’s problems. Monday I felt horrid. I could barely move. E and I went out to run some errands, while we didn’t walk that much but it was enough to help. Yesterday I pushed myself too much and walked a ton and felt AWESOME. I had grandiose plans for today. This morning I woke up, I did a few of them and then crashed and napped for three hours. I woke up even more groggy and pushed myself to get out the door and walk to the grocery store and back (about 2.5 km, not much but it helped). Yes, I’m lucky in that I work for myself and from home much of the week. When I was at the office 40+ hours a week I would take some time and just go for a walk around the block if I was having a bad day. As long as I told people were I was going and when I expected to be back, as long as it sounded reasonable (they all knew WHY I was doing it) no one really cared. My work environment may have spoiled me.
• Get out a timer and play a game just doing what needs to be done for X number of minutes. I happen to like 15 minutes. I also use podcasts. I’m listening to a bunch of BBC podcasts right now that are 20 minutes each. I do errand/chore/work for that amount of time and then (if I’m having a bad day) I do something I want to do for the same amount of time. Then I go back and do something else again. If I am in a groove and want to work for a second 20 minute segment, I do. But only if it’s for work-work. If I do a double-work segment I don’t do a double-play segment unless it was a double-work for which I can bill my standard rate.
• If you are female: pull your hair back into a bun or pony tail (not at the nape of your neck, sorta “up” like a cheer leader). Put on mascara. I can’t fully explain why or how this helps put me in a good mood. I sort of dislike makeup. If you wear a shaitel I really don’t know what to tell you. I end up taking mine off and putting on a tichel if I’m having a really bad day (and when I’m home alone I generally just wear a kippah I crocheted (as E doesn’t wear ‘em, he’s a black suede boy). Sorry guys, I don’t know anything equivalent.
• If my eyes are bothering me there are several solutions I use. I have really dry eyes and should be using this medication my eye doctor prescribed, but I don’t like it and I don’t use it. I’m really bad and my second set of resolutions (my first set were for 5767) for 2007 includes treating my eyes better. Anyway, enough dribble:
  1. use a hot eye compress. I generally just soak a washcloth in the bathroom sink until the water is really hot. Then I put it on my eyes for 5 minutes.
  2. use eye drops, TheraTears were highly suggested to me. The big thing is that they are in the single use containers to help minimize infection.
  3. Take two regular black tea bags, dampen them and put them in the freezer for a while. Take them out and put them on your eyelids. The caffeine works. It’s not a sudden jolt, but definitely makes my eyes happier.

  I learned the first two tricks in high school.

• Write in your journal for a few minutes. What, you don’t have one? Or you only have the online blog? Get thee to a discount store and pick up a composition book like you used in grade school. Just write about whatever is bothering you or not. Write about anything. Doodle. Take out a coloring book and some crayons and have fun (yes, I have a coloring book which sits near my desk).
• Write (or rewrite) the things you have to do. I don’t know why but this often makes me relook at them and often apply David Allen’s two minute rule and knock a bunch off my list.
• If you can, just make the day a pass, and go have fun. Sometimes you just need to recharge (and yes, this also happens more frequently just after vacation!). Or take a nap. There will be another post soon on the wonders of naps and optimal working time.

Ok. That’s my horrendous start (KathyMarie, do you still think I write well?) ;). Between writing this, some knitting, and my walk an hour ago I am slowly waking up and eager to do work. As far as the NYT article and saying yes to my mess… While I agree strongly that houses should look lived in and that clutter is nice, there is a line and I’ve sort of crossed it. Piles work (and look) better when stacked neatly. You can also get more in them then. :) E can’t sleep if the bedroom is really messy. I can’t work if I can’t easily fit myself into my desk (i.e. if there is enough crud under my desk that i’m seated about two feet away or if there is so much clutter i can’t find the keyboard). I’m going to finish the dishes, attack my desk, and jump into some client work.