tychoish, now without a net

Hi Everyone. I hope this weekend finds you all well. And I hope you find the little revision to tealart that we’ve undergone in the past few days well too. (how’s that for an opening?) I’m sure that I’ll do a little more explaining over the next few days. Worry not and enjoy.

I was going to write this week about the importance of regular reviews a la GTD regarding the maintenance of a productive system. And I’ll say a few, brief things here

GTD promises a sort of a better “stress-free” living through recording and full proof living. It’s true that the less you have to worry about weather or not you remembered to do x, y, or z there is more “you” to go around when you’re actually doing x, y, or z. Great idea. It is however, my contention that, the reason this works, is that GTD asks users to take various and regular time outs to reflect on their process. So rather than worry about your process a little bit all the time, schedule times to worry about your process all at once and get it done with. Great idea. One needn’t produce nifty contextual lists and adhere faithfully to the two minute rule (if you have a task that can be done in less than two minutes, do it now) and so forth. What is important is that every once and a while you give yourself the opportunity to say “what am I doing, and what do I need to be doing;” look over your lists and make sure things haven’t changed. The important thing is to make sure that your “system” or method hasn’t been broken by the “doing.” And as always, flexibility is important: if all the parts of your system aren’t adding up, then change it.

Though I don’t think GTD works for me, or that my process fits that model, I really do enjoy the fact that it’s out there–because it’s prevalence drives people to think up some rather amazing solutions to issues that I’ve dealt with for quite a while. The communities at 43folders (and other sites as well) has been an amazing resource as I’ve become more reflexive about these issues in the last few weeks and months.

Footnoes So I promised a little bit of a rant about footnotes. Much to a particular professor’s annoyance I’ve taken a rather hard line stand against Microsoft Office products. I’ve found that they’re not particularly suited to running on the Mac, and the benefit that they offer is appallingly small. Additionally, I find it hard to interact with a PDF document that I’m discussing in my writing, and an open word document at the same time. It can be a pain, that’s for sure.

But this is a rant about footnotes, not Microsoft Word; well it is about MS Word, insomuch as I have to keep Microsoft Word around because there are typographical features that I would love to have access to that, as near as I can tell, Microsoft has a strangle hold on. Footnotes are one of them, headers are another, but a much less important one to my mind at this point.

At the moment, I generally write the OS X Rich Text service (think the default TextEdit, but piped through VoodooPad or whatever other program I’m working in,) and then prepare the document for “completion” using a quick trip through MS Word, which I output as a PDF file, to get all of the “publishing features” and avoid having to work in

In certain respects, footnotes in particular is a typographical feature that I think many expect is on it’s way out, and as a result there isn’t a lot of support this kind feature. Also, since most academics are too busy, being academics, and not designing software, there aren’t many options, beyond of course Microsoft.

So I’m at a loss with regards what to do. I’ve considered (and even installed all that I need to do to start producing documents using LaTeX/TeX, but that is compleatly overkill: I’m never going to have an equation in my work, and while I think LaTeX documents are incredibly pretty, learning another complex markup language with features that I will never use. I hope/expect that the next version of Markdown will have some sort of support for footnote text, but I’m not sure that this will work out particularly well either but I can definitely wait on this one until it actually happens.

But yes, anyway. I want a good footnote solution that is mainly operable within RTF and (even minimally) markuped plain text files. Sigh. If anyone has any briliant solutions that I’ve overlooked that would be awesome. In any case, until next time, stay well.

Cheers, tycho(ish)

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Hi Everyone, I hope you’re all enjoying the productivity series we have going, and I also hope this post finds you having an effective and happy Monday morning.

I realize that there hasn’t been a lot of interesting or inspiring content on TealArt recently. I think I’ve done better this academic year than I have in previous years, but in general it still sucks. On the upside some awesome people have commented, so rock on you all. But fear not, I am still very interested in continuing and improving TealArt. Also, I love getting emails that say that real people have commented on the blog.

I think the column/series formate idea has been quite successful, and while I think the productivity series is winding down (maybe 2 or 3 more episodes?), I am working on coming up with something interesting for a new series, if you have anything interesting by all means, please drop me an email and offer a suggestion.

The other thing that I wanted to promote, is my twitter. Twitter is this nifty little thing that lets you post, very quickly, short “status updates,” or other little snippets that you find funny or interesting. I’ve started to use twitter as a kind of running log of what I’m doing, thinking, or finding funny at any given point. It’s nifty, and if you’re finding yourself with a lack of tychoish content check it out.

But this was supposed to be a little bit of a knitting entry, as I haven’t done that kind of writing here, at all in the recent past. I suppose this is something that I’m going to get more into. I’m working on (yet another) knitting project for school, and while this one takes a different form than some of the previous fiber-related credit that I’ve done in the past, it does mean that my knitting work takes on a different tone and energy. This isn’t bad, but it does mean that I’ve been knitting differently for the past six weeks. Having said that I finished a sweater that I think is pretty nifty, but the yarn is totally not right for the job. I’ll post a more in depth reflection in a bit I swear.

In the mean time I’m working on a sweater in shetland jumper-weight–my first with this yarn–and this is clearly magic wool. Its also my first sweater with a turned hem, and I think it’s nifty, although I see now that I might need to add a shock cord, but we’ll wait to pass judgment on that matter until latter when a more data is available.

Anywho, having successfully gotten the writerly juices flowing, I’m on to write an actual meaningful paper. Woot.

Cheers, tycho(ish)

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Sorry about missing last week’s essay: I basically missed last weekend in total, and it threw my entire week into a really interesting place. And by interesting we mean, crazy like no other. Suprisingly, or perhaps not, I was able to keep abreast of everything, and the only thing that continues to languish, is something that I’m “strategically avoiding.” Anyway, for this segment, I wanted to talk about the ways that I use the computer, breifly. I’ve always been a big fan of keeping digital data organized long before easy solutions to do so were commonly available. While there are some software tools that I think make this easier, a lot of what I do is just trying to find a systematic way to organize one’s data that lets you stay “in touch” with what you have, and find what you need when you need it. I’m also very much aware of GTD’s “one system” maxim, and I think this generally is the best way to run one’s digital experience. If you’re new to the series, links to the previous articles follow. I’d also love to hear from you if you have any suggestions or ideas for me.

Part One: Getting Other Things Done Part Two: Rethinking GTD: My System Part Three: Rethinking GTD: Production Times and “the Zone”

At the moment, I live and die (digitally) by two programs VooDooPad, and Yojimbo. As I’ve said before, VooDooPad is a supper app, that basically lets you create a simple desktop wiki out of mac RTF files, and Yojimbo is a very solid/basic clippings file/database. There is some overlap in functionality between these programs, and I suppose in theory you could, if your brain was up to it, use one or the other to do the job of the other. This of course brings up the question of one-systemness, which we’ll have to get to later. Let me first tell you how I make this work. Also, for the record these, are MacOSX applications, there are alternatives (some of which look rather nifty) for Windows and other platforms, but I know much less about them.)

I have a Voodoopad document that I live in, and have lived in for–omitting a 4 month period–the last two or so years. VoodooPad is a relational Wiki, the documents are bundles of “pages” which are by default RTF pages. I also have some pages that are PDF print outs, and there’s system wide Print-PDF-to-VoodooPad. But the organization is completely up to you. I use Voodoopad as the basis for all the content that I generate myself on the computer: class notes, reading notes, drafts of papers, and so forth. The latest version of VoodooPad, supports multi-window, and multi-tab browsing/editing, which are features that I think make working/living in an application useful. I also like that, because of this functionality and the organization as a Wiki, I only have one VooDoopad document to keep track of. Having said that, if you had very distinct projects (or very similar projects, depending) you could isolate portions of your VoodooPad into separate documents. The downside to this is, of course, that all the organization has to be self imposed, which isn’t that hard to do (and is aided by the fact that VoodooPad has great search functionality and is accessible by spotlight.)

Yojimbo, is my latest addition to the stable of every-day applications. It’s basically a database that can keep track of all the little bits of data that float around your computer, but rather than having an esoteric text file system, Yojimbo lets you dump any kind of file in through a host of different pipes and then lets you categorize all these files in a a handy database, using a system of folders and tagging. I use this program mostly to keep track of the heinous amount of PDF files that I download and consume regularly. If, VoodooPad is my notebook, then Yojimbo is the file cabinet.

For those of us that deal with and in words, these are the two main functions of the computer. The two programs that you use are largely irrelevant, and like I said, you could probably get away with using–particularly Yojimbo–as both your notebook and filing cabinet. VoodooPad would work as well but, you would have to do a lot of work to impose structure on the “filing cabinet” in VoodooPad. In any case, no matter what kind of software you use, its important to apply a personal convention to how you name and organize things.

Thankfully, with the advent of Spotlight (and PC equivalent) search services and tools you need not have a single alphabetical (or whatever system) file for your data, but good file names are still important. It’s important to be consistent, so that you can look at a file and tell what is in it without opening; the fewer conventions you have the easier this becomes. When it comes to files, shorter is always better than longer, and always start generally and become more specific. This makes file names, page names, document titles (and so forth) easier to scan, and it also makes it easy to use filtering and sorting techniques to group similar files together automatically.

For instance I have a unique CamelCase identifier for all of my classes and projects that begins all of the page/file names: all documents related to my historiography class this semester are tagged HistoryTheory. Following the tag, I list (in order) the assignment type, number, and a pithy description of the reading that it relates to. This is the general system in use throughout the entire document. I use the same tagging system in Yojimbo to keep the projects sorted (in addition to a few topic-related tags.) Similarly, for articles I use, “AuthorLastName - ArticleTitle.pdf”. For another example of a system before Yojimbo, when I just had files and folders, I used the same naming convention and had specific folders for each project (class) that I was working on when I found/downladed the file. The intention was to group file with the moment I downloaded it, in hopes of being able to retrace my steps based on this association, and it actually works pretty well.

So in summary, we have “notebook” functions, and “file cabinet” functions: simple and consistent naming schemes are important, good search functions are really important, and when in doubt (and it’s possible) let your software create your framework, not the other way around.

I haven’t decided what’s up for next time, but on my list I have “project level planning and reviews,” and that sounds pretty good for now. But perhaps we’ll all be surprised.

Cheers, tycho(ish)

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tagged: academia

Ok, that was a cheesy title, but I’ve recently realized taht I don’t do a lot of actual reading in a web-browser these days. I mean sure I open browser windows all the time, but I so rarely find that I do a lot of my heavy lifting-reading in a browser, and–gasp–I don’t keep very many tabs open. The feed reader takes care of most of that, and I have offline apps that deal with most of my most important tasks. For example: I post to this weblog (and others) using MarsEdit, I maintain my del.icio.us account using Cocoalicious, and of course I read weblogs and other feeds using NetNewsWire, and I check all of my email using Mail.app.

While the whole Web2.0 movement supposedly pushes us to “live in our browsers,” and while for folks who don’t have laptops as their primary computers but use multiple machines, this makes a certain measure of sense. But I don’t fall into that category, and I have to say that, for the most part, I would much rather use a handful of neat apps, and be able to avoid using a web-browser for as much as I can.

So I should say at this point that I use Firefox 2.0, because it’s good software, and rather like it. But I’ve started to realize that I don’t really need the power it offers, and given the amount of work I’m doing in Cocoa apps, a browser that played nice with OS X would be nice. For those of you who don’t know, Firefox doesn’t interact with the OS X service menu and that’s… less than desireable. Also, given that I’m not using much of what firefox can offer, I’ve started to think that perhaps a different browser would be more advantageous. Camino looks like the obvious choice, but Safari, is probably comparable and both of these options are fast.

Do people have opinions on WebKit versus Gecko? The firefox features that I like the most are: crash recovery and the FoxyProxy extension, so if someone has an any suggestion on how to replicate this functionality, that would be awesome…

That is all.

Also, if I don’t get the GTD article done tomorrow night, we might have to wait till next week, because this weekend is jamming.

Best, tycho(ish)

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The scary part is this actually made sense to me on the first reading, it’s funny mostly because it is an incredibly out of place piece of prose. The article until this point is very conversationally written. Also, frankly the “awkward” invocation of Nietzsche is priceless.

Rather the gendered subject emerges through a regulatory scheme of gender–we are literally brought into being as gendered subjects through gender regulation. From this perspective, the very idea of a regulatory “apparatus” appears as a kind of structuralist Althusserian hangover clouding the Foucaltian insight into the radical reach of subject production through regulatory discourse. In Foucault’s understanding of the power that circulates through the subject of regulation, there can be no actual apparatus because there is no sharp distinction between what is produced and what is regulating–we are not simply targets but vehicles of power? Thus to paraphrase Nietzsche awkwardly, we must be able to conceive regulation without the regulator, to understand regulation as only and always materializing in its effects, and to understand these effects as specific to that which is being regulated.

from: Brown, W. (1997) The impossibility of women’s studies. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 9(3).

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Hello folks!

I’m back once again for our little weekly series on productivity. It seems I’m a lot better at writing for TealArt, when I have this modest weekly column. Once upon a time I wrote weekly columns for another website, and while they were crappy, I think I did well with that form. I think I’ll probably stick with my TealArt writing in this format. I still have 3-4 more topics for this series, but we’ll pick something interesting after that, and an associated rambing or two, but I think on the whole I’m a bit too long winded at TealArt for bloging in the typical sense to work. Just to share, I also think that while I’m terribly interested in what I do durring the day, writing for TealArt is at it’s best when I’m not mashing through half baked ideas from my day. It’s happier for all of us.

So my little discussion about productivity and rethinking GTD for this week, is shorter and about scheduling to your/our strengths.

As I said last time, GTD is all about getting all the pieces together to make it possible for you to do everything you need to do when you can. I’ve called this the “on the go” phenomena. This view of productivity assumes that given enough time, and the completion of pre-requsite tasks, you should be able to get anything on your list done at any free moment.

Simply put, this is wrong. At least for people who do the kinds of things I do (students, academics, writers, and so forth), it feels like there are windows of opportunity in which certain tasks can be done. For instance, you may set aside an hour after you get done with class/work/meetings to write an essay, and by the time you’re done with these activities, you’re too wound up, or exhausted, or frankly just not up-to writing the essay; however, if you had used the hour before the meeting/class/work to work on the essay, you would have been more successful. Sometimes, if you’re in a stuck place, or trying to do something when you’re not ready, a little reboot–like taking a shower, a walk, or a snack, can help.

We all have, what I’ll call “prime periods of possible productivity, and I guess my primary argument here is to resist the tendency of many productivity systems to fight these prime periods. Do what you can to extend, stretch, and maximize what you can get done when you’re in the right zone. To do this, you have to have a good feeling of how you work, and a sense of what works for you. It means trying lots of different work situations and times, and being able to pounce on situations that aren’t working for you. Take (brief) notes, be reflexive, and be vigilant. One of the worst things, in my mind, is to work on a paper/blog/essay that absolutely refuses to be written, because these kinds of negative experiences make it harder to come back to this paper later.

Lets think about this like sleep: if you’re having trouble falling asleep, and it’s taking longer than it ususally takes you to fall asleep, generally it seems better to get up and do something else for a little before trying to sleep again. Think about “doing things” in a similar way.

This isn’t perfect, and there is a fine line between taking a reboot, and procrastination, but the line between sitting before a blank screen and a blinking cursor, and actually working. This is where the human factor comes in to play.

Just to continue the personal case study, I’ve found that I can pretty reliably write every morning for about 3 hours, and in that time, I can get a great deal of work done; more than, I could get done, in say twice as much time in the evening. So I’ve worked pretty hard to get up every day and write for 3 hours, before starting to read, or going to class or whatever is on my schedule. I’ve also found that having a couple of sizable chunks of time, is better than a single block of time, or lots of bits of time, less than or equal to an hour. The key was learning my patterns, and then working with them for the best result.

Sometimes we don’t have control over what times we can work, and sometimes deadlines require us to change our pattern: these are circumstances when borrowing more from a system like GTD or the four quadrant system mentioned in the comments of the first entry in this series would help you overcome these challenges. My hope is that with the date based list organization that I described last time, you can get a good idea of what needs to be done, and when, so that when you have your time, all you have to do is look at the list and run with it.

This week rather than try and adapt or adopt something new into your personal system, take a moment here and there and attempt to understand how you best (and do your best work), so that you can attempt to create situations that are the most conducive to these sorts of operations. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t change the way you work if you think it’s not effective, but more simply, that what you do probably works pretty well, or at least has elements that you can use, and rather than trying to strong arm your life into a system, take a deep breath and try and work with what you already have.

Until next time, tycho(ish)

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