The last post on organization - I promise

Today I made great progress on the data analysis. Starting from scratch was definitely the right thing to do. I worked about 7 hours just on coding. I'm happy to report the new coding scheme is working great! I had to make a few tweaks, but they were minor. I noticed some previously unnoticed ideas and I think I was able to find those because I had spent more time on my analytic framework. I still have many hours coding work in front of me, however my confidence in what I'm doing has increased about a thousand fold! I'm pretty optimistic.

Yesterday, a very nasty Florida-style lightning storm settled over my house in the afternoon. It stayed around for several hours and every room in the house had a UPS chirping as the power flickered and flashed. I didn't trust my surge supressor that much (some of the strikes were really close) and I decided to just quit working and unplug everything. (I prefer to be characterized as cautious, rather than paranoid.) But what to do without using my computer?

I'd been reading Getting Things Done, by David Allen. (The cool geeky types refer to this as GTD). They have a category they track called "Waiting for." That was the idea that caught my attention. I've always been so frustrated trying to remember when to follow up on things someone was supposed to do, but didn't. I try to keep that stuff in my head rather than systematically track it.

Since I wasn't going to be using my computers any way, I decided to implement a slightly modified version of his system to see what would happen. I spent a couple of hours plowing through the two piles of clutter I had on my desk. Gone! I also found a GTDTiddlyWiki and I modified it to suit me. TiddlyWiki is a very nifty little tool and I just love the idea of a wiki on a stick. That's what I have now! That, and a completely, amazingly, clean and organized desk and an (almost) equally organized file system.

There's been a lot of hoorah about GTD, but I haven't been drinking any GTD Koolaid. Imagine my surprise when I realized that my mind was racing in completely productive ways today, rather than the distracting ways it sometimes does. Maybe there's something to this being organized stuff after all.

Lately, I've been reading about "getting organized" more and more. Tonight, I noticed the Academic Coach had a posting on it. She even pointed to someone who was concerned about organizing books. When my sisters ask me what I want for Christmas this year, I'm going to ask for Delicious Library. (Dr. B, I know I told you I was going to order it and just haven't gotten around to it.) I won't forget this time because I've already got it noted on my Someday Maybe list. I suppose I could email them this blog posting, too.