3 posts tagged “productivity”
a little late, i know, given that half the people i know have iphones and most of the rest of them have some sort of blackberry/mobile windows hoo-ha-thingy while i'm still languishing with an almost-2-years-old sony ericsson w810i, but i felt that as i'm embarking on a collaborative project that requires me to programme for the mobile web, i should really be using it and finding out first-hand what works and what is seriously annoying.
so cue a little experimenting with my phone. most people, i believe go through this when they first get a phone. i did give it a go at one point, couldn't fathom it for some reason and figured it would be too expensive to use if i did get it working, so installed google maps and left it at that.
today i started by trying to work out how best to keep track of my expenditure (because i'm flat broke at the moment and i've decided i need to start budgeting properly so i don't end up like this again) and figured if i could find a little expense-tracking app for my phone, it would be better than writing these things down on little pieces of paper and hunting for pens and things and none of it ever getting put anywhere where it could be of any use at all. so i hunted one down and actually managed to install it which felt like a disproportionately great achievement. it's a long way from beautiful, but it actually seems to be quite well built - easy interface to use, minimal typing required and it keeps track of the basic stuff i need - what i spent, what i spent it on, and i can even put a note alongside it. and at the end of the month apparently i can export it all to xls so i can look at everything that happened in the month with ease. it was an interesting exercise in seeing how simple but how useful an app can be.
the next step was actually getting webby stuff to work. sony's interface leaves a certain amount to be desired, i feel. the email set up has HRs between sections, so you keep thinking you've got to the end of the page of options, when in fact there's a bunch more things to fill in underneath. so i managed to set it up to send, but didn't realise there were still outgoing-mail-servery things it wanted from me - it had looked like it was done with the questions, so i'd assumed it was going to use the o2 settings or something to send the mail, but it seems it needs a normal outgoing mail server just like normal email. once that was set up, sending and receiving was go. yay! i don't know that i'll use it for checking email very often (and the download seems a bit haphazard - rather than just downloading the new email since the last check, it seems to pull down a bunch of random other stuff too. and there doesn't seem to be any way to actually delete msgs out of the inbox, just to "mark them for deletion", whatever that means).
anyway, now that email's set up, i've been able to set up something a bit more useful - to be able to send tasks directly into my remember the milk account whenever i think of them. the only drawback with this is that to use the import-list function for rtm, you need to be able to separate items listed in the body of the email with line breaks, and i can't see that the sony ericsson mail client allows this, but will be checking the manual for that one and, if need be, attempting to find an alternative mail client. next step: set up email for evernote, so i can snap things i want to remember - posters for shows, or jot down random project ideas - and file them away before i forget. third step: set up emailing to flickr, which seems to work...
so i'm beginning to see the light, i think. but there's still a fair way to go before i can see this mobile web malarky becoming totally integrated into my life. at least it's a start and i hope it'll help me understand about the limitations of accessing a webpage through a mobile phone so that i can make pages which are a joy to use :-)
so after a long time contemplating it and hearing other people rave and reading *about* it online, i finally bought david allen's getting things done and actually read it. the final straw was when, after a conversation with my sister-in-common-law about where we each want to be in 15 years time and about the business she's setting up, and realising that our destinations are pretty much the same, albeit at slightly different angles (in 15 years she wants to be a world-renowned alexander technique teacher who gets invited to teach all over the place; i want to be a world-renowned composer who is invited to festivals all over the place as the drawcard guest composer), she said, "if there's one book i'd recommend, it's getting things done" and i kind of thought "wow". and given how far she's come with her business, even part time, it's obvious to me that she really has been getting things done and she's moving forward towards that goal while i sit in a stagnant pond.
so i trotted up the road to pick up the copy that ealing central library's catalogue said they had. but it appears that the librarians of ealing central have *not* read getting things done or they'd have got up and sorted out the shelves so that the books the computer says they have are on the shelves where it says they ought to be. so i gave up and went to waterstone's who of course had it nice and easily accessible in the right place on the shelf, and a lovely shiny £11.99 which fitted just perfectly into my remaining £12 of gift vouchers which were my leaving present from PwC 2 years ago.
short review: david allen is a genius. it's such a simple approach, but you can see immediately how it can work. within a day of starting to read it, i was following his advice and writing down all the random thoughts i was thinking about things i had to do and my gosh! what a huuuuuge difference it makes. almost immediately the permanent clamour in my head began to die down and there was actual peace in there. wow! and the book is surprisingly easy to read. he writes very well and while there is a certain amount of repetition, i didn't feel it was overdone - generally there was an additional point being made where the reinforcement of a concept introduced earlier in the book was useful to have.
and now i am following his advice and trying to clean things up around here. I've already talked to djeli and we've agreed that i should take the whole of march off work because what with the australia trip, an endless succession of (lovely) houseguests, an unexpected trip to belgium and the skiing trip to france, i have got nothing at all done since i finished work at the start of december, so i have a lovely block of time in which to sort through piles and piles of stuff. i started with the overflowing boxes and bags under my desk and have managed to throw out sooooo much crap! i think there were about 5 overflowing boxes and 3 bags of papery junk under there. now there are 3 partly empty boxes (1 big, 2 little A4 shallow ones), a few files which i need to find proper storage for and an absolutely enormous pile of recycling and shredding. thank heavens tomorrow is garbage day! there's still a long way to go, but for the first time i feel calm about the paper in my life. i know where my bank statements are. i know where my spare passport photos are (i'd forgotten i even had any), i know where all the overdue tax documentation is. it's brilliant!
another priority i've been trying to sort out is gtd software. i'm embarking on a collaboration with a friend in scotland and i want something that will keep together not just the tasks i need to do and the things i need to check she's doing, but which will also store all the reference emails and files we've accumulated so i don't have to rat through my email every time i want to check something, so i've been exploring a bit. i like iGTD but i'd prefer something online, and the need to turn on manual sorting to get my next actions in the right order is a bit tedious. and i can't use the latest version because i don't have leopard, which limits my upgrade options, and it doesn't come for PC, meaning i'd have to use a different system entirely for when i'm working. i like the look of nozbe and have played with it a little bit, but adding tasks feels a bit clunky when compared to remember the milk plus in my current unemployed state, €7 a month is a bit steep just for keeping my to-do lists in order (especially when i consider how often i use flickr and how that just costs me $24.95 a year), but the free account is far too limited to be useful. i like remember the milk - it's been my faithful companion for quite a while now, but for a proper gtd system, it's definitely a workaround situation, especially when it comes to adding new projects. but their keyboard shortcuts make adding new list items an absolute breeze and now that djeli's finally starting to use it just a little bit, i'll still have to use it for that. but i'm enjoying the challenge of finding something.
it's so tempting to just say "right, i'll build my own!" but i know i couldn't get it as slick as some of the ones that are out there, and i could spend weeks just programming it and not getting any of the stuff i actually need to do done, which would kind of defeat the purpose. i guess for now, i'll keep exploring, but stick to remember the milk as my primary list. i might re-read their blog post on setting up rtm for gtd and see if there's anything i can do better...
any suggestions?
heh. and just as i get home, vox posts a new sydney cityscape banner :-) so i'm just going to use it for a few days, i think. will replace the now-very-out-of-date easter eggs anyway.
yes, i'm home. as of 5am today, i am safely back in london at last. it feels a bit weird to have cupboards and my own kitchen and stereo and stuff about and to actually not have to go anywhere, and very little i really have to do. very very weird. but hopefully by tomorrow i'll be a little acclimatised.
i'm going to try not to rabbit on too much today, but so much stuff has accumulated in my brain over the last seven weeks or so, and feeling so jetlagged that it may be a hard ask. i humbly beg your forgiveness in advance.
to start with, i feel like the universe is giving me hints. big fat hints. big fat obvious wet-fish-slap-in-the-face hints. when i first quit my job, i had a nibble of a choral commission, which still may come through, but i haven't heard anything yet. while i was in sydney, a good friend of mine asked me to write something for the amateur choir she conducts. i wrote to the old girls' union at my school about their newsletter while in sydney, and got an email back including a suggestion that i might want to consider writing for an anniversary concert they're having next year (choir and/or orchestra). and now, coming home to find a file of spnm newnotes magazines, with their attendant flyers and composition opportunities, i discover that there's a juicy-sounding composition competition coming up, for - yup, that's right - SATB choir. so i think i'm meant to write choral music at the moment. which is fine and dandy by me. i've been feeling vocally inclined for a while now, between the satie song arrangement and the set of little walt whitman songs i've been working on, so might as well go the whole hog and work with SATB. so yay! direction!
which realisation has had me a little hyped up (well, as much as the jetlag will allow) to get back to sorting out my creativity stuff. i've done julia cameron's the artist's way a couple of times now, and it's been fabulous, but i'm still feeling a bit of a need for direction but it's too soon to read the same thing again, so while ordering another book from amazon this afternoon (more on that in the next paragraph, but it's medically related so feel free to skip that one), i made up the gap to get myself free shipping by ordering cameron's walking in this world as well. i've heard mixed things about this - some people saying it's great and a little more advanced than TAW, but others saying that she goes over a lot of the same ground. i think i'm not too concerned about the latter because she has a lot of useful ideas and approaches in TAW, and it's sometimes beneficial to run through ideas in different ways anyway, so i'll see how that goes. hopefully my new books will turn up at the end of the week.
the other book i ordered was because while i was in sydney, my doctor was finally able to diagnose the digestive problems i've been having which has set me off on an investigation of my assorted health issues in a quest to finally sort myself out and make life a little more enjoyable. at first she thought i might have some kind of bug we could kill, and i was most disappointed when she got my tests back and gave me a clean bill of health - no bugs to be found anywhere - grrr! but on the other hand, she was able to put a name to my problem - irritable bowel syndrome - and a bunch of reading has actually given me hope that i can really do something about this. seems it's not uncommon following gall-bladder removals as one's innards have no way of regulating the amount of bile floating about. so i have a couple of strategies for that, and we invested in both books of the csiro total wellbeing diet, which not only has had rave reviews from all sorts of people but came recommended by our doctor as a healthy and sustainable way to lose weight, lower cholesterol, etc. etc. (and the recipes look and sound - and by all reports are - delicious) and the second book i ordered today is about controlling the symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (another fun little health issue i have which mostly raises its head in the form of insulin resistance and a tendency to put on weight as soon as i look at anything that has a calorie) by diet. so i've got my reading cut out for me in the weeks ahead! i need to read all this stuff, digest (hah!) it and then come up with a plan based around the csiro diet which will keep the PCOS and IBS under control, allow me to lose a little weight, and keep my meals at least approximately in line with djeli's so that we're not having to cook six (or possibly nine - seems that small meals and lots of them may be the way to go for me) completely different meals every day.
</medical bit>
but it's marvellous to be home. i have no energy whatsoever at the moment, so just messing with some photos, ticking things off, deleting them or adding them to my to-do lists on rememberthemilk.com (which i am absolutely loving, i must say - it came in so very handy in our frantic last few days in sydney), catching up on a little tv and eating chocolate to try to avoid re-napping (i caught four hours earlier today during which djeli went up to the bank, came home, called the AA, changed the battery in the car, then drove to oxford and back to make sure it was ok - really need to not sleep again until it's properly night). tomorrow i think will be the time to clean off and reinstall the old vaio laptop in preparation for hooking up the 100-odd Gb of mp3s i ripped while in sydney. i'm fairly sure that if we counted individual discs, at least, i'd have ripped over 500 of the things. if i never look a ripping programme in the face again, it'll be too soon!
