Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Disorganizer

Bookstore
Not my desk.
But it could be.

I'm not an organized person. I mean, I'm really not organized. I have "could be useful" emails by the thousands in my inboxes. Most of my documents are completely unsorted, with helpful names like "brain5.txt". There'd be no point in me getting a nice desk as I'd never see it under piles of books, papers, unwashed coffee cups and long-forgotten forms anyway.

It's not just general messiness either. I tend to forget about seminars and meetings unless I get reminded, and I neglect administrative deadlines as a matter of course. I can never remember passwords, so I write them down - but then I forget where. Worse, I recently completely missed a submission deadline (not the one I've been working on), which is not just inconvenient, but fairly serious.

Last week I got the idea that I should try some kind of computer scheduling program. I looked around a bit and found one that's gotten a lot of good word of mouth. Simple and straightforward to use, and integrates nicely with my other desktop tools.

So I try to install it, but get a message to the effect that GTG can't be updated because it's already running. It turns out I already had this idea in January. I'd downloaded an earlier version, started it - and forgotten all about it. I found it open behind some ongoing blog entries, a forgotten instance of Octave and a couple of open PDF files.
 
So much for that bright idea.

4 comments:

  1. Dear Janne,
    once upon a long time ago, whilst we were still sharing rooms i Lund, you offered to become my secretary. I was running a study, a fairly messy one, and needed help to structure it. I cannnot really remember the reason, if any, I gave for turning you down - or could it have been because you simultaneously offered to come to work in a very short skirt and stilettos? Anyway, I wonder how the study would have worked out with your organization! And if your ankles would have survived the stilettos.

    Petra

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  2. Having me as your secretary or assistant would have been a disaster. Especially as, between you and me you're the organized one :)

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  3. Hi,

    Thanks for sharing the link - but unfortunately it seems to be not working? Does anybody here at janneinosaka.blogspot.com have a mirror or another source?


    Thanks,
    Mark

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  4. I should have mentioned the full tool name of course: it's Getting Things Gnome! (yes, with the exclamation mark).

    Here's the site: Getting Things Gnome

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