Out of The Sun
The net is, of course, full of personal development recipes and productivity hacks (see stevepavlina.com and 43folders.com for examples). But personal is personal: one size does not fit all and sometimes you just have to face a personal problem only you can solve.
I personally have (or, hopefully, had) a problem ending my workday. I work at home, which only makes it worse, if anything, but I use the inet. It might be ok, if not for me being the junkie material.
Which is exactly why I don't read mags or watch TV or play videogames or smoke pot: it tends to take all my time. You might say it's a mixed curse, since TV, mags and even VG are getting useless pretty fast. Pot might have some use, and I've learned quite a lot from it, but it has it's own downsides. It is bad for my discipline to start with, and I've had way more pot than self-discipline in my life.
Anyway, when its come to getting out of the net mode, the curse become very real and obvious. I'm all over the net. I have five to ten apps on the taskbar, which is usually too much for me to concentrate especially since, obviously, not all of them are related to the task at hand. I open and read the pages compulsively, and since I've banned a lot of interesting reading with my firewall, I end up opening the blogs for apps I don't even use.
Which is exactly where the secluded account come in handy. It has all the toys I need for the real act of writing - or for journalling, or for reviewing my numerous unfinished works, or even messing with my Projects.xls, but not more.
The problem is to get into that account after a day on the net. I finish my salary job at 19:00 to 19:30, but till recently it's been a typical scenario when I logged off from my regular account at 20:30, or even later.
Just the other day I've opened a Wkipedia article. Granted, I was doing research for one of my writing projects. And I've learned some stuff - mostly unrelated to the any project I'm working at. That's ok, I don't want my curiousity to starve but I wasn't really immersed in that article, so I started to do something else. Quite a few things, actually.
The result? I got up from my computer about 21:10, tired, displeased with myself and sick with irrelevant data.
How does it happen? Well, my first mistake was to go to Wikipedia without it being planned ahead. I should know where it ends, being down that road for so many times. Besides, I've got lots of other little things to do if I need to take a break from my job, like doing the dishes, or doing pushups, or drumming, or whatever.
So, if I really think I need to research something (and I do have things to research), I might want to put it down and then maybe let it simmer while I sort out whether it's all that nessesary. No, that's not russian bureaucracy in action, but rather trying to save me some trouble. I've only got one life and one head, both of which are of limited capacity. And I can't read all the time: I need time to write, remember?
Of course you do. On to my second mistake, then.
Which was not stopping when I should have. If my internet time is gone and it's obviously going to take more than 2 minutes to finish the task and it's not urgent, the right thing to do is to put it in my RMilk account and see it tomorrow.
And if it takes 2 minutes or less by the way, I've better finish it at once, without pouring me some tea or making playlists or other tasks or whatever.
There was a third mistake too. Did you know? Why, I've noticed only just, too.
But it's rather important. I was getting bored, I was feeling like I'm getting nothing out of that article, but instead of just dropping it, I kept grabbing at other things to help me through.
Which is both stupid and dangerous. I mean, isn't it a good chance to bore the readers, when I'm not even fully aware when I'm bored myself?
Ok, I'll write about awareness in GTD later. Until then - be aware. Be very aware.
Into The Darkness
I have made an account for writing, by the way. It has no internet connection (no shortcuts to my connections, anyway) and nothing much in Start menu*. There’s no desktop shortcuts either, only a few ones on Quick Launch panel. Those are:
- EverNote, where I keep my notes. Its skin resembles Media Player 9 and it looks ugly with anything but the blue XP theme, which I never ever used, but I kinda like how it works with tags. Anyway, I’m still to meet a PIM I really like. OmniOutliner looks promising, but I don’t have a Mac for now.
- A folder (directory) with my texts. BTW, this year’s projects’ subfolders names start with projects’ numbers for extra consistency. Petty stuff, but so is writing.
- Atlantis Word Processor. Its kerning is ugly and the latest version, 1.6.1.5, has troubles with Russian, but typewriter sounds are a killer feature.
- Foobar2000. One of the best-sounding player for Windows. They say it’s not the best, but I don’t have a hi-end hardware anyway, and I like the tagging/browsing/renaming features.
- Projects.xls. It holds a page with my weekly undertakings, so I can review it in the evening and write some tasks for the next day.
- XNote Stopwatch. I use it for timeboxing when I have to. The other times I simply make a playlist of the needed duration.
- dailybak.bat. That mama backs up all my projects. I don’t want to relogin to finish my daily session.
That’s it. It’s been about six weeks now, and I must admit it does work. Granted, sometimes I need to look something up on the net, so I have to make a note for myself, either on paper or in EverNote, and research later. But in my experience, the bulk of writing is actual typing or, at least, solitary pondering, and in this secluded account I really can write.
Later on further problems.
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* I’ve moved all the shortcuts from “c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs” to “c:\Documents and Settings\s\Start Menu\Programs”, which is the folder of my generic, non-writing account.
The Power of Goodbyes
What the fuck am I doing? It’s not as though reading my friends’ blogs is my solemn duty. It’s not as if bloating out on the random bits of humanity’s thought is my long-term goal. It’s not as if my rss reader is doing much for me, except for wasting my time and jamming my radar.
I shagged it, then. My rss reader doesnt’ support cancelling the account, but I changed the password to something I don’t remember. I can retrieve it, of course, but that would take way too much dedication.
Anyway, for the next step I’m about to try creating another Windows account with access to Atlantis, EverNote and foobar2000 only.
page sweet page
They’ve made a Remember The Milk module for Netvibes. Alas, too late.
I was among those who asked for it. But since then I dropped Netvibes as my homepage, in favor of The Milk itself.
Netvibes is the best personalized homepage I know but I just don’t seem to dig that kind of apps. When I run my browser and see a list of task, I know where I am and what to do. When I look at a bunch of tasks sticky notes weather reports rss feeds podcasts whatnots all I know is I’m multitasking. I don’t need a multitasking tool. I need a tasking tool and maybe an unmultitasking one (oh yes, I do want a Mac).
Scrivener
Have the guys at Literature & Latte finally got the writing right? And do I have to buy the Mac, after all? Hmm.
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