As most of you who know me are aware, I am not exactly the most organized person out there. My books, DVDs, CDs, computer files, et cetera, yes, they are fairly orderly, and I don’t have much trouble finding what I need. No, my central (but not sole) area of disorganization is in organizing my time. In school, my packets are pretty consistently at least a day late (sometimes much, MUCH more), and my personal projects never seem to get off the ground floor largely due to me not dedicating time to them after getting them started.
It’s not something I’m exactly proud of, but that makes it no less an issue. After several abortive attempts (heh), I’ve decided to try and schedule my time a bit more rigidly. Using iCal, I’ve made a daily schedule for myself, alloting time for the projects and tasks that I want and/or need to get done. It runs roughly from 8am to 8pm, and includes time for meals, puppy wrangling, showers, et cetera. (It both begins and ends with a puppy feeding, hence the 8 and 8.) Evenings are for spending time with Mickey, days are dedicated to getting my shit off the ground. When it’s time to switch to the next item in the schedule, my computer beeps at me, in the loudest, most noticeable alarm noise I have.
And yes, I am in fact following that schedule right now. I left time after lunch for doing web work (design, blogging, writing). I spent the morning reading for school, and at 2 I will be pulling out my programming books and having another (more organized) go of it (one of these days it WILL stick, damnit!). In the afternoon, I’ll go back to school (that IS the priority, after all).
We’ll see how long this lasts… hopefully I’ll manage to do it for a month, at which point it’ll be a habit.
On to other things:
1) I’ve updated MT to 3.14… this is largely inconsequential to all of you, and mostly involves spam protection upgrades.
2) I’ve archived this year’s images, which opened up an extra 6gb of space on my hard drive. MUCHO needed, as I was getting out-of-memory errors with some scratch disk heavy operations. I still stand by my statement that I need a new computer before this one completely self-destructs, but I’m not going to really push about it til February (several reasons, not the least of which is that MacWorld San Francisco is mid-January, and a speedbump then or the weeks immediately following is extremely likely… assuming I stick with my desired specs, this means a price drop). I definitely appreciate the suggestions and most generous offer to lend me a laptop while I get mine fixed, so we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks.
I’d be interested to see who actually still reads my blog — if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate you dropping a comment to let me know.
sweetie!
I’m glad you’ve got your computer to make loud noises at you instead of me doing it… much as you know I just LOVE to nag ;)
here’s hoping the scedule works out for you once you get used to it.
*smooch*
I do check your blog daily.
Hope your schedule works for you.
Mom
Well, I still read it! :P
This schedule sounds like a good idea. We all need *something* to help us focus on getting things in order and done. Kind of like me going out to breakfast and the Post Office in the morning to give me the feel of “going to work” when I get back to the studio. It really does help deal with some of the drawbacks of working at home.
Good luck with the month. I’m sure you will do well with it after the initial “training” period.
Pop
Hi, Nabil. :-)
Getting yourself on a schedule is a good start! Keeping on a schedule for a month and beyond (i.e., the rest of your life) is essential.
Make sure that the actions that you’re scheduling are crucial to achieving your goals in life. Allocating time for something of little consequence that doesn’t support your goals doesn’t make much sense.
It is probably redundant to point out that the amount of time you allocate to any item on your schedule should support your priorities. In my contracting and consulting work at IBM, I’ve met a lot of bright (even brilliant) people who negated or wasted their talents due to an inability to focus on what was important to them or their team or the particular project they were working on. It was necessary on a few occasions to get rid of individuals who mentally “went off in too many directions” and replace them with people who weren’t as bright but were focused on the goals at hand and were able to get the tasks done when needed.
Keep your eyes open for interruptions and other time wasters. (I sound like Dilbert… or is it Dogbert?…) If you can’t avoid certain interruptions between your 8:00 am to 8:00 pm time frame, work out ways to minimize them. Again, I’ve seen (and worked for) managers who ended up being managed by interruptions instead of managing them. It may be necessary to say, “No!”, to some folks or give them an alternate source for assistance if and when they call. I’ve run across some organizations that declared one day a week for “No Interruptions”: no meetings were scheduled that day, phones were shut off, office doors were closed, and productivity increased markedly.
Review and evaluate your schedule and your actual performance periodically to ensure that you’re achieving your goals. Revise the schedule (increase or decrease time, delete or add activities) as needed. You only have a certain amount to time available during a day (or a week) and you’re the only one who can really manage and control it.
Oh, yeah. I do read your blog… ;-)
Hey,
I’m still here, still reading. Glad you’re getting organized. You guys have a governor yet?
-CB
Hey buddy! I still read, when I remember I have a computer anyway. *grin*
Good luck with the organization stuff. I’m working along the same tasks, but not being very orderly about it, and thus not having it work real well from day to day. Maybe I should try your tactic.