Just a brief note: I have successfully found a way back home from North Dakota- though I'm afraid to type it, just in case I jinx it- and will hopefully not have crazy axe murderer for seatmate on the way back.
North Dakota is:
I am not, by nature, an organized person. I am a creative person. I make connections between things in all directions, not always in obvious ways. This means that while I like to categorize and organize and have structure, I am pretty bad at coming up with structure on my own, because I get overwhelmed by all the different ways it could be done.
Enter the eternally sexy David Allen. And by "sexy", I mean... balding middle-aged consultant in a suit. But any man- or woman, for that matter- who could come up with an organizational system that actually makes sense to me automatically earns the appellation "eternally sexy". It's a rule. Look it up.
I went out and splurged on this last night. It's moderately famous among geeky sorts, and I'd heard of it before but never really understood the concept. Turns out, it's this perfectly brilliant system for getting stuff out of your head, so you don't have to worry about it constantly.
I stayed up way late last night reading it, and by the time I was done with the second part, I was determined to set this system up for myself. So today was Implementation Day. I followed the rules, I worked through the flowchart, I got in touch with my inner office supply fetishist, and at the end of the day:
I have folders.
I have a calendar.
I have a workspace where I can do actual work. (My desk doesn't count, because the computer takes up the entire desktop).
And best of all, I got things done today. Lots of things. I made phone calls and sent emails and faxed in forms and put batteries in things and went to the library and changed the paraments and emptied (emptied!!!) both my email inboxes and even had time to do some knitting. Freakin' amazing.
I am a superhero of productivity.
I knew I had to get this into place before I leave for North Dakota, because the one thing that would have made college a million times better for me is the one thing I could never figure out: study skills. Up until college, school was so easy for me that I didn't have to schedule study time or plan to work on assignments before the night before. I never learned the sort of organizational and time-management tricks that were a matter of survival for most people before they got to university. It made my life miserable, but I could never figure out a better way.
Hooray for the people who can figure out better ways!
I predict this semester suddenly becomes a thousand times easier than any semester before.
