beginning to worry.

[_fool]

the computer is a fantastic tool in my life:

• without a calendar in my pocket in the form of a microcomputer (palm pilot, smart phone) i could never effectively live the life i'm trying to live (life goal!)--participant, doer, community builder, fun-lover, socialite. that technology has enabled me for 14 years now!
  
• without a keyboard i'd probably

Comments

[vintagehandbag]

Have you considered looking into the "pomodoro method" or any of the other time management strategies? When I'm writing my dissertation, I usually do something like, "Write seriously for 45 minutes, delete or respond to e-mail for 15 minutes." Once the e-mail is handled, that increment becomes something else -- including "read or update LiveJournal" or "look at funny cat pictures."

[_fool]

i had never heard of that. investigating!

btw, even having no idea whether i'll get anything out of pommodores or not, labelling this as a time management problem seems like it will be incredibly useful. i was kind of flailing for a category. because i like categorization a lot, and i'm not great at top-down problem solving without somewhere to start. i'm not good at the big picture. i usually try bottom-up problem solving but this one feels like it might be better addressed top down, for some reason.

anyway thanks!

[vintagehandbag]

No problem! I'm really big on structure, because otherwise, I would spend 100% of my time looking at news of the weird and blogging, which is not exactly productive.

[_fool]

but you get shit done. viz, job AND grad school. i'm having trouble being productive at a "work when you want, maybe 2 days a week" gig. or in finishing my 2-month-overdue bike tour travel journal, etc.

[cratermoon]

When I decided to get out of computing as a job it wasn't because I didn't enjoy programming or generally futzing with computers any more, it was because I couldn't stand the business and management structures around doing it for money. I still use my computer a lot, I've even found some great tools to help with my guitar playing, and I even write little tools for myself, like the automated #qotd tweets I do. But I can't do it for money any more if I have to treat it like some idiot-savant file-clerking calculator monotonously moving things from here to there and counting how many widgets get moved where

[aprilstarchild]

I love Write Now! I bought a copy of the workbook years ago and did the whole thing. In retrospect I wish I'd traced or photocopied the pages so I could reuse them indefinitely, as my handwriting has backslid terribly...I tend to go back and forth between the method I used growing up (D'Nealian is what I learned growing up, which is hideously ugly IMHO) and the Italic method, sometimes mid-word...which from of the lower-case "f" I use is depends on where it is in the sentence, for example.

But yeah, I went through it one summer and then did full-time PCC that fall, and my notes were really legible for the first time in my LIFE. I even figured out that I like Uniball-style pens (with the tiniest point I can get), they make my handwriting way better than normal ballpoints.

workbooks

[cratermoon]

Ask, and it shall be given to you. (Scroll down for the adult Write Now excerpts)

Re: workbooks

[aprilstarchild]

Welp. I'm bookmarking that.

[aprilstarchild]

Without computers....my social skills would be lacking, for one. But also, I just wouldn't have the fucking fantastic awesome friends I do. Don't get me wrong--I still have at least once circle of friends based purely on people I met in person first, and these are people I know going back farther than any of my current friendships...including Tyson, whom I met in high school, and Katrina, whom I met just a few years later