Kung Fu, Meditation, and Sexual Intercourse - What's Wrong with My Life.

I spend too much time blog reading and not enough time on the work that actually gets me closer to completing my actual work. So what is my blog topic of choice? (And what is this here blog about?) - Productivity

But Alas, I procrastinate by reading about ways to be more productive. And then I had Merlin Mann point it out in a recent podcast. This podcast is called "Kung Fu, Meditation, and Sexual Intercourse" and is about how reading about these things is anlagous to reading about Productivity. You can read everything you can about them, but until you actually do them, you don't really know them. Unless you do the stuff on your list, reading about productivity and even making list to stay organised is pointless.

But I love doing this. I love writing this blog and letting other know about my latest productivity and organization schemes. I have been doing this sense I was little! I remember in elementary school wondering how my classmates could let their parents shop for their school supplies. I didn't understand that not all kids set up organization systems for themselves every year.

So even if it sounds odd, I am going to keep on using productivity as a procrastination tool. I will keep updating this blog and share my organization schemes with the world!!

Note:
I am a religion major. I also spend a good bit of time reading about meditation.
Number of hours I have meditated in the past year: 2

What's Worth Doing?

I have recently discovered David Seah's blog and was really impressed with his Printable CEO. He creates forms the we can print out that help us plan our day and stay organized. I plan to post a post on various aspects of the system soon, but for now I want to touch on just one aspect. The original form in the system is called the Concrete Goal Tracker, which is based around the concept of giving tasks a point value based whether it will more a company forward or whether there is networking value to it. He gives a point system to work from:

When is something worth doing?

10. It's life-sustaining billable work!
10. It's signing new business!

5. It's publishable code! Ship it!
5. It's sharp visual design! Show it!
5. It's concrete planning or accounting!

2. It's new self-promotion!
2. It's a new article for the blog!
2. It's social or business development!

1. It's maintaining an old relationship!
1. It's making a new relationship.

This is a great list for a CEO (who the system was designed for). But it doesn't apply very well to me (a student). Therefore, I decided to write a personalised version of the list to fit my situation. This is based on my responsibilities and what will help move my goals forward.

What is worth doing?

10. It's gradable schoolwork!
I pay this much to go to school, I better work at it!!!

10. It's directly related to Marion's Ledge!
Marion's Ledge is a major project that I am involved with and is probably one of the most important things in my life right now! If I had my choice, this is all I would be doing. But it gets pushed aside way to much because of school work. :-/

5. It's studying for school!
This is the non-gradable stuff that is still important, but I wanted to make it less important than Marion's Ledge. And there is a lot in this category that could be skipped if I got into a pinch.

5. It's concrete planning and organization!
This category is for stuff like GTD reviews and printing out my Hipster PDA!

5. It's billable or extra-curricular work!
I am in a bunch of extra-curricular activities that are just as important to me as a real job would be. So this category contains both!

2. It's furthering swing dance!
This is either personal dancing development (aka. practice) or furthering Swing in Houston such as demoing at a middle school or a mall in order to get more people involved with our swing scene.

2. It's concrete self- development!
This includes such things as personal writing and other types of activities that I do in order to work on something about me personally.

2. It's an entry for a blog!
This one is self-explanatory.

1. It's furthering computer work!
For me this includes both blog reading and going through PHP, Cocoa, and Objective C tutorial books. At some point in the future, this category may rise up the list to become a 2 or a 5, but for right now...

1. It's building a relationship!
Networking and relationships are important and take work!

So there you have it. Those are my categories for what is important to me. When I write more about the Printable CEO system, I will be writing more about how these play into my personal organization system. And I also plan on trying to find alternate wording for one of the times that I use "concrete" and "furthering". Any suggestions?

Project Organization - Part 1 - My House

I have made it a resolution to get my life under control. Things are just completely out of whack!! My house is a disaster and I have way too much stuff. My schedule is chaotic. I am always forgetting to do really important things!!!

Join me as I begin Project Organization. Starting with my bedroom and kitchen, I am going to gain some peace in my life and chronicling the whole experience online. I will be searching for systems, life-hacks, and ways of organizing that will let me get, and then stay, organized.

I challenge anyone who feels the chaos building around them to join me. I will share my story and struggles here at Fearful Symmetry. Feel free to join the conversation and leave comments.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Beginnings
I started my journey towards organization by taking everything out of my bedroom.I was going to start by focusing on two areas: my kitchen and my bedroom. Every item that was in my room that wasn't too large, I put into my living room which I am using as a holding area for all my unsorted stuff. Then I took the time to reorganize my bedroom furniture to a layout that was a little more useful and fresh.

Then I tackled my kitchen. With the help of a friend, the kitchen got clean and trash/recycle got sorted. For the first time in months, I now have a perfectly clean kitchen!! I highly recommend getting a friend to help you clean. It is funner and easier to clean with a partner. (And it goes faster!) My cleaning friend and I made a deal to help each other clean our apartments.

So now my room looks bare and my kitchen is usable. Now onto the heftier stuff...

Systems
Before I could start bringing stuff back into my room, I had to set up a couple systems in order to contain my stuff. For this, I turned to David Allen's book Getting Things Done. The first is a reference system. David Allen suggests using a simple alphabetical filing system. He recommended using manila folders without the hanging folders, but since I own a large deep file cabinet made for hanging folders, I decided to just not use manila folders and just use the hanging ones. I bought 50 hanging folders to start. (David suggests starting with 100 in the book). I also bought a new cartridge for my labeler so that I could have very neat folder tabs. I only put tabs on the center of the folders so that they would be neat in my drawer and I would not have to worry about placing a new folder in between two existing ones and messing with the tabs.

Another system that I set up is my tickler file. I use a 4 X 6 index card box for my tickler with Jan-Dec dividers and 1-31 dividers. I set them up so that there is a spot for every day. And the numbers already used for this month, just go after the next month's divider. Here is a picture of how the dividers are suppose to look:

I also bought myself 4X6 index cards that I can make lists on. Each card is a context for Next Actions or a category list (such as Projects and Waiting on). Now I am ready to begin the sorting.

Processing
I started with the drawers to my Elfa cabinet (which I had taken out of the frame and put in the living room), so that I could get the drawers free to hold other stuff. I began by taking out one item from the first drawer. For each item, I would go through the GTD workflow diagram (From How to Save the World) with one modification. I added "Memory Box" to the list of things to do with a non-actionable item. I have a lot of souvenirs that I don't want to get rid of but which are cluttering my life. I don't want to trash them, or do anything about them in the future, or have them cluttering my reference cabinet, so they get a sturdy plastic box to be put in. In the end, this box will be going into my living room closet.

Most of the stuff that I got through today was reference material that didn't need an action and therefore got filed away. But I did find one thing to do in less then two minutes (I did it) and a couple things to put as next actions. My friend that I mentioned earlier sorted through my living room, so now even that looks doable. In the week to come, I will be sorting through more and more and running everything through the workflow diagram. Soon enough my house will be under my control once again. That will be a fine thing indeed. :-)

I'm back

ok, I think that I have most of the kinks worked out of the blog layout enough to start posting again. :-) I sure have enough to post about. A quick preview of future articles:

- The Sony Vaio UX
- The Cult of Apple (I'm going even deeper)
- Much more.

So check back soon.

Also, from now on this blog will be related only to Apple, Lifehacking, Productivity, and general inspiration. All of the personal entries will now be posted at My Life 2.0. So all of you that don't actually know me don't have to keep reading about me rant about my life.

*** Work Zone ***

This blog is about to get a facelift, so if you see some odd things here over the next week or so, those are just un-finished sections. I hope that you like the new design. It is my first real attempt at designing a website that is not done with tables. :-)

Mac Power Supply fails in puff of Smoke.

I am a proud owner of a Apple iBook PowerPC. Last nght I was sitting in my room working on my new website design when I began to smell smoke. This is always an alarming smells so I got up to see if some part of my house in on fire. I returned to my room when I couldn't find anything, and was distrubed that the smell was still there.

Then I noticed that my laptop was not being charged, dispite being plugged in. I made sure that both ends were securely plugged in (I use an extention) and then checked the part in the middle. It was smoking! I picked it up and it was extremely hot. So hot, in fact, that the smaller cord that goes to the computer was soft and if i had tried, it probably would have pulled right off in a gummy mess.

I unplugged it and let it cool off. Sadly, it now no longer charges. That was my fourth charger over the life of my two iBooks. (5 years). I love Apple, but that's not a very good record.

I found an article about similar things happening to other people.

Fried Power Cord
The only difference? That was one of the new magsafe powercords. Mine is one with the older connection. :-/

New Look

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while, I just ignored the internet during finals and then during christmas. But I am back and am now working on a new layout design for this blog. And a new format.

Currently, I have this one blog that contains both personal and non-personal entries. If I want this blog to be actually useful to people, which I do, I need to take out the personal entries and put them somewhere else, in a new blog. This is exactly what I plan to do. The new site will actually have four seperate site combined into one. One will still be called "Fearful Symmetry" and will be the blog with useful info in it. I will be writing about Apple Computers, Life Hacking, and general inspirational (in a non-religious sense) material. I hope that you keep reading that blog.

My personal blog will be called My Life 2.0 and will be where I discuss personal issues and my own life journey. If you actually know me, you may want to read this one.

Along with the two blogs, I will have a Houston Swing Dance Information site, which is already up in the new theme (although it's still in beta and doesn't yet work on Internet Explorer. I will soon be on a css hack search.)
I will also have an academic site, which will hold my resume and work that I have done. This is where I will be compiling my Leadership Rice Portfolio. This site will only really be of interest to a couple people, but I've been thinking about doing an academic site for a while, so here is my chance.

The site should be up completely by the end of next week (I hope). So check back soon for more info and for the new design.

Every once in a while a thought crosses my head saying, "what would it be like if I just dropped out?" Sometimes it sticks on, "and run away". Today, the thought didn't have the ending. Now don't worry, I am not going to drop out of school any more than I am going to drive off a cliff when I wonder what it would be like to do that. But these thoughts are there. We all have such thoughts from time to time.

But these thoughts still make me stop and wonder. Is there something wrong with the flow of my life? Is it good to just look at everything that you have to do and sit there like a 6-year-old screaming, "But I don't wanna!!!!" Granted my version is a bit more pg-13 rated today. Can I just blame that on hormones? I'd like to think so.

But there is a serious thought wading in the back of my mind. Not about dropping out, but about living. I spend hours every day on productivity. Searching for that best system. Always trying something new. See what works an what does not. When am I productive and when am I not. Despite that, I still haven't implemented any version of GTD. And the list does nothing but build.

I think there is a lot of anger in me. Granted, again, it may just be hormones. What else could I be mad at? but there are moments when I just break down and snap at people. Or fight the world. I usually regret it. Like that time that I snapped at Hank when Hank wasn't really the person I was mad at, but I couldn't snap at them and they were making me even more angry just by being there. Hank was the next person to interact and I just let him have it. After that I just broke down completely, apologizing profusely.

I had a study abroad appointment yesterday. I went in and asked for the easiest program they had. The lady just stared at me. That isn't the attitude she was looking for, but it is my attitude. I no longer want to push myself in school. I no long want to go to grad school. I may go back. But not right now. I have 4 really easy semesters in front of me. I say easy because I am going to make them easy. All I need is 3 classes a semester, plus one elective. That makes 12 hours, which is what I need to be full time. No longer am I going to be taking 15 hours. No longer am I even going to try to. I just want to do my work and learn my programming and be joyful.

To be honest, Swing is falling lower and lower on my enjoying list. I enjoy helping with the ScSwing dance (I feel needed), and I enjoy doing outreach like Ryan and I did at that middle school. And I hope that I will enjoy teaching intermediate swing next semester, but beyond that, I haven't been enjoying it. Granted, there are always fun moments. Moments when I do things grand and I know it. But for every one of those, there are 2 painful ones; 2 flubs, trips, bad thoughts. And add that with all the crappy social issues the compound on top of all the good social issues and It leaves me feeling drained and upset. I won't me able to take it much longer. Sorry everyone. I won't even be coming to the Monday lessons at taft next semester, sadly, unless of course I am needed to fill in. Although that just has to do with bad scheduling (a class) more then distaste. That is the only place I truly feel comfortable dancing at. That is, as long as none of the students ask me questions.

As I sit here writing this, I have a lot to do, and absolutely no will to do any of it. All I really want to do is curl in a ball and go to sleep.

iWrite 2007

I found this wonderfully interesting event on Facebook. Since a lot of you don't have facebook accounts, here is the description given:

On January 3rd 2007, I will be arriving to a local 24 hours restaurant. At 5pm I will begin writing, and continue writing for 72 hours with the goal of creating "200" pages of a one-of-a-kind, individual, irreplaceable work, before 5pm of January 6th 2007. This is not just something for writers, but for anyone who has any emotions, ideas, or concerns for themselves, their friends, or their family. It is what ever you can write about, no one will grade it, criticize it, or even look at it if you don't want them to, no matter what you write you can prove to yourself that you have done something unbelievable and have something to show for it. This is an opportunity to push your body, mentally, physically, and find out how far your imagination will run when you let it. Wherever you are, I recommend you, I insist you, I suggest you, I advise you, I urge you, I direct you, I beg you, To be a part of something never before done. Invite as many people as you can, these friends are your muses, the more people, the more ideas floating, the more influence, the more connected the world can be. I will be trying to video tape the entire experience in my area. What will you do? Are you up to it? Do you have what it takes?

This idea intrigues me. Although, I really don't think that i'd like to do this in a 24-hour cafe (too many distractions), I will be partaking in my own version over the christmas break. I will pick 3 days and write 200 pages within those 3 days. It will be extra hard to stay focused because i will have my mother there to try to get me to do chores (joys of going home of the holidays, right?), but I can do it.

There is some stuff that I have been meaning to write about lately, and this will give me the opportunity to do that.

So, will you join iWrite 2007? Pick 3 days and over those 3 days try to write 200 pages. It doesn't matter what is on those 200 pages. They won't be graded. They won't even be read by others if you don't want them to be. Freewrite to your heart's content. I plan to post some highlights here in my blog.

Low Price Electronics

This is a cool way to search for things on Amazon that are really Marked Down. The link to search for Electronics that are 85% off is http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?node=172282&pct-off=85-

(via Life Hack)