Newsletter Week of 11 September 2020
My book review column from the Sept/Oct issue of Analog is now available to read for free.
Like most of us, I've been using a workspace that was primarily temporary. Many years ago, when my upstairs office was conquered by clutter, I moved operations to the main iMac in nthe downstairs hall, wich lived on a tiny, cramped comuter desk. The printer perched on a rickety tray table. When I began my book scanning project, I attached the scanner to this iMac, which is also the home media server (i.e. the palce where I rip our DVDs). Over the years clutter piled up, a set of plastic shelves appeared to hold in-progress work (mostly books to scan), and clutter accumulated.
When the plastic shelf started to collapse, we knew it was time to Do Something. We got a nice set of strong, durable steel shelves...which sat in their bow waiting for the right moment to install them. Because, you see, it would be a major disruption of several days, and the time just was't right....
Then our friend Merrily started cleaning out her own clutter, and offered a nice, large, durable computer desk for any takers. Thomas and I [icked it up (and had a wonderful visit), and now it was time to bite the bullet.
Chaos ensued. I'm not going to go through all the myriad steps—berfore this can move, that has to move, etc. Nor will I dwell on the problems that inevitably crop up when moving electronic equipment (although I'm still mystified as to why moving the comptuer a meter to the right made it totally forget how to connect to the printer). There's still a lot to do, but the main pieces are all in place, and I'm ready to be productive again.
Until next time....
- Ripped 7 more DVDs to mp4
- Legion of Super-Heroes website: Cataloging December 1998 comics
- Picked up new desk, reconfigured workspace
- Subtantial progress on new paperback edition of The Leaves of October
- Posted Rule of Five episode 2.24, began work on Quarterly #16
My new workspace, still somewhat in progress.
Most of the resrouces on time management advise that you should track your time to figure out your peak activity levels and how you use time. To this I will add that it's also important to figure out how you think about time.
Case in point: When I retired, I decided to structure my time around daily tasks. In particular, I assigned one writing project to each weekday: Monday review column, Tuesday memoir, etc. It seemed a good strategy, but somehow I was just never productive enough. Often it was difficult to get to the scheduled project on the right day. In addition, when deadlines approached (review column or Rule of Five episode), I tended to drop everything and work on that project for a few days in a row.
A while ago I came to the realization that for me, the fundamental unit of productive time isn't the day; it's the week. So now I'm rescheduling my major writing projects on a weekly basis: first week work on x, second week y, third week z, and so on.
After this has gone on for a while (say around the end of the year), I'll report on how it's going.