A unified platform
Having a bunch of time to myself causes the thought engines to start up again.
My life is, not to put too fine a point on it, a disorganized mess. That’s ok, it’s largely to be expected given my complete laxity this calendar year. But my dissatisfaction with it has gotten me back up towards a critical mass that I usually associate with being dramatically overcaffeinated (pssh, as though such a state could exist *twitch*.)
Last night I spent about a half hour (doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but…) with a pad of post-its and a blotter pad (big 17″ wide desk pad.) I was just brainstorming a bunch of life organization things “apartment clean” “baking” ” get laundry” “learn russian” etc. and as always, once I got going, I ran out of space pretty quick.
But one thing I kept coming back to is this idea that pervades organizational systems all over, and that’s a calendar/tickler file to keep track of scheduled tasks, events, and deadlines so you don’t have to.
I thought I’d give it another shot so I started looking around the internet for calendaring software I could live with. So far I’ve got Sunbird, the mozilla one as the “least bad.” I tried “Lightning” the add-on to Thunderbird (I use the Mozilla “Eudora” codebase for email, which is actually Thunderbird with some tweaks) and it doesn’t really work so well. Sunbird is passable, but it’s exceptionally mediocre.
Having everything online is cute (for solutions like Google Calendar), but I don’t want to have to connect to the internet every time I want to get an update a mobile device. I could see using it as a backup, but not a primary point of reference.
Outlook is right out, primarily because of it’s unreasonably heavy weight process footprint and perfectly opaque persistance format.
I keep coming to this horrible notion that I’m going to have to write something.
Tags: Programming, SIP
October 20th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I use a physical tickler file, just the proverbial 43 folders. What I like about it is that I can toss letters and things that need to be dealt with (vehicle registration sticker) into a folder and when it’s time, it’s there. Can’t do that with software.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
But I can’t really manage an 8.5×11 format. It’s just too cumbersome. I like the idea of 3×5 cards (and have thousands I use for what I call The Idea Deck) but it doesn’t proactively alert me.
I do really love a paper and pen based format but I need an electronic component to draw all the lines between things.
I suppose if I were to pay attention I’d find I’m spending more time moving the goalposts than I am running the ball.