Recently in Productivity Category

There is a very good (well, I like it) summary of how to use Orgmode as a day planner at Lost in Technopolis.

I've been a big fan and user of Remember the milk. I found it a great way to manage my task, and so on, in a GTD like manner. As a bit of an aside, the GTD methodology really works for me ... and every time I find work getting a bit out of control its because I've not been ruthlessly applying the principles of GTD.

Anyway, I've switched to using org-mode (aka orgmode). I don't recall how I stumbled across Org-Mode: Your Life in Plain Text. No before I go any further, let me say that I don't think orgmode it for everyone. Its an extension to the emacs text editor, and in this WYSIWYG world a texted based programme may be 'a bridge to far'. But, as an old hand a unix (albeit a a vi/vim user) the transition to emacs hasn't been too hard.

But why change? Is this just part of the ongoing search for the perfect tool [Andrew might comment here]? Is it just displacement behaviour (avoiding doing PhD work)?

As I said at the beginning of this post, when I find things spinning a little out of control (or what I've come to regard as control) it's because my GTD system isn't out of date/wack. So, moving to a new central store (orgmode) is a mechanism for me to get things back in order (and on track). So, today I've finished the migration from Remember the Milk to orgmode. No doubt I'll have some ongoing tweaking of orgmode ... but I have deleted my Remember the Milk account.

There are lots of useful resources on using orgmode in a GTD way. For example, this one, this one or this one. Most of the articles assume you have emacs up an runnign already (which isn't hard), and that you know how to configure emacs (which is harder). Fortunately, emacs now ships with orgmode included, so there isn't a lot of additional work that needs to be done. you can just jump right on in.

Orgmode understands lists and dates ... and a whole lot more; but lists and dates are enough to get started with.

First of all, one needs to turn on orgmode. There are a few ways to do this. I do it thought my .emacs file (which, is normally in your home directory; if it isn't there you can create it). In .emacs I have the following text.

;;
;; Peter's setup for orgmode in .emacs
;;
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\\(org\\|org_archive\\|txt\\)$" . org-mode))
(global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-iswitchb)
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)  ; Org buffers only
(setq org-log-done t)
;;
;; Some more settings
;;
(setq org-agenda-files (file-expand-wildcards "~/org/*.org"))
;;
;;
;;quickly open my gtd file - "M-x gtd"
;;
(defun gtd ()
	(interactive)
	(find-file "~/org/gtd.org")
	)
;;

The main parts of this code are (1) the first line turns on orgmode for any file that is ends with .org .txt or .org_archive. (2) I keep all my orgmode files in a directory off my home directory, i.e., ~/org. any files ending in .org in that directory are scanned when orgmode puts together my agenda. (3) The last little bit of code opens my main 'to do' file called gtd.org when I execute M-x gtd (for non-emacs users that means pressing ALT-x then typing gtd and pressing return). This provides me with a quick way to get to my my to do list. Oh, the "org-log-done" line results in my to do items getting a date attached to them when I mark them as being done.

Now for some fun stuff. First I create my gtd.org file (using c-x c-w org/gtd.org ... that means Control-c Control-x and then typing the path/file name). I can then start making my to do list, vis:

* Work
** Review APR
** Revise article on governance
** Order textbook for INTBUS 202
* Home
** Pick up milk on way home
** Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).

So far so good. I have to have my APR review done by Monday, so let's put a deadline beside it. Positioning my cursor somewhere on the relevant line I type c-c c-d mon (and press enter)

The line changes to be:

** Review APR
   DEADLINE: <2010-01-18 Mon>

And I what to schedule doing the article revision on next Monday. So, on the appropriate line, I type c-c c-d +2mon (and enter). The line changes to be:

** Revise article on governance
   DEADLINE: <2010-01-25 Mon>

I also want to schedule buying "The Wire" today. On the correct line I type c-c s and press enter. The line changes to be:

** Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).
   SCHEDULED: <2010-01-16 Sat>

Now I have dozens of tasks to do. And looking at them all at once doesn't always add clarity. So let's look at my agenda. Pressing c-c a a will bring it up (no need to press enter). My agenda looks like:

Week-agenda (W02):
Monday     11 January 2010 W02
Tuesday    12 January 2010
Wednesday  13 January 2010
Thursday   14 January 2010
Friday     15 January 2010
  gtd:        Scheduled:  Buy a copy "The Wire" (Series 5).
Saturday   16 January 2010
Sunday: 17 January 2010
  gtd:        In   1 d.:  Review APR
  gtd:        In   8 d.:  Revise article on governance

And that's probably enough examples for now. So to sum up, c-c c-d marks an item with a deadline, c-c c-s marks an item with a scheduled date. Oh, and to save your file (the currently open buffer) use c-x c-s

I really like Zotero. The more I use it, the more useful and powerful I find it. Also, the technical support for the product (from the community of users and especially from Dan Stillman is outstanding.

Dan pointed out a really useful feature to me today. When adding items to Zotero, sometimes the title of the item is published ALL IN UPPER CASE or sometimes In A Mixture Of Upper And Lower Case (i.e., title case). It is really tedious to fix by hand; but there is a better way. I viewing mode (thats in the right-hand-side panel), right-click on the title and choose "Transform text->lower case". It can then be quickly tweaked to be sentence case.

Jo Badge talks a bit about her personal learning environment, and so I thought I'd draft out mine. I'm really web-centric and spend most of time 'in' Firefox (I sometimes think about switching to Chrome, but I'm hooked on Zotero).

I found it interesting to consider what is missing here ... there is no Powerpoint. I so rarely use 'slides'; often all I have is a single slide so students coming into class know they are in the right place. Increasingly, when I need slides I'm trying/learning to do them using Beamer. Having said that, for the odd complex set of ideas I do use MindManager in presentation mode to show how I see the connections between things.View image

Since writing this, I've come across Hull, Pettifer, and Kell (2008). They present an interesting figure, which seems to show how much I can actually do in Zotero (which is most of it).

Figure 4. A typical workflow for using a digital library representing a subset of the literature. Tasks represented by white nodes are normally performed exclusively by humans, while tasks shown in blue nodes can be performed wholly or partly by machines of some kind. The main problematic tasks that make digital libraries difficult to use for both machines and humans are ''GET'' (publication) and ''GET METADATA''. These are shown in bold and discussed further in the Identity Crisis section of this paper. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000204.g004

References

I've taken the plunge and moved to gmail for all my email. I've exported all my email, contacts, and calendar, and notes and then imported them into gmail.

For all my non university email addresses, I've set up forwarding so it goes straight to my gmail account. The IT wonks at the university are in the process of setting up the forwarding of their email to my gmail account. In the meantime I have a rule that moves my university email to gmail via imap folders. Once the proper redirection is in place, it will be interesting to see if my university email still gets processed by the University's spam filters (they just tag email as spam, allowing the recipient to decide what to do with it).

One little thing I have yet to solve has to do with filters. Gmail allows one to apply filters to messages (to label them, move them, delete them, etc). However, one can only match ordinary text (i.e. not the email message headers per se). Also, the "*" is a wild card. But the university tags spam with "***SPAM***".

Now ideally, I would like to filter messages that have "***SPAM***" in subject line. Alas, I can't (because of the wild cards). If I just match on "spam", then I also select messages where I'm writing about spam; e.g., "How much spam do you get". Maybe in the future gmail will allow one to match on email header information such as "X-Spam: yes".

But really, that is a minor thing. So far I am really impressed with gmail, and as I learn the shortcut keys I am even more impressed.

Previously, I kept all my email in a series of folders (e.g. 2001, 2002, 2003, ...). But with gmail I've found the search so fast an powerful that I've done away with those somewhat arbitrary categories.

Jim Munroe has produced a very entertaining and helpful guide to time management. I really like it's counter-cultural style. So, if you have time check out his time management for anarchists

PhD's and productivity. What could be relevant at this juncture? Academic Productivity does what it says on the box.

Tucked away on the site are the following observations:

1. Doing a PhD is lonely
2. Your picking the right advisor will determine your happiness level more than anything else

The second point reminded me of a joke. I found this copy at Rabbitchick

One sunny day a rabbit came out of her hole in the ground to enjoy the fine weather.

The day was so nice that she became careless and a fox snuck up behind her and caught her. "I am going to eat you for lunch!" said the fox. "Wait!" replied the rabbit, "You should at least wait a few days." "Oh yeah? Why should I wait?" "Well, I am just finishing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'" "Are you crazy? I should eat you right now! Everybody knows that a fox will always win over a rabbit." "Not really, not according to my research. If you like, you can come into my hole and read it for yourself. If you are not convinced, you can go ahead and have me for lunch." "You really are crazy!" But since the fox was curious and had nothing to lose, it went with the rabbit. The fox never came out.

A few days later the rabbit was again taking a break from writing and sure enough, a wolf came out of the bushes and was ready to set upon her. "Wait!" yelled the rabbit, "You can't eat me right now." "And why might that be, my furry appetizer?" "I am almost finished writing my thesis on 'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'" The wolf laughed so hard that it almost lost its grip on the rabbit. "Maybe I shouldn't eat you; you really are sick ... in the head. You might have something contagious." "Come and read it for yourself; you can eat me afterward if you disagree with my conclusions." So the wolf went down into the rabbit's hole and never came out.

The rabbit finished her thesis and was out celebrating in the local lettuce patch. Another rabbit came along and asked, "What's up? You seem very happy." "Yup, I just finished my thesis." "Congratulations. What's it about?" "'The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.'" "Are you sure? That doesn't sound right." "Oh yes. Come and read it for yourself." So together they went down into the rabbit's hole.

As they entered, the friend saw the typical graduate abode, albeit a rather messy one after writing a thesis. The computer with the controversial work was in one corner. And to the right there was a pile of fox bones, on the left a pile of wolf bones. And in the middle was a large, well-fed lion. The Moral of the Story: The title of your thesis doesn't matter. The subject doesn't matter. The research doesn't matter. All that matters is who your supervisor is.

Ouch. The grammar fairy didn't like that last sentence at all.

Today I was asked if I would be acting as a discussant at the next PhD conference. I'd see the emails about the conference and had already decided that I wasn't going to put a paper forward and that I wasn't going to act as discussant.

Why?

Although I glibly said "It's not my core business", what I really meant is that I had asked the question Does it make the boat go faster?¹, and the answer was no.

Having spent sometime thinking about what I do here, there are only three things that make up my "boat" here :

1. Teaching well
2. Publishing two good articles per year
3. Finishing my PhD

So, when I'm asked to do something, if I can't see an immediate and direct connection to making the boat go faster, then I'm probably not going to do it.

"So", I can hear someone saying, "what about your blog?"

Good question. I regard self-reflection as fundamental process in becoming a better manager, teacher, and researcher. This blog provides a semi-structured forum for me to engage in self-reflection, so I'll keep on doing it (as much as ever, and possibly a bit more).

¹ Attributed to Peter Blake

Having spent a lot of the weekend sorting out the styles and templates for the blog, I think it's about time to get back to work; i.e., the PhD.

However. before I abandon this 'diversion' I thought I'd make a few notes about what still might need to be done on the site:

• The main page of the blog just lists the ten, or so, most recent posts. At the bottom of the page there is a link to the site's archives. I wonder if I need something upfront, such as a search box, to allow people to find old material more easily.

• I've done away entirely with the sidebar. That gives the page a cleaner look, but it doesn't invite people to explore more of the site.

• Finally, I've started using the hierarchical categories. I had planned to do this earlier. But, having now installed the latest version of the software, it's been so easy to do. Now I'm wondering if I should use tags as well as categories.

I'm amazed at my capacity to get distracted by something. Such as fixing these templates and styles. I could easily spend much more time doing this. But at the end of the day, I wouldn't be moving forwards on what is really important; my teaching and my research.

Actually, it has taken me less time than I expected to do the changes I needed wanted to make. That's all down to Google's new web browser Chrome. It's a slick and tidy piece of software. I would make it my main browser except that it doesn't (yet) support ad blocking, and two essential Firefox add-ins ( Zotero and libx) aren't available for it (Oh, and it isn't yet available for FreeBSD).

Anyway, Chrome has this really neat feature that allows you to inspect elements of a web page to see which parts of your stylesheet are 'active'. Without this, I would have spent a lot more time tweaking the site's CSS.

And now, back to the salt mine.

Update
Andrew pointed me towards CSSViewer. This neat add-on for Firefox shows what the CSS is for a particular element on the screen. Google's Chrome inspector shows which parts of the style sheet is being used (or overridden) so it is easier to tweak one's style sheet.

I've been a fan of David Allen's system for getting things done or GTD for some time.

Up until know, I've been using the add-on for Outlook. It's worked pretty well, although I have experienced some instability with Outlook (but then again, who hasn't).

I'm spent a bit of time over the weekend rehashing David Avraamides's code to work for me. It's been fun making the changes I've needed (mainly cosmetic), but is seems reliable enough for me to move all of my tasks out of Outlook.

It's also been a great opportunity to tidy up and generally sort out my tasks. After a while some crud does collect in there. That's probably because I don't do my weekly reviews the way I should.