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An Organizational Meme
1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?
Not very -- I do keep trying and trying, though, and somehow I manage not to miss too many appointments, payment deadlines, et cetera. I have very little sense of time passage -- really, if I "think" I paid something last month, I'm probably misremembering the month before, or actually having paid last week instead.
Occasionally it works to my advantage -- instead of an afternoon crawling by, I get surprised by the sudden swift arrival of 5 PM.
2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?
I've got a Palm Pilot through work, and in addition it sinks up with my Lotus Notes, so I can kinda sorta keep track of important dates and appointments, plus keep a coherent list of email and phone numbers. I also keep a DayRunner (actually, a Franklin Planner) open next to my phone at work and keep a running list of phone calls and important details. And I'm pretty good about sorting my email into folders so that I have a chance of finding it again when I need to refer to something.
All of this means that I barely manage to keep track of what I'm doing on any given day. If I'm concentrating on a task, I can barely recall what I worked on the day before. Over the years I've come to leave lots of comments behind in my code not because I'm so anal but because if I don't leave lots of bread crumbs behind for myself I'll never find my wyay out of the forest.
3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?
Organized... in the sense that strata is organized. It's better than it was two weeks ago, when I was pulling bills from 2001 from one of the layers that I uncovered....
4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?
I'm just getting to the point now that alphabetizing might help with the CDs... I've probably got more than 100 now, counting the individual CDs in the box sets from Rhino. I've got less than 20 DVDs, so not mattering there, either. The books are pretty much hopeless at this point -- I've got way more than fit on the shelves, and they're in whatever order they came out of the boxes when we last moved.
Strangely, my files on the computers are in pretty damn good order, all neatly filed in carefully-thought-through folders by use and/or thematic grouping.
5. What's the hardest thing you've ever had to organize?
I've been a professional database wrangler for, um, fifteen or more years, so in a sense organization is my real life job -- making sure that all the data is there, that it's not corrupted, that it gets displayed in the best possible way to the user so that they can make sense of it. In a way, it's like playing Solitaire, taking a lot of cards and by certain rules reconfiguring them into perfect order, or else making several very fast shuffles and being able to reveal certain patterns that tell you everything you need to know about the cards.
As for hard things to organize -- I can barely handle getting more than two or three people together for an expedition. It makes me very nervous. If people were more like cards, I'd be better at it.
Not very -- I do keep trying and trying, though, and somehow I manage not to miss too many appointments, payment deadlines, et cetera. I have very little sense of time passage -- really, if I "think" I paid something last month, I'm probably misremembering the month before, or actually having paid last week instead.
Occasionally it works to my advantage -- instead of an afternoon crawling by, I get surprised by the sudden swift arrival of 5 PM.
2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?
I've got a Palm Pilot through work, and in addition it sinks up with my Lotus Notes, so I can kinda sorta keep track of important dates and appointments, plus keep a coherent list of email and phone numbers. I also keep a DayRunner (actually, a Franklin Planner) open next to my phone at work and keep a running list of phone calls and important details. And I'm pretty good about sorting my email into folders so that I have a chance of finding it again when I need to refer to something.
All of this means that I barely manage to keep track of what I'm doing on any given day. If I'm concentrating on a task, I can barely recall what I worked on the day before. Over the years I've come to leave lots of comments behind in my code not because I'm so anal but because if I don't leave lots of bread crumbs behind for myself I'll never find my wyay out of the forest.
3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?
Organized... in the sense that strata is organized. It's better than it was two weeks ago, when I was pulling bills from 2001 from one of the layers that I uncovered....
4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?
I'm just getting to the point now that alphabetizing might help with the CDs... I've probably got more than 100 now, counting the individual CDs in the box sets from Rhino. I've got less than 20 DVDs, so not mattering there, either. The books are pretty much hopeless at this point -- I've got way more than fit on the shelves, and they're in whatever order they came out of the boxes when we last moved.
Strangely, my files on the computers are in pretty damn good order, all neatly filed in carefully-thought-through folders by use and/or thematic grouping.
5. What's the hardest thing you've ever had to organize?
I've been a professional database wrangler for, um, fifteen or more years, so in a sense organization is my real life job -- making sure that all the data is there, that it's not corrupted, that it gets displayed in the best possible way to the user so that they can make sense of it. In a way, it's like playing Solitaire, taking a lot of cards and by certain rules reconfiguring them into perfect order, or else making several very fast shuffles and being able to reveal certain patterns that tell you everything you need to know about the cards.
As for hard things to organize -- I can barely handle getting more than two or three people together for an expedition. It makes me very nervous. If people were more like cards, I'd be better at it.
no subject
I'm like this, too. Significant dates always seem to sneak up on me. I'll remember a month in advance that I need to send someone a card for their birthday, and the next thing I know, it's the day before, so no chance for it to get there in time. I gave up even trying to send cards years ago.
"Strata" is a very nice way of describing it. It's always fun to play archaeologist on the desk piles to see how old the bottom layers are.