Let's Ride - Fred Faulkner's Blog About the Road Called Life

Ever walk into your office on a Monday morning, or any morning for that matter, and just go "ugh, look at that mess"? It is that exact attitude that also throws me off during the day when I'm trying to organize thoughts, tasks, and find something that needs to get done. Where the heck is that post-it?! So what I have been doing lately is organizing tasks, projects, and sub-projects into file folders with post-its as labels. This way I can relabel the folder when I am done with the previous project for the next one. But the real reason I use folders is because I can staple pieces of paper to the inside with notes, tasks, and to-do's for that project. I then put the folders into a desk organizer. Ones on my desk are current projects. Those in the drawer right next to me are items that I need readily accessible. My cradenza behind me is for archives or projects that are completed. Of course I would ideally like to keep all of this information electronically, but that hasn't happened yet. I think for that to become more realistic I need a Tablet PC where I can jot notes digitally. Otherwise, I'm stuck using note pads and I'm not about to copy those notes into a digital version just yet.

So does your desk look like a paper bomb blew up on it? Try spending thirty minutes tomorrow morning putting projects and tasks in folders to help you organize it all.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's very easy to let your news aggregator get out of control. It seems that I am more often likely to just click that "subscribe" link on a Web site or blog and never read the feed again. Well train time is starting to be maximized again by reading my aggregator (BTW...the new beta of FeedDemon rocks) and getting up to speed on what is going on in the Web world as well as the legal industry. But I find that I was skipping a lot of feeds and only reading the ones that I the "usual suspects". So I started trimming the fat. I'm still easily over 200 feeds, but they are much more focused than they used to be. Some I still subscribe to just for reference purposes, but others are the daily, sometimes hourly hits. I hope that by trimming my feeds down I can focus on what I want to monitor and move on and get to work during the day. Instead, I have found myself doing the "oh, I haven't checked that feed in a while" which I'm sure I'm not alone in that practice.

So what is the ultimate tip? All I can offer is focus on the "hubs". The ones that will aggregate other information. This will allow you to keep tabs on items in certain areas without having to sift through the other stuff. I don't have 200 hubs, but I have hubs for certain areas. For instance, do I really need to monitor the Post, Tribune, and NYTimes? No, just pick one and move on. If you really like certain areas of each paper, grab the specific feeds for each. Web Dev is by far my largest category. But there is so much to cover there that it is almost impossible to not have a ton of feeds.

Another tip that I've heard from folks like Steve Nipper and Dennis Kennedy is "probation lists". I couldn't get into that. I just didn't see the need to put something in a category that wasn't going to get updated or read anyway. I always figure I can resubscribe to the feed if I really need to.

So give it a try. Can you trim your aggregator fat?

Update: Related Techniques

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)