Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

More details since Tom asked:

I use Things as a GTDish type device — to capture everything I need to do so I don’t worry about it and can focus on work. I also use it to schedule all events and deadlines. I can’t be bothered with ‘projects’ since I do a better job keeping track of those in my head than making lists in Things. I also don’t use it for contexts, except the library — I throw all the LOC #s for things I need to get out of library in there, print them up, and mark them off.

The biggest thing I’ve found Things useful for are repeating projects: everyday I wake up to find Things has added three tasks to my to-do list: “Read for :30″ “Write for :30″ and “Transcribe for :30″. If I do all three of these things — on top of my teaching and other responsibilities — then I allow myself to browse the web for all the books I’ll never have time to read.

In terms of note-taking programs for Mac, I tried: Yojimbo, Together, Scrivener, Notae2, Mori, Notebook, Evernote and a few more whose names escape me at the moment. What I was looking for was: price (they’re all about US$30-40), decent way to export data (for when I code fieldnotes or the sofware stops being developed), robus support and developer community (aka track record), ability to clip webpages (important for WoW research), get data in via the finder (pretty much all of these now have a button or drawer you can drag documents or highlighted text to to create new documents), and the ability to categorize entries by ‘tag’ or ‘smart folders’ (apparently increasingly called ‘saved searches’ these days). I was particularly interested in finding a program that would let me keep multiple databases open, each of which had its own separate category structure — that way my WoW Research categories do not get mixed up with my PNG research categories.

Pretty much all of these products can do this in more or less the same way — and they are all much better than what I started using 2 years ago. I went with DevonThink despite the fact that it has tons of features I will probably never use because of the ability to open and close multiple databases, tag/group with ease, and because I might grow into its features as I need it more. 2.0 is much easier to use than the earlier versions I attempted unsuccessfuly to love earlier.

Speaking of software I use regularly, but which I forgot to mention in my last post: Dropbox. It’s finally managed to hit the sweet spot of online storage and version control. Let’s all give it a big round of applause folks.

As for dissertation-writing books, I must say that I am taken by Demystifing Dissertation Writing by Peggy Boyle Single. Like most people I got to know the book through her columns in Inside Higher Ed (and really if you’ve read them you already know 70% of what is in the book). Despite the fruity cover and kinda-lame name her ‘Single System’ there is a lot to like in the book: a clear outline of how to write, a small but useful bibliograpy, and just the right amount of depth. The book sort of orients you to what successful method is like but does not micro-manage you. One of her main points — the writers block comes from not enough ‘prewriting’ — really resonated with me.

Also, I like the book because the process it describes is familiar to me from doing fieldwork: take a living, buzzing world, simplify it by putting it on paper, reduce it down more and more to just a few quotes, and then start building up in a new, parsed form. This complex -> simple -> complex dynamic is more or less what I teach in my field methods class and I think it really works. That said I have not actually inflicted the volume on anyone but me yet, so I can’t really say I have experience using it in teaching.

One more quick shout-out — Single’s publisher, Stylus, actually turns out a lot of good books on teaching. I’d be interested in exploring them more, but requesting review copies is burdensome and requires giving up WAY to much personal information, etc. Yo Stylus: make it easier for me to publicize your books.

On category of things that did not make the cut with me, there are two that did not make the cut with me: first, academic socialbookmarking services like CiteULike or Zotero. Let’s face it: the problem these days is not discovering new things to read. Zotero and CiteULike are great programs for some people. But for me, who already as a long to-read list, cares about easy storage of PDFs and metadata, it is just far far better to spend the money on Sente.

Second, PDF management systems like Yep or various finder-enhancements that let you tag files etc: I think Alex Payne summed it up best when he said: “If you want to store data of differing types within a lightweight organization system, I encourage you to check out THE FILESYSTEM”. For academic books and articles I have a special program. For everything else, I have the finder. There is one exception: I wish there was a decent program for filing away syllabi as I download those things like a mother. Right now my half-solution is to store them in DevonThink. Ditto wih CVs.

In sum, one key to my recent optimization has been getting clear on what specifically I need programs to do, and then chosing one (1) program to do it. I resist programs that do more than one thing, and I resist the urge to do more than one thing with one program. Of course some things fall through the cracks this way — I no longer have long lists of books that I might someday read before I die. But that is the point: the stuff that I am not actually doing for a good reason does not fit in the system, and so I do not do it, which leaves me more time and focus to do the things that I need to do for a reason. Which is, of course, the goal.