Testing out Bitstrips.

"Day Zero" is bland to do list tool

I heard about "Day Zero" through Lifehacker. It says that "If you've got a list of a few things in your head that you really want to get done 'someday', consider actually writing them down at Day Zero." It claims that this will somehow motivate you.

Now, I'm all for productivity tools, tools to record my goals and my efforts, tools that will help me get done what I want and need to get done. But I'm not sure how this "Day Zero" is supposed to help. Writing your goals down is pretty much all it does. I can do that anywhere. It does allow you to write them all down and gives you a handy list, with tagging and a nice countdown feature but I'm afraid that that won't cut it for me. I already have a tool that will do that and more (RTM). Hell, I could do that with Excel.

But maybe you'll have a different take. Go check it out. Tell me if you see anything more to it than I can.

Librarianship needs to solve the information overload crisis

Watched "No Time to Think" and Dr. Levy, the presenter, describes a series of crises and resolutions in the recent past:

1. The rise in business and size of organizations threatened with lack of management mechanisms, ergo the creation of the corporation and office management technologies.
2. The increase in production with the declining demand for products threatened over-production, but then led to the development of modern advertising and marketing practices.

He points out the current "information overload" and "lack of time to think" crisis that we are in and sees the Web and online technologies as at least part of the solution.  And of course, I think about how librarianship needs to be a part of that solution as well.

We, as librarians, need to consider how to help our patrons with these problems.  Sure, we provide access to the information and assist people in finding exactly what they need/want. We even work at helping in the management of that information.  But I don't think we're doing exactly what needs to be done to resolve the problem, particularly in the eye of our users (or those non-users that influence our funding).  We need to LOOK like we're helping.  We need to make our users FEEL like we are lifting a weight off their shoulders and make it obvious to non-users that that's what we're doing.

Here are some suggestions (inspired by the presentation's points):

1. Raise awareness:  Librarians are in a somewhat unique position to be authoritative on this topic.  Think about the issue yourself, and tell others about it.
2. Provide the space:  Honestly, I thought about this before Dr. Levy mentioned it, but libraries have typically been a place for this contemplative study time.  We need to promote it and nurture it.
3. Provide the tools:  We provide access to information tools to manage and access resources.  We need to do this more intentionally and widen the scope of these tools.

Anything else?

[ Discovered this video through Lifehacker's "David Levy on Having No Time to Think" ]

It's not actually too bad...

There's a few interesting things in this strip that made me want to put it here... after the roflmao's of course. lol

1. "Constant novelty saps my initiative."
   • There's actually two parts of this that made me pause. Firstly, the concept that constant new stuff could or would affect someone's creativity and productivity negatively. I don't think this happens to me. I find it's the other way around: I discover new tools and find myself pulling them apart, thinking about how I would improve them if I had the time or the ability. Or thinking of new or weird (or usually just librarian-centric) ways of using them. That's the constant novelty that I experience in the net. Mere informational novelty doesn't really affect me since I'm immersed in it every day as a librarian... it's really functional novelty. "I can do what now? That's cool."
   • The second is a little more meta than that. I've never really thought of the Internet as being a source, or rather a particularly unique source, of constant novelty. In a way, that makes sense... Thinking about your stereotypical pre-Internet horse-and-carriage, steam-locomotive, stone-tool kind of existence, I guess there wasn't as much sudden change, regular mass communication, constant input as there is today. But although there seems to be a lot more info-producers around, once the printing press got up and running, there was still more information than the average person could absorb in a lifetime. We just see the lists and streams of it better and we can dig through piles of it that were not quite as reachable as before.
     
2. "I'm gonna try to spend a weekend at home without Internet."
   • Try? Ok, I like the Internet. Correction, I LOVE the Internet. I spend my whole day at work on it. I come home to it. I play games on it. I plan my day with it. I write with it. I read with it. But I've yet to reach a stage where I couldn't pull myself away from it. I could spend a whole weekend off the computer as easily as I could spend a whole weekend on it. And why would I want to? It would be like saying, "I'm gonna try to eat for week without refrigerating anything." You could do it, and it might be an interesting experiment but there's no real ethical consideration here, which is what seems to exist when people talk about using computer or Internet related tools. It's a computer people, not a TV with a keyboard!
3. "I give you an hour."
   • Again the sarcasm. Ok, it's for the benefit of the joke, but it disturbs me to hear people first rage about the evils of technology or their bewilderment at the draw of something online, then respond with absolute certainty that it has you in it's clutches! You either understand a phenomenon or you don't. You either see something as inherently and obviously harmful or you don't. Have faith in your fellow humans that we're not mindless and pitiable automatons!

I guess all the interesting bits were in that first panel. Then the funny happens. Leave it to me to destroy all the humour in it for you... Go subscribe to xkcd if you don't want my commentary! lol

A real day off...

I did remarkably little productive today. I had created a long list carefully scheduled for today's day off (due to either Heritage Day - a uniquely Kingston holiday - or Family Day - a recently conjured Ontario holiday) but disregarded it almost completely... I did reorganize all the items and postpone them appropriately. And you know what? I don't feel bad about it either. I got more accomplished Saturday and Sunday than I have in several past weekends so I figure I earned today's laziness. All I did today was:

• goof around in World of Warcraft, working on professions, checking mail, participating in silly guild chat...
• tried several more times in vain to convince my 8 year old daughter to PLEASE listen to what I have to say and that, unlike all the other parents in the world, I'm not saying these things for the good of my health... LOL
• and read an article that I will be peer reviewing for the Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (JCHLA)

Ta-daa!

Work and not work...

This image from flickr is an excellent graphic to go along with today's post. (Update 20110628: Had to relink to the image since it disappeared. This one is by Paul Stamatiou.  The original was by Rsibaja. Backup is here.) I've spent several days over the past week or so rethinking and redesigning my blog. I'm still not perfectly happy with it (can you ever be) but I think I've got it to a point where I can let it be for a while. I've still got to create a forwarding page from the old url to here but that shouldn't take much time.

In other news... I've been going for family walks a little bit more recently. I was helping my 6yo daughter ride her bike and after a few trips up and down the sidewalk I felt like I was going to die... I think that's a hint from my body telling me that I should get a little more exercise. LOL

Work's good. It's getting closer and closer to the end of my temporary contract at Bracken so I'm getting a little anxious, looking and preparing for any job openings at Queen's U or in Kingston (or near enough anyway). Now that my colleague across the hall has officially announced that she's going on maternity leave in October, I feel a little less panicked, but I certainly don't want to just assume that that will be enough: I will still be looking and preparing in any case.

I've been using the "Remember the Milk" site to record my to do list and I've put several presentations I'd like to give at some upcoming conferences and events. Hopefully I'll be able to submit them, get accepted and complete them all... Speaking of which, I'd better get doing some of them and stop procrastinating. I've got to make dinner for the family first.

(Oh yeah, I've also taken some nice screenshots of some things in World of Warcraft. I'll put them in flickr and then maybe post one of two of them here. Along with a screenshot of my "completed" new design. For historical purposes.)

Management material...

Wouldn't it be great just to have meetings all the time? Not actually do anything but just go to meetings and talk about doing stuff. I have three meetings today and boy do I feel productive. Nothing's done - in fact I now have a whole bunch more work to do - but it feels like I did a lot.