• Who am I?

    I am Qrystal; or at least, that's my dot-name! Har har. (My name is really Crystal, but that's not as internet-searchable; hence, switching the C for the little-used letter Q.)

    I am here because I enjoy writing. I do this mostly for myself, but I also have a passion for helping others learn things from the things I write. Now that I am done my Ph.D. in Physics, I am stepping away from academic research so that I can indulge in some creative ways to share my knowledge and inspire the appreciation of scientific thinking in others. I am also working as a tutor, which is one of the jobs I've most enjoyed doing in my life so far.


  • Post Categories


  • Archives


  • Meta

    • So many time management options, so little time!

    Posted by Qrystal on February 28, 2008 at 12:00.
    Category: Tools. Tags: GTD, procrastination, task-management, thesis.

    “If you don’t have time to DOWNLOAD and use this software then you really need it.” — from the ThinkingRock homepage.

    I’ve been through a lot of time management software and webware in the past year or so… I’m almost afraid to estimate how much of my time was eaten by such endeavours. I’m trying to keep myself to doing it just on weekends and evenings (my hubby just got a new game to play, so I think he doesn’t mind much that I’m lost in my own investigations) but some days I just find myself unable to focus on anything, because I just don’t know where to start.

    I guess that isn’t totally true, I do know I always need to spend more time on my thesis. But I’m constantly worrying that something is slipping past that has an earlier deadline, or otherwise should be rated as more important. I have absolutely no confidence in my “system”, so it’s no wonder I don’t seem to be Getting Things Done! I know that the point is to set up the system and forget about it, and I know that it doesn’t need to be complicated, and I know it will be marvellous once I’ve gotten it there. I am also pretty sure that I’m causing my own frustration, and that I’ve gotta stop it if I’m ever going to get anything done.

    Of course, I also have never done a weekly review (another GTD ‘essential’), and that’s surely part of the problem. But for now, I’ve gotta at least get a system I don’t loathe. For some reason, Remember the Milk just wasn’t sitting well with me. I should’ve known — I don’t even like milk! Well, actually, I think the problem was that I didn’t like the system I developed for using it, and I didn’t want to take the time to go back and tweak it. I was having problems figuring out what to do next, because everything was high importance, and yet tasks were still slipping past me because there were just too many tasks there. And I simply didn’t even want to go look, because I knew I’d only see all sorts of markings telling me that everything is high priority.

    So, yet again, I found myself endlessly testing different systems, endlessly tweaking, endlessly feeling that my struggles are endless.

    SIGH…..!!!!

    There is one thing that I’m feeling better about, though: I’ve decided that this month’s focus is to STOP PROCRASTINATING. This means, I can’t finish this article right now, because it’s just a means of procrastinating what really needs to be done. AAARRRGGGHHHH~!!!

    Several Days Later…

    I have been actually doing fairly well with avoiding procrastination, and actually writing stuff that will be an actual part of my thesis!! Woohoo!! And I’ve got some more anti-procrastinating and pro-thesising to do today, so I can go visit a friend this afternoon.

    What’s really amazing (to me) is that I’m pretty sure that I no longer intend to write about all the time management options I’ve tried out. Instead, I really want to put my time towards things that are actually important to my goals! /GASP! I’ll explain how I’ve come to this conclusion soon enough. For now, I just need to get this draft out of my “posts pending” list, so I can relieve the guilt of letting it sit for the past few weeks.

    Stay tuned…!

    6 Comments »

    • Marco

      Hi,

      Nice post… and so true. It rings so true to me that it could have been me that wrote it. Although if it were me that wrote the post it would probably not have made nearly as much sense.

      I have been on and off with Thinking Rock for about the last year. More recently I have been trying Remember the Milk. Both seem to have pros and cons… I have settled on Thinking Rock for work and RTM for personal, however I am sure that this recent setup will change again in a couple of weeks.

      Good luck!

    • Marco

      Hi,

      Nice post… and so true. It rings so true to me that it could have been me that wrote it. Although if it were me that wrote the post it would probably not have made nearly as much sense.

      I have been on and off with Thinking Rock for about the last year. More recently I have been trying Remember the Milk. Both seem to have pros and cons… I have settled on Thinking Rock for work and RTM for personal, however I am sure that this recent setup will change again in a couple of weeks.

      Good luck!

    • http://qrystal.name Qrystal

      Marco, I’m definitely going to let you know when I get around to writing the review of the online to-do-list choice I finally ended up sticking with — wow, I think it’s been over four months now that I’ve been with Toodledo:

      http://www.toodledo.com/index.php?ref=td470bfd1829679

      I’ll be sure to post the link to my writeup here when I’ve done it, too.

    • http://qrystal.name Qrystal

      Marco, I’m definitely going to let you know when I get around to writing the review of the online to-do-list choice I finally ended up sticking with — wow, I think it’s been over four months now that I’ve been with Toodledo:

      http://www.toodledo.com/index.php?ref=td470bfd1829679

      I’ll be sure to post the link to my writeup here when I’ve done it, too.

    • Marco

      Thanks and I look forward to reading it.

      It the sprit of things I will create a Thinking Rock project entitled ‘Try out Tooldledo’ and the first Next Step for this project will read ‘Waiting for Response From Qrystal re: Toodledo blog post’. The Context of course will be ‘At my computer’. :-)

    • Marco

      Thanks and I look forward to reading it.

      It the sprit of things I will create a Thinking Rock project entitled ‘Try out Tooldledo’ and the first Next Step for this project will read ‘Waiting for Response From Qrystal re: Toodledo blog post’. The Context of course will be ‘At my computer’. :-)