the Ongoing Organization of My Life

This has been an interesting weekend with a very strange rhythm. For example, last night I just didn't go to bed at all - I crawled into bed at 9am this morning when Kevin's alarm was going off to tell him we needed to go meet a friend for brunch. This isn't because of caffeine, or even because of insanely interesting content in GoogleReader - I was reading a few books I'm working through, and then researching more about potential dog breeds that might work for us, but I wasn't building the stuff I said I might this weekend (and still haven't touched that). Today I was thinking I would just check RescueTime to see exactly where all that time went, but then I realized I haven't set it up for this machine yet (doh!). Oh well, it was fun - I felt like I was pulling one of those high school "all nighters" but without the sense of urgency.

Kev and I have combined our offices into the bonus room so that we can get some exercise equipment and put it in the extra room off the master (where I used to work), which is nice since that way whether we're staying at the house or the condo we'll always have access to workout equipment. I love moving my desk and everything, it forces me to process and purge all the ad hoc ideas, sketches, notes, and random items that pile up on paper. Paper is the devil, and yet I can't ever seem to get enough notebooks with just the right texture of paper or pens with just the right width of the line. I'm trying out OneNote, where I can condense a lot of the career development, reading recommendations, tons of business ideas at various levels of development, reflections on the past, and more into one place. We'll see how that goes, I am still not convinced this will be the best tool for me. If I can hook it up with Jott then it might be better.

I'm also making a second pass through Getting Things Done by David Allen to see what else I can do to better streamline the workflow of the work and non-work information inflow that feels more like a deluge at times. I think aggregation of my email would be nice, in a different format than just mutliple inboxes in Outlook. I'm using Xobni, but so far I haven't found that it solves this problem for me. In fact, I don't feel like I'm getting the same experience as all those people who hyped it - I've minimized it. I already know I email my boss the most at work and my husband the most on my personal account, and that I need to email my long distance friends, colleagues, and casual acquaintances more regularly - but it doesn't actually get me to the point where there is no barrier to just taking action.

The search for great tools for personal organization and time management continue.

RescueTime I Love You - You Make My Life Better

I just was getting caught up with my other beloved new toy, Google Reader, and found out that RescueTime was part of Y Combinator day this week is funded by Y Combinator. For some reason, I had the impression RescueTime was much further along as a company - considering their product ROCKS MY WORLD and looks so polished. These guys are doing something for personal productivity and time management that is going to make a lot of us more aware of how much time we "waste" and how much value we are getting out of it. Frankly, I was actually proud to see how much work I was doing once I looked at this, it was like getting a pat on the back. I was also surprised to see that my Google Reader noshing isn't eating up nearly as much as I had feared.

I'm a pretty picky user, I send feedback and all that, and I have had such a great experience from beginning to end using RescueTime that I have been telling everyone I can about it. From a time management perspective it is amazing, I can tag the applications I use and sites I visit with things like "work", "email", "news", "social" and then I can also tell it how productive (or non-productive) each tag is.

I love graphs and charts and am a data head, so this has been love love LOVE (!!) at first sight. I can't say enough about it, and I am sure it will only get more amazing as they continue to develop it. Even if it didn't change a bit I think I would use it for a long time, I've never had a tool like this before!

They are in Seattle, just 3 owner/operators.

RescueTime Website: http://www.rescuetime.com/
RescueTime Blog: http://blog.rescuetime.com/