| Wednesday, February 5, 2003 |  |
| Getting Things Done |
 "Time is that quality of nature that keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working." --Anonymous My copy of "Getting Things Done" by David Allen arrived today. Matt Mower recommended it. I'm excited. I paged through it and read the first chapter. It might just keep me from going insane. It is all about unloading ALL the stuff floating around in your mind which you sense you ought to be doing something about, and putting them into a system you can trust to be able to find them in again, so that you can relax and enjoy life in the moment without worrying about mountains of incomplete and ill-defined tasks. "There is usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done."It is close to 20 years ago since I last felt really organized. It involved In-, Pending- and Out-baskets on my desk. It involved daily to-do lists, with items I could happily check off during the day. It involved a routine of Do It, Delegate It, File It, or Toss It, with every item that came to me. And it involved a filing cabinet with folders with nice labels on. Unfortunately the world has changed since then. It was before e-mail and cellphones for one thing. And everything is now more fast, more fuzzy, more multi-dimensional, and there's a hundred times more of everything. Something better is needed. I think I once again have hope, that I might possibly once more become organized and stress-free. [ Knowledge | 2003-02-05 19:30 | 7 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| OrgSpace |
 Today I received my Certificate of Registration for the service mark ORGSPACE from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It's for the word, not the logo, and it is as applied to online software. For those of you who haven't tried it, it is a rather lengthy process to register a trademark (for tangible products) or service mark (for services). Took about three years, and a number of phone calls with lawyers.
So, what exactly am I going to do with it? I'm not sure yet, but the thought is that it is a brand to put on software I'm involved in making, which helps people organize their stuff. Like this NewsLog program. Even better if it happens to be a particularly brilliant universal, multi-dimensional system for storing any kind of information. [ Diary | 2003-02-05 19:57 | 3 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| France 'no longer ally' |
 U.S. foreign policy is becoming more and more like a Monty Python show. UPI reports that Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon's Policy Advisory Board is condemning French and German policy on Iraq in the strongest terms. He thinks that France's attititude is particularly dangerous and serious."France is no longer the ally it once was... " and he says the U.S. "must develop a strategy to contain our erstwhile ally or we will not be talking about a NATO alliance." and how about this one "I have long thought that there were forces in France intent on reducing the American role in the world."No kidding!?! It is time to send in the bombers. Those Frenchies are too damned independent. Wanting their own language and foreign policy, sheesh, they're just a bunch of revolutionaries. Let's just freeze them out. And those Germans: "But in the German case, the behavior of the Chancellor is idiosyncratic. He tried again to incite pacifism, and this time failed in Sunday's elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony. His capacity to do damage is now constrained. Chancellor Schroeder is now in a box, and the Germans will recover their equilibrium."INCITING PACIFISM!?! Yeah, I can see - that's very serious. Maybe it is time to bomb Dresden again, so they can forget about silly notions like that. Sarcasm aside, it is looking pretty grim if that is official policy. ... Maybe what is going on is that this is now the Internet world, so we actually hear what people like that are talking about, instead of it just being something they would talk quietly about behind closed doors, and then the CIA would sneak out and assasinate somebody and fund some new dictators that were easier to control. [ Politics | 2003-02-05 22:44 | 5 comments | PermaLink ] More > |