Thing Four (slightly out of order)

I realise that I wasn't very explicit about thing four - I did link to a blog I follow, but I failed to say anything about it or why you should read it. So, here I go!

The Thesis Whisperer is no doubt familiar to most academics, but if it isn't, I urge you to read it. It is mainly aimed at PhD students, but has advice on all aspects of study and academic work which is applicable to most students. I particularly like the discussions on writing, and have used some of the resources mentioned. Of course, I also have TW to thank for the Procrastination Fairy!!

Speaking of which, should you find yourself with time to kill nothing to do, you could also take a look at one of my other favourite blogs - the beautifully written Rachel Eats (because: Italian Food. Life in Rome.) Thank me later!

Thing five: How I organise my online reading

 Anyone who has visited my office will probably wonder how anyone with such an untidy desk could possibly have anything but a passing acquaintance with the concept of organisation. But, in fact, the concept and I are very well acquainted, and while some areas of my life might look like a paper bomb went off, others reveal the workings of a very orderly mind indeed.

At home my CDs are alphabeticised (and, if I am honest, in categories), my books are also shelved by author and category (except for cookbooks - they go by frequency of use, gorgeousness, and size), my food magazines are shelved by date and title, and even the seeds in my garden shed are organised by type and name.

At work, while my desk features a sort of deconstructed filing system, my Outlook and My Documents both have a detailed range of folders for saving things in. No surprises then that I am drawn to systems for organising my online activities!. For a long time I used Delicious for bookmarking, but this stopped working properly with Firefox (or maybe generally), so when I got sick of another problem I was having with Firefox I was motivated to change my browser to Chrome, which has an excellent bookmark manager. I was able to export my bookmarks from Delicious and now have a fantastic tab on Chrome with big icons for each bookmark, so they are really easy to find (and to arrange - in categories, and by frequency of use, thanks for asking), and to use.

I also use and love, love LOVE, Evernote - I use it for home and work and have clippers loaded so I can send readings off to Evernote. Just so you know, my Evernote is also very organised :-)

In line with Thing 5 I have registered for Feedly. I have several favourite blogs and don't generally have a problem keeping up with them as I follow them on Facebook and or Twitter/Instagram, but I can see the point of Feedly for keeping up to date with the ones I forget about, or that don't post as frequently (and of course for finding new sites to follow). I did assume that I would get an email with reading suggestions, but that doesn't seem to be the case - so Feedly is now bookmarked on Chrome.

Thing Five, done!

23 Things blogging take 2 - in which I fall about laughing at myself

So, as I have already observed on Twitter, my all too limited participation in 23 Things last year has at least meant that this year I am almost up to speed.

Twitter account? Check.
Tweets? #youbet.
Blog? This is one I started earlier!

Hilariously, in my one and only post, I described giving the procrastination fairy her marching orders - but clearly she just laughed them off and went back to wafting her too-scary-and-hard-, do-it-later-dust in my direction*. It took a year, but I think we are even now, PF!!!

* credit where credit is due to Inger Mewburn for the Procrastination Fairy and her fairy dust.

Doing as I say, not as I do!

Why is it that we often find ourselves not following our own good advice (or is that just me?). I urge students to break a task into its component parts so that it becomes less daunting and more manageable. I tell them that procrastination often results from not having clear goals or an understanding of the task at hand, and especially from fear (of failure, of the unknown, even of success). I tell them to just get started because, in the immortal words of my (much) better half: once you have started you will have less to do. I even tell them to skip ahead if they get bogged down. And yet, here I am still stuck on Thing 3 - the blog - decidedly not listening to my own advice!

You might surmise that I am a Luddite, a recalcitrant resister of online communication, but you would be so, so wrong! I love blogs, I read them all the time, I want to have a personal blog (in fact, no, two!), and I have had a blog for students kicking about (unused) for a few years. The problem is (was) that I had no clear idea of the purpose or concept of this blog for 23 Things - what would I write about? What would be the point of it? To whom would I be addressing it? More importantly, what would I call it?  Could/should I kill two blogging birds with one stone and resurrect my student blog and combine it with this task? How would I stop my head exploding with all the decisions?

Which brings me to this post: I don't have all the answers to my questions, but I finally took a get- over-myself-pill and gave the procrastination fairy her marching orders - and here I am, blogging.