As we went to bed yesterday, $wife was rubbing her arms and legs all over me trying to warm up. I said, “Just call me Jungle Jim.”.
She stopped, sat up and said “What?”.
“It felt like you were climbing all over me.”, I said.

She told me to post this.

Thanks to my friends Tim and Jeanette, I now have my very own homicidal maniac plushy. A Dick on a stick!

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, head over to LFGComic and start reading.

Friday night I had dinner with family and some friends that I had not seen for a long time. Two of them I find out are in the process of writing a book. One other person that was supposed to be there but couldn’t be due a prior engagement, is also starting to write a book.

This got me to thinking. Not about myself writing a book, I know I don’t have a story that I want to tell that way. But just about writing. The process of it, the drive to do it. All three of these individuals can be very highly motivated and VERY creative. Not the single dimensional creativity that many people display from time to time. The world changing creativity that they bring to every aspect of everything they do.

All three are entrepreneurs, or have been at some time in the past. All three have a technical bent of some kind. (To be honest one is more of a technical pretzel, his interests and projects look more like a sick form of the game Twister than anything else.)

I find myself wanting to read whatever it is that the three of them write. I even find myself wanting to provide feedback for them as an early reader of their manuscripts. But for selfish reasons. I want to be able to tell people that I read that book before it was even published and now it is on the New York Times Best Seller list, or won a Hugo, or some other award.

Is that wrong?

Here are some followup notes for the LOPSA-Madison Time Management Round Table discussion.
(This was also sent to the mailing list)

Tools that we talked about:

Remind – Calendar

todo.sh – Task list

The books we had were:

“Getting Things Done” by David Allen

“Time Management for System Administrators” by Tom Limoncelli

Websites:

One of the websites we mentioned was 43folders. This has ceased to be the “Productivity Pr0n” that it used to be, but still contains lots of good information, tips, tricks and ideas. It may be easier to just start from the beginning of the blog and work your way forward to the present.

Inbox Zero Videos and info on the how and why of getting your inbox cleaned out.

LifeHacker Also a good productivity site and good source for ideas.

We also referenced back to Franklin Covey a few times.

Just remember, the best tools to get organized and keep on top of your tasks, projects and other commitments is the one that works for YOU. What anyone else does, while it may be helpful in showing what is available, may not always be what you need or want.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if it is, diagnose it and get back on track.
The hardest thing about getting and then staying organized is the discipline to do whatever it is that you need to do, and do it every day.

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Below are some shell functions and aliases that I use to make remind and todo.sh a little easier.
This should be able to be copied and pasted directly into a .bashrc

# GTD
alias t='~/bin/todo.sh -d ~/.GTD/todo.cfg'

# print out the todo list and 2 weeks of the calendar on login
echo " -- TODO --"
~/bin/todo.sh -d ~/.GTD/todo.cfg ls
echo ""
remind -w$(echo ${COLUMNS}) -c+2 ~/.GTD

# put the above in an alias
alias gtd='t ls;remind -w$(echo ${COLUMNS}) -c+2 ~/.GTD'

# my remind and todo.sh data files are stored in ~/.GTD and managed
# with subversion.
gtdcommit() {
    cd ~/.GTD
    svn commit -m 'auto commit'
    cd -
}

gtdupdate() {
    cd ~/.GTD
    svn up
    cd -
}