New game plan, once again

An argument with Duv this past weekend has brought about yet another change in my game plan.  I never did tell him about my bad PGW score.  He was not a happy camper.  He’s now worried that I might lose my job.  He had asked that I remove as many distractions away from work that I could.

 

So, here’s the new game plan:

·         I had wanted to get a 4^th, smaller iPod, since my largest genre had grown past the device that it was on.  Last night, I removed most of the videos on device #1 and moved the pop/rock genre onto it.  (I can’t put too much more on it, since there is only 18GB left.).  I’m left with some favorite commercials that I have saved (I love the Hershey’s Kisses commercials from about a decade ago), some music videos and some animated movies that I’ve seen so many times and know so well that I don’t even have to watch it; the track sort of becomes a very pleasant droning, somewhat.

·         I’ve moved my study time to 5pm, instead of during lunch.  This way, I can go with the guys to lunch, and not have to worry about not getting any studying done while I’m down there. 

·         I will not take out my netbook until 5pm.  I have set up hourly reminders to remind me to stop any time-wasters that I might be doing.

·         I’m searching for the Temptation Blocker software that I used to have installed on my work PC, to keep me from perusing Internet sites.  The newest version of the websense software we have installed still can’t block particular things for particular people.  Instead, it would be block everyone and set up exceptions.  Temptation Blocker allowed a person to set up sites that they could avoid trying to go to.  However, that person could override that decision, by keying in a very long randomly generated password.  I think that it also kept you from getting to the Task Manager, to just kill T.B., and I think that was why I took it off, since there are occasions where I needed to get to the Task Manager to kill a messed up process.

 

At the same time:

·         I have gone back to using my pseudo whiteboards in my office.  I have one marked with items due this and next week, and this and next month.  Another is marked with what is due today and tomorrow, and today’s #1.  After going without using it for some time, I’ve found that it really did help to be able to actually see it up somewhere.  A task list or calendar doesn’t show you all of it all of the time.

·         I have reinstalled Evernote again onto my work PC.  I had used it some years ago to capture all kinds of data, instead to taking a note here, scribbling a list there, etc.  Some years back, after a conversation with Don, I decided to try Microsoft OneNote instead.  That is the crappiest capturer that I have ever come across.  Evernote now has a mobile version and also keeps it data in  the clouds, meaning that any of my devices can connect to the same repository.  It now makes more sense to use it again.  I can capture on my phone and access it later from any of my PCs that have it installed, which will soon be all of them.  If it had alarms, it would be nearly perfect.

·         I’m condensing the apps on my phone, and at work.  I’m putting as much into Google as I can, since I can also access those via PC or phone.  I find that I’m still doubled up in a few spots, such as notebook apps.  Evernote allows you to combine notebooks into a group, however it has no reminder or alarms.  I could create a list in it, such as a task list but I can’t set a reminder for those tasks.  So, it’s either Google Tasks or another app I found.  The latter one lets the built list for the day display on my phone dashboard area, so that I can access it before the said alarm goes off, which is nice.  I have a project app at work that I’ve been very happy with for the last couple of years.  I can set numerous alarms on any given task or note within in, which is very, very nice.  If Outlook allowed this, I would still be using it to keep my work projects.

 

And another thing:

·         JoAnn’s group had always been big on using the forward planning that Bill McKenna had set up some years ago.  David had dropped using it, mostly because we weren’t hitting all of our meetings.  Scott is continuing the use of it.  Now that it’s in use and we are being diligent about using it, I really like it.  I believe that Scott prefers that we work the items in the order of the list, whenever possible.  That one-at-a-time process will help considerably.