The day before Christmas and I am trying to put the old year to rest. Making backups, putting papers in their correct folders, generally saying good-bye to a pretty brutal semester. But I also am looking forward. I think I waste a lot of energy because I don’t have well-developed systems in place for getting certain routine tasks done, such as backups. I do backups now and then but have not regular daily schedule. Since I’m storing all my research stuff like interviews and lit reviews, in some cases, documents that can’t be recreated, I need to know that I’ve got at least one reliable daily backup and then a weekly backup to CD. So, I downloaded Apple’s Backup product and am going to give it a try.

I rearranged a few trays so I have a “to do” pile that is clearly different from the filing pile. And, I’ve got to get on some kind of schedule with doing my books so it isn’t this huge thing every three or four months or so. I don’t know the last time I did my books…probably at least back to August. Oh well, I have time over Christmas and can spread out.

The final thing I need to figure out is a reading journal. I am getting serious about both reviewing for comps and for working on my dissertation. Noter is really the tool for the technical reading in my field, but what about comps? I’m thinking about a wiki…I actually got out a notebook and pen and was going to paper and pencil stuff and I may do some of that, but I’d really like to try out the digital tools including Gliffy.