The Road Goes Ever On

Thanks to Mikal I now can map where I've been. This is very cool.

create your own visited states map

create your own visited countries map

As you can see, I have lots of the world still to go :-)

travel/chicago | 31 Dec 2004 | #

Interruptions

This article titled, Life Interrupted, hits the nail on the head. Life is so busy - I find myself multitasking continuously, and it is far too easy to get nothing done. In computer squeak, the cost of task switching, which involves saving registers out to memory and then paging in a new chunk of memory to do the new task, can result in thrashing if we switch between tasks too often. And that's a apt term for life in this new century.

What I have been doing for about 7 years is blocking out chunks of time in my calendar so as to get things done - i.e. achieve what is most important in my day. Even a colleague known as BoyWonder (to everyone around him but ignorant of the label himself) says that "You need to make sure you achieve some progress every day, despite all the other pressures." He's right on this one.

It's hard though in a day job with a mandated Outlook/Exchange email/calendering "solution", where the default set up bothers you on every email arrival, and people just book you for meetings all day and through your plea-for-sanity "Do not disturb" bookings. They get very offended when I don't turn up to their meetings, but hey, my booking was in there first! :-) I'm of the opinion that think these tools have a net negative affect on communication.

Sometimes I have to go a step further and cut myself off from email all day and place police-style ribbon across the front of my cube to discourage visitors. Interruptions are greeted with, "Which part of Go Away don't you understand?" Of course some smart alec (Hi Kevin!) hangs a Do not feed the Penguin sign on the ribbon, but that's fine - I can finally get some work done and I'm far less stressed at the end of the day.

tech/misc | 31 Dec 2004 | #