Achieving Nirvana

Today there are seven post-it notes on my desk. One reminds me to think about what kinds of books we should add to our newest e-book collection, one tells me to make bookmarks to advertise our new Kindle service, another says "Save for India trip" and one simply says "FYS". A fifth note says, and I quote, "Freud, Larry David on happiness". Huh.

In addition to the post-it notes, I have a whiteboard on my office wall with a list of ongoing projects, at least two of which overlap with the post-it notes. I maintain two online calendars, make "notes" to myself on my iPhone, and rarely go a day without writing something on the back of my hand. Oh and I always carry a mini notepad and pen in my purse in case I think of something while I'm out.

All of this is to say that I am fairly disorganized organized person and my personal organization system has a lot of redundancies. It's not even a system really, which is the problem. If I wanted to get deep and philosophical I would say I need to learn to let go a little bit and trust myself that I'll remember the important stuff. Yeah, not going to happen. Type A much? A little much too much.

So when I read about Nirvana on the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog I thought I'd give it a try myself. Essentially, Nirvana allows you to keep detailed, easily-searchable, organized, long-ranging, to-do lists. I requested an invite and within a few days received a link to create my account.

I haven't been using it for very long, but my first impression is that this is going to be an extremely useful tool. No more (or at least a lot less) using ten different platforms to order my thoughts and tasks. I love that I can easily prioritize them by when they are due and that I can search for items by tag or category. I also like how I can create larger "projects" and create a sub-list of tasks within that project. The icing on the cake is that I can access my Nirvana account from my iPhone so I can see my to-do lists and update them on the go no matter where I am (provided I can get cell phone service).

I do wish some of the features you get in something like Google Calendar or Outlook were available-- specifically setting pop-up reminders about an event and specifying the time something is due instead of just the date. Even with these drawbacks, Nirvana has the benefit of giving you an excellent longer range view of tasks to be completed and makes it easier to manage them all.

Next task on my to-do list? Think about adding a Nirvana tutorial to my FYS syllabus. It has potential to help my students on their goal-tracking project. But then again, maybe they'll come across this very entry in my blog.

UPDATE: I just discovered how to get a daily email "tickler" sent to me to remind me of my to do list. So there ya go. Not quite a pop-up reminder, but it'll do...

I'm like school in the summer....

'Cause I got no class! (pausing while the laughter dies down)

But seriously, summer is a slow time in the library. During the school year I am always running around-- teaching a class, planning a program, answering questions, coming up with projects, implementing surveys and just generally doing stuff. But in the summer there are no classes to teach, nobody to come to programs and very few students around that need help with assignments. So I spend my summers planning for the upcoming school year, generating ideas and doing professional development activities. And I use up my generous allotment of vacation time to go visit family and have three day weekends pretty much all summer. I love my job.

This summer the whole planning bit is taking up quite a bit of my time because I am planning to teach a new, semester-long course in the Fall. I am so excited for the opportunity, but I also know that no matter how much I plan it's inevitable that there be surprises and challenges. This blog is both to document my successes (and occasional failures) in teaching this course as well as a gesture of solidarity with my students, who will also be keeping blogs over the course of our semester together.

Later, after the course is over I hope to continue writing to document my professional and personal development. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, first I need to finish writing my syllabus...