Oh yes Rands yes yes.

Aaron - that really is just a list of the first people I thought of. I think thought of you because of your Activity Log.

Edited by author 10-23-2003 01:44 AM
Three parageeks whose prolifickness brings me out in hives of envy:

Seth David Schoen
J Brad Delong
Eben Moglen

(oops, you had Brad already)

Have you read "FSTR" by James Glieck?

You've got confused between organisation and motivation. The things you claim are difficult to get completed (your todo list, writing the Linux kernel, reading 1,000 e-mails a day) have little to do with being able to organise your life, but instead have everything to do with being motivated to do them in the first place. They aren't hard, they don't need your desk to be "just perfect" before you begin, you just DO them.

Try this for an exercise - you have two choices of what to do with your evening; you may read mails from a dozen mailing lists, write a few hundred lines of code, submit patches for something cool to go into a project you love before reading a chapter of War and Peace OR you can sit in front of the telly eating pizza and cuddling your other half. Which one is it?

See. The Universe likes everything at it's lowest state of energy. Anybody who has studied semiconductors know that this rule is so important, without it, computers wouldn't work. You are no different. You could do all those things "geniuses" do, but the truth is you have something else you would rather do.

Organisation comes after you've decided to do something. Trying to organise your life before you have the motivation is just the "Rimmer Study Timetable" problem.

Hey Danny,

So I agree with Rachel that Seth is amazingly prolific. But I suspect he leads life much like you do, somewhat (though not totally) disorganized. I think if he were really really organized, he might be leader of the free world. But he enjoys life way too much for that, meandering and wandering where life takes him

So, I have interviewed many geeks and the one that was quite impressive and really fun to interview is bdale garbee. Ex project leader of Debian, he was launching amateur satellites, writing code, working full time, and raising a family. And he just seemed to put together!

Good luck...

No names, but one tactic I've seen that works is: Delete. You had over 150 things on the todo-list? Delete any item older than a month. If you haven't done it in a month, it wasn't important enough to do anyway. And if it becomes important again (due to panicky reminders from other people, for example), then add it again.

Same goes for mail. Older then a month - dump it. Actually, set up an automated filter to delete anything too old. Only way not to have it deleted is to do something with the item. If you don't, it wasn't important. If it turned out to be important anyway, you will be reminded.

Thing is, once your inbox is a dozen pieces and your to-do list number in the single digits, thos things still there are important and/or new, and quite a lot more motivating to actually accomplish. You no longer have the feeling of cleaning out Aeigan stables whenever you drag yourself to actually do something on the list.

oh and danny, here is a small anthropological suggestion:
look for embodies technologies too!!! http://healthhacker.org/satoroams/archives/000361.html#000361

The easiest way to become efficient is to do something worthwhile under time pressure.

I developed the first effective lung cleaning system for pneumonia, COPD and CF. Concentrating my thoughts was the fact that 20,000 people died of these diseases every day.

How about Paul Ford?

Maybe try to track down some more women, cos I reckon we have a very different set of getting-things-done tools. Maybe. Or at least, it would be interesting to know.

Something I have always found makes a huge difference to overall productivity is the amount of sleep a person needs. Student friends who were perfectly bright and awake on 4 hours a night invariably managed far more homework/parties/hobbies/societies/friendships than those of us for whom 8-9 hours is barely enough. What proportion of hugely prolific geeks sleep very little? And do they all have housemates/OHs/parents etc with whom to "share" day to day chores (which eat time like nobody's business), or do they exist on internet-ordered ramen in a single darkened room?

It's not all organisation...

My favorite organizing tip.

When you file something ask yourself "Where would I look for this if I was trying to find it?" This really helps you put it in a place you can find it later. Works with physical filing and computer files too.

I once had a manager - an actually good one - tell my my biggest contribution to the team was asking "So what do we need to do next?" I hate leaving a meeting without knowing what we are suppose to be doing next. Often in a meeting you brain storm and discuss stuff and feel you've accomplished something. Then you go back to your desk and think, "What am I suppose to be doing?"

Find a like-minded geek and use them/their brain as storage. This works particularily well with scattered, ADD-like geeks. Your important stuff becomes their trivia and will be guaranteed a much higher degree of persistence than you could ever manage over it because we all know
how geeks are with trivia.
This actually does work, at least among my friends and I it does.
"What was that thing I was supposed to do Wednesday down south?"

'You were going to be speaking at the SIG/LUG and take your book with you as a door prize. It starts at 1900'

"Oh, right....I guess I better write up the slides then"
'No problem. Where did I leave my 802.11 card?'
"You gave it to Mark to graft a new pigtail onto..."

Hey, I had Paul Ford!

Actualy, I'm beginning to think the best policy might be to compose a questionnaire for anyone who wants it, and then pursue those who want to be pursued. There are more prolific geeks out there than I can track, and everybody seems to have at least one tip in them.

(Mine, for what it's worth, is this: "The Ten Minute Hate". If you're untidy, every day, spend just ten minutes cleaning up. Time it exactly. Play loud annoying music. Model it after the 10 minute hate in "1984". Revel in the hate. If you share an apartment, synchronise your hate with your housemates. Ten minutes is almost no time at all, but it will do most of the work of keeping an environmentally stable, if not cleaner. Also, it's nice to have part of your day reserved for despising everything and everyone.

velcro,

I coated the back of my laptop screen with velcro. (the nice smooth 'industrial strength' stuff)

it's great for organization, because you can keep all the little incidental stuff you need attached to the computer.
http://www.aaronpropst.com/blog/images/laptopdriveconfig.jpg

This way, you can just pick up your laptop and take it to a meeting, or wherever, without needing to drag a bag of stuff along. I keep my power supply, external hard drive, wifi card back there. and it's all modular so you can rig it for.. ahem.. specific activities:
http://www.aaronpropst.com/features/war-rig1.jpg

The other cool thing, is i made some small sheetmetal or plexiglas plates with velcro on them so they stick to the screen and stick out to one side.. I clip my cellphone to that.. and my cellphone is mounted right next to my screen.. quite handy for the telecommute from wifi pockets around a city.

One of the most useful things to keep geeks organized is to not skimp on administrative staff to organize them. You wouldn't have a flock of sheep without a sheepdog, so why wouldn't you pay for one $30,000/yr admin for every 2 or 3 $100,000 geeks?
At my last-but-one company, my productivity probably came close to doubling when I decided to hire an admin to take calls for me, track my calendar, and remind me of things I'd forgotten.

I highly recommend the book Getting Things Done. It's about, well, getting things done. They key idea is moving from "to do's" to "next steps". I wish I had time to implement the whole program. We have a saying in Texas: Too busy chopping down trees to sharpen my axe...