Are you one of those people who does Google Calendar? Or keeps a to-do list on your phone? Or sets an alarm to get you to do a regular task, like exercising or writing?
If so, then we have nothing in common. We just don’t know each other like I thought we did 🙂
I do not work well with electronic reminders of my life. I have an outlook calendar at work, which does me very little good since I only turn my e-mail on about four times a day (so I can have longer uninterrupted blocks of time to work on programming or technical writing, y’know working). Often Outlook will claim I’m two hours late to something I just came back from.
And digital reminders for Bible study don’t work that well for me either.
My old netbook was set up to open Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening devotions every time I booted the machine up. After a week or two this just became the way I knew the computer was ready to do some work, and would happily click the red X without a second thought.
My writing has always been very goals oriented, and maybe even regular, but not timed to a calendar. Even blocked off time like Monday’s writing session is in flux, and I need a more opportunistic approach to writing time (making the most of it when I have it).
I tried this one program called Stickies when I bought my new netbook. It lets me keep virtual sticky notes on my desktop with a list of things for me to do. My wife swears by this program, but I used it for about two weeks and now I have the same sticky note sitting in my bottom left corner unchanged and ignored (and eating a little of my RAM).
The only times I’ve been good with details are when I kept a little physical pad and paper of random notes. But this could get messy and a note kept in there too long would lose its meaning. I dropped this habit pretty much after college.
I think I’m a decently ordered person. I write regularly, keep most of my obligations, and what I miss, well… that’s why I got married 🙂
I just resist external attempts to order my world. This has always been true. I didn’t write down homework assignments, keep date books or even have big wall calendars. I just remember what I need to, and what I don’t well… someone will remind me if it was really important.
How do you keep order in your life?
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 