The desk and work environment…

Funnily enough, it was only last week that I decided to take measures to fix the situation with my desk at uni – ergonomically, it wasn’t working. After lots of physio for the neck, the culprit was narrowed down to the desk – it being too high and therefore resulting in me having a slight ‘chicken wings out’ pose while typing. Ergonomically, I think it all works better now – moved to a desk that has a detached keyboard platform that can be lowered or raised, and works great.

Having done that, the next thing would be to sort through and file (or whatever needs to be done) the 15cm. high pile of paper on my in-tray….it looks “neatly” piled, but it needs sorting – I believe they’re mostly articles and things that I wanted to keep close to be able to deal with, but after a couple of months now I do need to revise that.

When it comes to how I organise my electronic documents files, I’m fairly happy with my filing system and perhaps does not need much tweaking – I manage to find things fast at a glance. Provided that I don’t spend too much getting organised, which inevitable I did in setting up my system.

When it comes to protecting my work and electronic files, I do a daily back-up of my whole PhD project (which sits in its own drive as a subset of the C: drive in my laptop) – a copy of the backup goes in my university network drive, and the other in a USB I carry with me everywhere. I also do a daily sync of my laptop computer with an external hard drive, which comes home with me every night and use it to sync all the files contained in it with my PC at home. Whilst I find I can keep up with the routine and so far has worked really well, I wonder about my system’s sensitivity and robustness – I should prioritise in testing it and having more reassurance that this works efficiently and effectively….for instance, in system or files recovery.

Personal Management Strategies…

Here we are asked to reflect on Topic 2, titled “Personal Management Strategies”, starting with learning strategies with respect to computing skills.  In thinking about what learning strategies might I adopt in order to continue to expand my computer skills, I would have to say quite simply ‘Try it out!’ – that has always been my motto. I love exploring new software and seeing what it does, however the key for me would be to watch the time I spend trying things out! especially when it comes to personalising settings – the less choice and controls I have available the better for me in avoiding ‘procrastination’ – I’m being entirely honest with myself here, telling it like it really is.

So, what steps could I take to improve my computer proficiency? I mentioned in the unit’s discussion forum that I’d like to try and use macros more, not sure I’ve really tried that (never quite realised its value in automating tasks, really). Other proficiency issues in my computing would include better use of short cut keys “Ctr+…+…” etc, as well as my typing skills to learn to use all fingers rather than stressing the same few fingers all the time. I’ve had some experiences with repetitive stress injury (RSI) before, and I guess the best way to reduce the chances of tha returning is to become a little more ergonomic with my computing, just as important especially now that I enter the final stages of this research and writing (typing!) will become the daily norm.

The other aspect of personal management strategies, involves recognising one’s own organisational weaknesses – I  know very well what those are, but it is hard to admit them, especially so publicly which is what we do as a class for this unit. Quite confronting. One of my principal organisational weakness, above all others I feel, is the time I spend getting organised (i.e. labelling, shelving, filing, re-organising, etc etc etc). However having been made more ‘aware’ of this has allowed me to become more cognisant of that time spent … I’m really now learning and practising to just ‘let go’ once the task achieves effectiveness, rather than going beyond that with too much aesthetics. It’s hard, but becoming more aware of its importance in becoming more efficient (and reduce my stress levels!).

Another strategy, centres on time to complete tasks – I very much liked Covey’s four quadrant matrix for prioritising tasks (Figure 3.1, p.38 Ch.3 of the book). It would give me a better idea of what needs to be done first (and why), rather than just one log list. I have a small sized whiteboard by my desk, perhaps one way would be to draw the actual quadrant on it and use it to list things or stick Post-it notes (as I often do) in the relevant quadrants based on urgency and importance. I in fact used this strategy as a ‘case study’ for assignment 1, and I found it very useful to go have to think through and apply my assessment criteria to see just how well it works (or not!).

Finally, we were asked about mind mapping software and how it might be useful to me in my research – Frankly, I’m not sure. I have tried using mind mapping tools before, but I dislike the often ‘messy’ and unstructured look – it confuses me more than clarifying a concept, I find. Maybe I need to try again.