Tag: personal

Spring Garden 2012: Growing Up!

Our seedlings are growing up!

It’s been a month since we planted everything in the garden box, quite a pleasant month actually; the plants seem to be appreciating the warm days and cool nights. Most of the plants, anyway… Our lone eggplant while not dying doesn’t seem to be ding much living either, and the basil has been struggling as well, probably because it is still too cold at night for them. We’re on a nightly watering schedule right now. I don’t know if it matters when you water your plants, I should look into that. During the hottest time of the year we end up watering twice a day, and that doesn’t seem to have an adverse effect.

Happy tomato plant

The plants are all still small, but our tomatoes have already started flowering. I’m tempted to pull the flowers and buds off though as I want the plant to concentrate on getting bigger right now not on producing fruit. A reminder for myself and other gardeners out there when you are watering your plants avoid getting the flowers wet, if you use a drip system this isn’t an issue, as the water will ruin the flowers and they’ll not fertilize or become fruit. I’m thinking in a few weeks our cucumbers and bush beans will start putting out creepers and D and I will have to install the netting for them to crawl up, by that time I’m hoping the zucchini plants have doubled as well. By the end of June and early July I expect we’ll be harvesting fruits and veggies and I’ll have a lot more to talk about when it comes to the garden.  Continue reading “Spring Garden 2012: Growing Up!”

Mind Sweep: Tools/Things I find Helpful

Still using the Hipster PDA

I feel dirty even writing this post. I don’t make any money off of selling strangers crap they don’t need to get organized in life. There are whole sectors of the internet that do that and do it really well. I don’t think they’re helping you. As the old saying goes, “your wallet doesn’t make you money.” So, doesn’t matter how many great apps or tools there are to help you keep organized buying them isn’t going to make you anymore organized. All you really need to do is want to be organized, if that is the case you’ll be organized even if all you have is some scraps of paper and a pencil to help you. So, before you go to check out anything I talk about here, and certainly before you go and spend your hard earned money on anything. Actually, if I think about it everything I use is free, except for the index cards and the binder clip; those will cost you around 65¢.

Analog Capture/Task List: Hipster PDA

Electronics are great. Computers, laptops, and smart phones are all fantastic ways to assist you in staying organized. They do run out of batteries though, and they’re not always the easiest thing to use. This is where the Hipster PDA comes in. A few index cards clipped together and a pen. The cards can be used for all sorts of things; click the link to see quite a few of them. I generally use them to do mind sweeps, idea capture, and to do lists. If you take anything away from this post take away the Hipster PDA.

Digital Task List: Wunderlist

Wunderlist is on everything (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, Blackberry, Web) Whatever and wherever you use Wunderlist it syncs up with the web and all your other devices that have Wunderlist. You can tag tasks, give them priority and dead lines. It’s nearly perfect for my purposes as soon as its makers integrate it with Wunderkit, the next item on this list

Project Planning: Wunderkit

My Wunderkit Projects Page (click to embiggen)

Wunderlist works well for simple to-do lists or task, but when you’re organizing projects that have multiple tasks, multiple goals, and multiple levels you need something a little more robust. That is what Wunderkit is for.  It allows me to track all my projects and all my next tasks. The makers have said Wunderkit/Wunderlist integration is on the way and as soon as it is I’ll be set.

Deadlines: GCal

The last thing I use for this sort of thing is Google Calendar (you can find it on-line and on your smart phone.) I’m still just beginning to start scheduling my days but blocking out hours for tasks in GCal helps for me to make them real and to sit down and do them when it is time.

I’m always interested in seeing and hearing what other people use to get through their tasks. Leave a comment below and tell me how your system works and what works best for you.

Follow these links for the other posts in this series: Mind Sweeps, Winnowing Tasks, Actions

Spring Garden 2012: Planted!

Seedlings!

The weather is still all wonky but D and I decided that we didn’t want to wait any longer to put the garden or else it would be too late. I’m a little worried that the non-existent then late winter is going to lead into a too warm summer but that is a completely different topic. We went to the Ace today and picked up some compost, manure, and some tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, zucchini, and eggplant. We had some seedlings of those but they are still very young, as you can see above, and we wanted to have some back up. Back at the house I turned the garden bed over, put in all the compost we had produced ourselves (from the composter and the worm bin) and then turned it all over.

All the plants
All the poops!

Once it was turned over we laid out where we were going to be putting everything, put in some beer plants and then planted the store bought seedlings. We left a lot of room in the bed for the seedlings still in their planters (bush beans, Japanese cucumbers, edamame, and some heirloom tomatoes). Once the plants were in we watered it all down, soaking the garden. Then we filled up the beer traps with the King of Beers, and spread out the Sluggo (damn slugs are still the biggest problem we have with the garden.)

All done! Sorta...
Zucchini!
Basil!
Lemon Cucumbers!
Our tiny, precious seedlings! Protected from birds and slugs (it's on the roof of a shed.)

This is going to be our last garden here in Davis and we’re both crossing our fingers hoping it will be our best yet!

 

Mind Sweep: Actions

A list! Everyone loves lists!

Once you’ve winnowed your tasks down to the ones you are actually going to do, discarding or putting into the “Nice to do sometime folder” the rest, the next step is to break the project down into it single tasks. This can be difficult and might seem ridiculous but it’ll save you time in the long run. While it seems ‘moving furniture’ doesn’t need to be broken down into steps. It does. Will you need someone to assist you? Is the area you’re moving the furniture to clear? Will you need tools? Are they out? Thinking all of this through now will make completing the project/task much quicker and organized.  The list above is all the projects that made it through the winnowing process. I’ve also lined out the first task and the one following. Some of these projects will be completed in a single action some require many.

Current Progress

You can see the updated list above with the progress I’ve made on these projects. At this point you just need to keep track of new projects and to break them down as they come in and make sure you continue to work on the next tasks for your existing projects. A simple list like this on paper, or on your smart phone is sufficient to manage your projects. Though there are a number of fancy ways to go about it. Just remember that your wallet can’t help you be a better organized person when it comes to productivity products…

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