Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

One of the problems with GTD is that many who write about it love talking about the tools more than what they actually accomplish with the tools. Alex Payne has some ideas about where to put to-do lists, arguing that they should live in the context in which they are done. Development tasks in tickets, conversations in email, blog posts in the drafts folder/status, tabs or bookmarks for unread articles. Writing a list of topics to write about so far hasn't worked for me, so I'm going to stop doing that.

Ian McKenzie points to 6 ways to fall in love with bookmarks again. Except that I've been in love with them since day one, still. Now, with RSS, "store the daily visits" is kind of pointless, but I use bookmarks for reasons other than mentioned in the articles. Below is a partial screenshot of the main categories of bookmarks.

I wish I could remember the section it was from, but I remember starting the folder names with "Staging:" because of something in Getting Things Done which recommended collecting materials to read later on. "Articles to Read" is pretty straightforward: these are longer essays that I have for time when there isn't anything to read. "Software to Try Out" are tools that don't necessarily solve problems today, but tools for which I can see might solve problems later on. "To Watch or Listen To" are mostly podcasts I can put on while ironing. "Blogs to Syndicate" are weblogs I need to put into an online aggregator, almost all of them French-language weblogs writing about China. "Blogs to evaluate" are weblogs I'm on the fence about subscribing to. There's likely a better way to organize my bookmarks, but I use bookmarks still and almost exclusively for stuff that doesn't need my attention now but is there for when my attention needs something, anything.

Come to think of it, someone could potentially write a very good article on when your attention needs something, anything.

Like Ian, I use my bookmarks toolbar for frequently-accessed almost-entirely-work-related links that either don't have RSS feeds, are reference material, or "do something", such as the link that creates a randomly-generated, 6-letter password with no numbers.

Pamela Paul: “While the temptation to correct errors - which often reverberate from blog to blog - can be strong, counterblogging can be counterproductive. Authors report sad tales of the flaming feedback loops that follow such confrontations.”

The article links to the most blogged-about books of 2005, and I'm linked on the page for Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd (which links to my 'just quote' of a review of the book). Most of the writers asked seem overly-sensitive about reactions they read in weblogs, but then again, aren't writers overly-sensitive to begin with? (And the same for bloggers?) Dowd seems the most sensible about following what bloggers say about her by deploying human filters—her assistant and her sister—to forward her the important reactions.

Dowd's book is not listed in the top-20 list, however, but two technical aspects of the list strike me as interesting: you do not need an account to view the list and also search engines are allowed to index the list, though not archive it in a cache. (But what, no links so that I can purchase any of the books, with the newspaper getting a cut?) It's unusual for The New York Times to allow search engines to index anything—but it's very smart, because users coming in through search engines are more likely to click on the ads which most bloggers and weblog readers probably have learned to ignore.

Here are the books on the list that I've read, with, if applicable, a link to my short review for each:

• 3. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (my brief review)
• 5. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (my brief review)
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• 12. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki (my selection as best book of 2004)
• 14. 1984 by George Orwell (my favourite book of all time)

I decided finally to succumb to the cult's wishes and buy a new notebook? Which cult you ask? One that lamely doesn't have sex as its primary selling point, but which is wrapped up in the larger GTD cult that preaches the art of not fucking things up.

Which notebook, you ask? Why, the Moleskine Ruled Notebook of course. Or, as I call it, "Notebook 2.0".

Last night at 2 AM I looked up 'moleskine vancouver' and found a wiki page for where to buy Moleskine notebooks in Canada, and went with Essence Du Papier on Robson & Granville (inside the Sears building), mostly because buying something from a store with a French name makes me feel snootier than I really am (also because it was close to work).

Darren Barefoot mentioned the Moleskine occasionally (see his article on marketers as liars and his mentioning that he wondered where they are sold locally and the question he posed on AskLocally Vancouver) so he and some people I work with have them and were happy with them. I've written only on one page of it—notes during a meeting—and so far so good. It's a nice-looking notebook with a few cool features (elastic closure, pocket in the inside back cover, and a bookmark), and I'll use it mostly for taking notes about how to do stuff and ideas when I'm not near a computer. For $27 Canadian, it's a lot more than I normally pay for something like this, but then again, for a notebook, it's on the higher end. There's a weblog about Moleskine notebooks and even a weblog about art created in and with Moleskine notebooks, but I plan on not following them, because there's only so much I, a non-artist, am going to do with a ruled notebook.