Amazing

The internet is an amazing place. Thanks to a reader, Ray, I now have a licensed copy of Note Studio! I've been using A5 and pedit with some success. I've just really missed the free form style of Note Studio. And, since I have a PC at work that I can install software on, I can even use the desktop at work. I reloaded all my "books" and tweaked the nav bar a bit. Since I had the system duplicated in memos, I just copy the new stuff over. I'm waiting a bit, before I post about the system, until I decide if it needs any addtions. I found some gorgeous fonts for OS5. I'm using Garamond, which is my all time favorite font.

I think the biggest problem for me is whenever I use a system to handle Hard Landscape (a calendar of sorts) and another system for Next Actions. I like to have everything in a single place, so that I'm not looking everywhere. It just feels fragmented somehow. When I've used todo based apps (like Todo+ and Life Balance), I've always put the dated stuff into them as well. Now, I just have a page for dated items. In my new job, I don't have a lot of these. I have the big deadline looming for the catalog. And I have a weekly meeting to attend. The rest seems to be keeping the workflow on track. Some days I just write, some days I knit. Both jobs need to be done (since the knitted items are projects for the catalog.)

One of the things I have yet to incorporate into Note Studio is a great tip I had in an old post from Harry Larsen. He uses an "electronic tickler" file on his Palm. It's just a memo. You start with a list of items that need to be completed within a certain month. Then, you add items that need to be completed on a certain day within that month. They may be several years down the road. It's just one more way to make sure that things don't fall through the cracks.

Tomorrow will be my first Weekly Review with the new system. I'd planned to spend some time goal setting, as there are goals related to the new job that I need to write down somewhere. What I am trying to keep foremost in my mind is the idea of "well grooved tools". I want to have a system that works and that I don't need to think about. Tweaking this much has been useful, in that it's made me think about what I need from a system. Now, I just want to use it. For this same reason, I've gone back to Accounts and Loans for my financial stuff. (I added Quik Budget again, but I never know how long I'll leave that one installed.) Splash Money is a nice app. I just don't seem to trust it somehow. It's the same issue I'm going through right now about which MP3 player I want to register, Pocket Tunes or Aeroplayer. Both do similar things. In this case, they even cost the same. I like the simplicity of Aeroplayer and the fact that it takes up a lot less space. I like how Pocket Tunes organizes the songs. One or the other will win out this weekend.