Anna Koop

A recurring issue for me is the need for a place to offload the whirl of ideas that fills my head. It can get quite overwhelming, since it is tied to decisions about what to follow up on and a mixture of should-dos and could-dos.

When I was an undergrad I used a Palm program (I can’t remember the name anymore). It was great for juggling class deadlines. I tried using it as a grad student but it didn’t work as well for that. The nature of deadlines changes so much, and the projects turn into these flexible things that can infinitely branch into different areas of research, different paper deadlines, different thoughts to follow up on.

I also, in undergrad, started using Getting Things Done. Now I use a slightly modified version of that with OmniFocus. Most of the time when I’m feeling overwhelmed by my todo list it’s because I either haven’t been putting things into the inbox, or haven’t been reliably clearing things out (In David Allen’s terms, I’ve stopped being able to trust the system and so it all stays in my head).

It’s still not a perfect fit for thesis work, because I haven’t figured out a good way of breaking the proposal down. There are a long list of things I could do (hunt down references, write precis for the lit review, make diagrams, write any portion of the thing itself) and they are all variable length. I think GTD works best when you have countable finite tasks for the projects you’re doing.

I suppose I’m also using a kind of First Things First approach, in that I use OmniFocus for offloading lists of pesky things, but in picking what to do each day I look at what is most important rather than urgent. Which is how thesis work makes the cut without being exhaustively enumerated in OF.

And GTD is way too much overhead for joint projects with Joel. Joel does not have the same intense need for a system—he manages to compartmentalize to-dos better than I do, and tends to just do the thing to get it out of his head. He still (I think) needs some kind of system, depending on how many projects he’s juggling, but he’s more of a visual do-er than compulsive organizer. So we haven’t exactly found the best solution for our joint projects, although the whiteboard and calendar figure hugely in our current work.

If anyone has suggestions for other todo or idea management systems, I’m always interested. Go productivity p0rn.

We had a series of houseplant mishaps in our last several living places, so as part of Joel’s Christmas present(s) we got a watering system from Lee Valley (thanks in part to a GC from Mom & Dad Koop) and then went to Home Depot together to pick up some replacement plants.

We were using these lovely PlantMinders but Asha loves dumping them over. Attempts to make a cage to keep it safe didn’t work, so we needed something new. The watering system we got is more elaborate (there’s a big reservoir, and a series of hoses and valves), but should help with plant health. Asha has investigated but not pestered the valves. Seems like a win.

The watering systems make a big difference in fungus gnat defence, as well as keeping things lush. No damp soil==no breeding grounds.

We have a peace lily and anthurium again! We got an ivy for the corner, although it’s small yet. And we’re attempting a fern once more—we’ll see how it goes. Survivors are the dragon plants, the figs (one from my mom that is older than I am, and a shoot from Joel’s grandma that is still hanging on), a spider plant, Christmas cactus, the rubber plants and philodendrons.

You can see the reservoir in the top right of this picture. On the rock coffee-table there’s the arrowhead plant that never dies (regularly comes close), and a new lipstick plant.

A bright spot for the dead of winter. The days are getting longer now!

The only resolution I’m allowing myself this year is to be more mindful—live more in the moment and less in frantic plans for the future.

The edict “Begin as you mean to go on” has been dancing through my mind lately. Although it refers to the future moment, I think it helps to bring my focus to the now—every moment is a new beginning, and it’s in this present moment that I am showing how I mean to live, and what I mean for the future. My intentions are clearest in my present actions, not in schemes about what I should do or will do.

So. Here’s to a year of living in the now.

When my operating systems covered thrashing I felt an immediate affinity to the poor processor. Thrashing is when the processor spends more time switching between processes and shuffling memory than executing anything. I think the example used in class had to do with a queueing system and the set up of a new process using up all of the available processor allocation, requiring a switch, which used up all that processor. My memory is hazy, though, and most of the online examples have to do with paging.

The human analogue is being overwhelmed with all-the-things! and not being able to focus on any of them long enough to make progress. Sometimes it’s set off by a resource chain: “I want to write up this abstract, but I need to double-check this reference, which means I need to find this paper, and oh yeah I needed to look up this other term…” Sometimes it’s set off by an excess of ideas: “I have a day off! What shall I do? I could knit or clean up or read or start this large project or advance that project, and I’ll just check the internet and play Lux until I decide. . .”

In any case, the result is—as the Wiki link currently says—“large amounts of computer resources are used to do a minimal amount of work.” Oh yeah. That there is the root of my procrastination issues.

So, solution? Picking a focus for the day sometimes helps, but even within “concentrate on thesis” the multitude of possible tasks can be overwhelming. Lists are essential (writing to long-term storage to free RAM? How far should I carry this analogy?). Deadlines help, but artificial deadlines don’t always work (and the danger there is setting impossible deadlines, which just leads to discouragement).

I have a feeling mindfulness in general would be helpful, but I haven’t worked out how. Focus is not my strong point. I’ll keep practicing.

It probably comes down to something simple, really: Increase resources or decrease demands. Finding a good way of doing either is the problem.

I’m wondering if it goes something like: You can’t deny insult, only the intent to insult. So whether or not a statement is racist depends on the hearer, not the speaker.

Intent matters, of course. But it’s only part of the equation.

I moved the bulk of the tutorial over to my artfire blog. Need some content there, so this is going to be more for personal/research stuff.

Artfire link to tutorial

Highlight reel:

1. Start with a slipknot.
   
2. YO on the working needle (right).
   
3. Knit the slip knot.
   
4. Pass stitch back.
   
5. YO.
   
6. Knit.
   
7. Pass the new stitch back.
8. Repeat 5-7 for the until you have at least 2 extra stitches.
9. Cut and secure the yarn. This is pre-cast on.
   

10. Knit with your real yarn, this is the cast-on row that will stay.
    
11. To free up the provisional stitches, undo the last chain stitch and zip the waste yarn off.
    

There you go! Some extra details at the Artfire page, but that’s the essentials.

I have realized something about my writing process.

Progress on my proposal has been slow. Not discouragingly slow, but incredibly painstaking. Other than the usual battles with perfectionism and undue diligence and scope explosion/implosion, I haven’t quite known why. A possible (addition) explanation occurred to me just now.

One of the artifacts of working on writing with Rich, particularly if it’s a topic he cares about, is the constant scrapping of what’s-been-done. I bring something in (when I bring actual writing in and not just the latest point to discuss!), we look at it, we discuss what works and what doesn’t, and I go out to start over from scratch. It’s not just Rich’s critique that does it—I have a strong tendency towards restarting anyway. Restarting after discussing the whole pictures leads to an excellent narrative and very clear ideas about what the work is about. However.

It does not lead to a complete draft. Ever, really. Hence, right now, although I have written several hundred thousands of words over the last two years, my (incomplete) proposal draft contains 680. Subject to change. Always. That’s down from one of the earlier iterations, which did have a couple thousand, I believe (pardon my obsession with word counts—progress must be measured in some way, for sanity’s sake).

I don’t know if this is something I should embrace or resolve. Free-writing tends to lead to this sort of thing, and free-writing is the lowest-pressure way to get work done. The perfectionism and diligence and scope expansion all lead to paralysis, and free-writing knocks me out of that. But . . . I would like to have a draft. As Mike said, only five people are ever going to read this document. Perhaps I am perfecting just a little too much?

Remember 100k or bust?

I’m pretty happy with the progress I made on my thesis proposal, but I did not meet the 100k goal. Or the complete-draft goal. Or the 50k goal. Oops.

I do have a document that’s shaping up very nicely. Other things intervened and I didn’t push as hard as I could have to get the word-count up. So it goes.

It turns out that free-writing is very useful for clarifying ideas, so I think I will keep alternating that with work on the document itself. What I’m doing is easily delineated by which program I’m using—WriteRoom for free-writing, Scrivener for more careful but still rough writing, and TexShop for actual draft content.

It always sounds so rigid when I describe my various processes. It’s not, really. But I’m glad to go with what works for me, even if it sounds a little crazy to other people.

I’m caught up on email. That’ll teach me not to neglect the inbox for a week.

The working title for my thesis has been “Empirical Prediction as the Stuff of Knowledge” for quite some time. I have been fond of this title, though not totally sold on it. Rich has not been fond of it, particularly “stuff of.” I thought it was because it was too informal, but I think now he found it too vague?

Anyway, the new working title is “An Empirical Approach to Knowledge Representation.” This is better. Changing from empirical prediction as a noun (which was a jargon-alert) to empirical as an adjective helps with accessibility. And then good old “An” is always nice. Not claiming to be the definitive work!

I was resisting “knowledge representation” for a while, because I thought the term had been lost to the old-school approaches. But now that I know what philosophical framework we fall into, I’m more comfortable with it. The agent is using a representation, and the thing being represented is patterns in the sensorimotor data rather than external entities.

It was a great meeting on Friday, and I have an improved working title: simple, clear, accurate. Good things.