Mimi's Musings

I'm trying to be more organized, and I'm doing pretty well, I like to think. I still really need to work on time management (>_<) but as far as keeping track of tasks and dates, it's not bad!

My first big tool is Google Calendars. I love how I can color-code and organize the events themselves. It's easy to use and pretty powerful. My favorite parts of Google Calendars, though, are the repeating events (I can add it once and it'll go on for however long I want it to, at whatever interval I like!) and the notifications. I run a twice-a-week showing of Sailor Moon but I tend to forget on the days I'm supposed to run it. I added it to my calendar, turned on email notifications, and now I never forget! It emails me three times in the hour before showtime just in case — I can be quite absentminded at times.

My second tool that I'm just starting to use is a lovely pink DayOne planner. It was a gift from a very good friend of mine and I love it. Although I haven't gotten everything in it yet, it will eventually have all my important phone numbers and addresses, as well as all my offline appointments and dates and such. It's great for seeing my schedule at a glance when I'm away from my computer.

My third tool is Ta-Da List. These are simple to-do lists that are really easy to organize and arrange on the computer. I love making notes to myself about things to do and buy, but I've never had a really good system for keeping up with them. I used to use my school notebooks but then I'd lose them or forget about the lists. Then I most recently used gmail and just emailed things to do to myself, but that was way more complicated than it should have been. I remembered about Ta-Da just a little while ago and I'm already keeping up with everything I need to do!

My fourth tool, one that's specially for my knitting projects, is Ravelry. I can keep track of projects in-progress, see my notes on finished projects, queue projects I have in mind, tag all projects, look up new patterns, see info on yarns, make notes of what kinds of needles I have…it's a knitter's dream come true. I especially love this one because I soon won't have enough extra space to stash yarn and printed patterns — it's helping me to choose what I really want to do (tagged with "definitely"), what I probably want to do but aren't totally sure (tagged "maybe"), and ones I would like to do but just don't think I have the knowledge, talents, money, or time to do (tagged "someday").  Of course, its pattern database is giving me all sorts of projects I want to do, so it's not totally helping…but hey, at least the stuff I make will all have uses. ^_^ It's also a bit of a social networky site for knitters and crocheters but I've not explored that. If you have an account, though, feel free to add me — I'm Babelglyph.

My fifth tool is OnlineClock.net, a super-simple alarm clock that's great for one-time things. I like it to remind me to check on uploading videos or boiling water. It's a good alarm for a quick nap, too — it's obnoxious and impossible to ignore. Simple and easy to use.

My last tool is, oddly enough, Vox! I like to post on Vox about all the things I have in mind for future projects and such. I don't do it often enough, but it really helps when I do.  So now I think I'm going to get caught up on my knitting projects thus far and go write that post!

(teehee, I wrote this before the knitting one below it, but I posted the knitting one first. This one feels incomplete. But I can't remember anything else I use…so here it is for everyone to read!)