I know I disappeared for a week and that's bad. I was trying to stay sane and stay on top of a deluge of work. However, I'm back on the Tuesday - Thursday posting cycle and I'm trying a different tack. I read an article over the weekend about taming the email beast and I wondered what comments you might have regarding the struggle between work and email. Is email an efficient way for organizing work for you, or is it a distraction from getting real work done?

So, Pam asked about how to roam between locations and "stay sane". I have a couple of personal tips I can share, and I'd be curious to hear your experiences. Click Continue Reading to read more...

Rather than do a separate blog for each class as I originally intended, I'm introducing the second class to our blog. I'm also hoping to inject a little life into it by doing it. I was bad for a week, but I've scheduled time in MeetingMaker (yay - calendaring keeping me sane) so that I am guaranteed to post now. I promise to keep updating at LEAST until the semester starts, and maybe even longer, so at this point - don't feel obligated to continue to post, but it helps my self esteem to know you're still reading, so I appreciate anyone posting comments, even if you didn't come to a class!

This is a kind of boring entry, but I'm on vacation and since I often write about things related to my own reality, here goes. I had reason (unrelated to work) to think about the different methods of electronic communication and outline them in my mind. Because the method I receive communication is often instrumental as to how I organize my work, I thought it would be useful...

The second "staying sane" class brought up RSS, which sounds scary, but I ASSURE you it is not.

I prefer calling RSS, "Subscribing to Websites". It was not something that came easily to me. My web surfing habit was basically, go to a website I like, read it, and then go to another. However, last year I attended James's Web 2.0 class and got hooked on Google Reader. What Google Reader (or another RSS program or site) does is collect stories you might want to read and put them in one place. I don't find it super useful for sites like the NY Times that I read every day, but rather sites that are interesting to me, but that I don't always have time to read, or don't post regularly enough to become habit forming.

To sign up for Google Reader, you need to create a Google account. If you already use Gmail, you can use that account if you want. If you don't trust Google with your data, (I don't yet with work-related stuff), there are others out there. One I've tried and considered using is Netvibes.

I was going to write a tutorial, but what I would have written is much less entertaining than this video that James has played in his Web 2.0 classes that I really like:

Sometimes, it's not your method of organization (or lack thereof) that is preventing the return of sanity Click for more!

So, you know you have that file somewhere, but where is it? There's some tips I can share that can help....

I talked about searching your email in a prior post, but you can do similar things with the files on your hard drive, your meetings in MeetingMaker, and even large documents. It's our little friend, Ctrl-F. (I like to think of it as F for friend, rather than find!)

I posted about zPen in TechNoCool, which is another blog I occasionally contribute to. Go check out my post to see what I'm talking about. I've been using it long enough to start to incorporate it into my organization scheme. I tend to be a gadget freak, so I posted in TechNoCool, where I can be a gadget freak. I didn't want to mention it here until I was sure it was something that made me MORE organized, rather than LESS, as some gadgets will do to you.

On an semi-related note, blogging is an interesting way of staying sane. I think to some degree, it contributes to my insanity, particularly trying to come up with interesting things to say. However, as a means for communicating with the masses, it's sure beats the alternatives.

To set up a blog at Allegheny, contact User Services. They'll do the heavy lifting for you - you mostly have to have something to write about. Your blog can be about anything, but my recommendation is to keep it about work and for work purposes. If you want a personal blog, a popular site that I use is Blogger. Yes, it's owned by the Google evil empire, but for personal stuff, I'm willing to deal with the devil for freebies. Creating a web page has come a long way since the Dreamweaver and HTML days of yore.