Back in February (wow, it's been that long now!) I blogged about a form of to-do list that gamifies life. I'm quite happy to tell you that even though the productivity spike from trying something new has ebbed, and even though there are some things I'm still doing badly at, I have stuck with the game and actually get stuff done a bit better, or so it feels. (This is always hard to tell, I think. How do you know that you are more, or less, productive than you would be with another method? Or none at all? Unless you go from, say, 5% good use of time to 95% good use of time and stick with that over several months at least, it's pretty hard to say.)

However, it was time to try something new in addition to the list. I'm suffering from the same problem many freelancers do - very little structure in a given day. Yes, there's getting up, there's the need to eat something at some point, and there's the need to sleep, and to take a break. But otherwise, my time can be arranged quite freely.

While that can be an asset - for instance, being able to take half a day off easily in case of unforeseen stuff, or re-arranging for something that came up suddenly - it can also be a hindrance. I can do that later. I can take a break now. I can read now and write later. Or whatever.

So yesterday, I decided to try the Pomodoro Technique. You may have heard of it - it's actually really simple, even though there's a whole book been written about it (a free pdf copy is linked to in the article above, or in the Wikipedia article). You take a timer (any sort will do) and set it to 25 minutes. That's time for work, and nothing else. Then you take a short break, 5 minutes, before starting on your next slice of worktime. After 4 slices (or pomodoros), you get a longer break - 15 or 20 mins, for example. Rinse and repeat.

The intention behind it is to give some structure, cut the worktime down in manageable slices that make it easier to concentrate and to tackle things that seem daunting, and provide enough breaks for recovery. It might work well, or it might not, but I'm giving it a go. After all, the worst that can happen is that I am not going to stick with it as it won't help. Should you be curious now and also want to try it, here's a link to several free timers intended especially for the technique - and there's lots more suitable on the ol' Interwebz.

This time, it's not because I cluttered it with stuff (though yes, that has also happened) but because I am now working with a second screen in addition to the (not overly large) one that my laptop has. And what can I say? It's lovely. Really, really lovely - I can have several texts open at once, glance over, get my information and write something in another open window.

It feels like total, complete, utter luxury. I remember that time when 17" was a huge monitor, and when flatscreens were a sensational new thing that took up so much less space. I remember seeing a spread of more than one monitor, with the extended desktop, and being told that while that was cool it was only necessary for graphic designers or folks working a lot with AutoCAD.

I have sort of worked with two screens before, only that one of them was on my computer and the other on a second one, that having internet access, and I'd use the one for writing and the other for online dictionary searches and looking up stuff. Which meant that all kinds of weird using-the-wrong-mouse-or-keyboard moments did happen. But somehow, until recently, I did not really think about getting a second screen all for myself. Total luxury of virtual real estate.

I'll probably get used to that luxury very soon and be bewildered whenever I do not have my second screen. It's still a little weird, I'm adjusting angles, and the colours of the two screeens don't match exactly but oh, I do not mind. Finally I do not need to switch windows again, and again, and again for a simple piece of work. Hooray!

I don't know how all of you handle it, but I have tried out a lot of to-do lists and other track-keeping things over the years. Calendars, special "get things done" thingies, hand-written lists, reminder calendars, you name it. Some of these worked for a day, some for a week, some for two weeks... and then I would quietly ignore them and go on with my life in some other way.

The method I currently have involves a blackboard (or something quite like it) that is hanging at the wall across from my desk and that holds several things, mostly long- and mid-term projects. Add to that a stack of paper snippets with lists on them directly on my desk - most of those are short- to mediumshortterm things. (Though there are some items that keep getting transferred from one list to the next. Gah.)

But yesterday I stumbled across a new sort of to-do list... one that is supposed to give you extra motivation by not just taking that task off a list, but by sort of Roleplayifying your life. (If you have never played a roleplaying game - pen and paper or computer - and have no clue what roleplaying means, here's the short one: you play a character that goes on adventures, kills monsters, saves people, finds treasures (to buy stuff that will help during the monster-killing and people-saving and treasure-finding) and gets better and better at stuff over time.)

So the basic idea is that you have a list of stuff to do - daily, weekly, or small things you want to make a habit - and each time you sucessfully finish a task, you get XP and gold. The gold can be used to buy stuff - either rewards you made up yourself, such as "have cake", or rewards available from the shop that will help you get more gold and more XP. Which sort of makes clicking "done" on these tasks... more fun.

I'm trying this out, and I can tell you: I had a lot of fun yesterday already, even though the to-do list is freakishingly long. And even if it will not work long-term for me, I will happily take a spike in productivity.

Oh, yes, the details: The thing is called HabitRPG. It's under development, it's free (unless you die and need to resurrect yourself), and there is currently a Kickstarter campaign running (which also features a video telling you more about the idea and the "game") to help develop it more, including a mobile app, and faster.

As the long-term readers among you might know, I am using EndNote for my citation and bibliography needs. Theoretically, I also have all the .pdf files that I have of articles in one folder on my system, and all the titles of these articles in the EndNote database.

Theoretically. Which, unfortunately, is not at all what I really have - over time, a large stack of .pdfs has accumulated that are not yet in the database, because it all meant opening the file, copying the relevant bibliographical data into the database, then saving the file under a new (and unique) name also written to the database file. Yes, the programme can theoretically attach files to database entries - but I have never gotten the hang of that, and I also prefer to have things separately in case of desasters.

So here I was, with a stack of pdf files - unsorted, and with quite a few non-articles crept in between them - and my database. Enter Qiqqa, a database/citation tool geared entirely towards .pdf collections. (If it were a little less geared towards those, and a bit more open and more import-friendly from EndNote's end, I would have considered switching to it completely.) In my process of checking out Qiqqa, I already tried to use it for sorting, organising, and EndNote-ing my pdf files, but it turned out to be a tiny bit less trivial than I had thought.

So I have made a clean slate in Qiqqa and have now tackled (again) the task of sorting my files and inputting them into EndNote. It's still a multi-step process, but much less tedious than before. Preparation step was to make three new folders for sorting: One to hold the batch of pdfs for processing, one to hold the exported files, and one for the "rejects" - files that have obscure bibliographical data that will have to be entered by hand.

Step one: Move a batch of pdf files from the big heap into the processing folder.
Step two: Import that folder into Qiqqa (or set it as watch folder). The programme will now index (and, if necessary, OCR) those files.
Step three: Use the inbuild BibTex-Sniffer to match bibliographical data to the individual files, and delete all the non-articles from the library.
Step four: Make sure to move all the files for hand processing from the processing folder to the "rejects" folder (else they will be lost), then delete them from the library.
Step five: Export bibliographical data to a .bib file.
Step six: Export complete library to the export folder.
Step seven: Convert BibTex-file to an Endnote .xml file using this nifty little programme.
Step eight: Import bibliographical data into Endnote (excluding duplicates). (I only had one minor glitch with importing up to now which seems to have been an incompatible record type number.)
Step nine: Add "pdf file available" or similar thing into a suitable field of each of the new references (this can be done quickly with "change and move fields").
Step ten: Move all the exported files from the "doc" subfolder in the export folder into the regular folder for referenced pdf files.
Step eleven: Delete everything from the export folder and the processing folder.
Step twelve: Delete all the entries of the library.

Then start over... until everything is processed. It takes some time, but on the other hand, it allows me to be sure I get everything referenced and lets me clear out all the other pdfs that crept in without too much woes. And with the possibility to do this in smaller batches, it's also not so overwhelming to add hundreds of BibTex entries at once.

(And if this blogpost has made you want a bibliography programme/database, here is a list of those currently available, including EN and Qiqqa.)

I'm still struggling with data floods - I have solved a few small problems only to find more (of course there are more). Some of them, I guess, are the usual things - details so small that they are not listed in the normal tutorials because, duh, everyone knows that is how you do it. I know I have been guilty of the same thought in some instances, but alas, I also know the other side much, much too well.

And somehow, I can understand why there is so few statistics in archaeology or historical sciences in general, even where something like a statistical analysis would be good. The learning curve, oh, it is steep. (Or I am a little stupid - but since others agree with me, I'll go with the former assumption.)

As of now, the analysis and visualisation I've been able to do has not yielded any new and really evident things (apart from the usual - that spinners are individuals and quite, quite unpredictable).

Ah, what I would give for a few minions. One to do the boring scanning work that is now left to do. One to work out which programme best to use for the visualisation and give me an intro to it. One to finish entering books into my book database. One to make me coffee.

Okay - I can live without the last one. But the others! That would be so good!

I am wrestling with Excel, and it is winning. I have not yet made it to the breakthrough in R (I think I need someone to teach me R for dummies, as I am somehow shattering on the most basic things, like importing an Excel workbook with several sheets and saving that as a dataframe) but I need some quick results. Not much, mind you; not the full analysis... but at least something. Something! And I would know how to get it! But... I have made the mistake of saving the formulas in one workbook, and now I need them in another one. And due to the perverseness of my system, and that of Excel, and that of the worksheets... I get an out-of-memory error every time. No, the workarounds all do not work. Yes, I have tried them all (at least all that I could find). Arrr...


And since two people posed the same question yesterday: From what I remember of Swedish coffee (real Swedish coffee drunk in Sweden, from a cafe or a selling point for caffeinated hot drinks) they are large, they are strong (but not overly so) and they are delicious to my taste - with neither too much acidity nor too much bitterness. Not like the thing we termed "Swedish coffee" at the Forum - though of course there are different strength and quality coffee experiences to be found in any country.
German plain coffee roasts often have a tendency to be quite acidic, and the sourness is something I neither like nor can stomach well, so I am fond of the "milder" kinds of beans here, and I generally prefer the fancy coffees with lots of milk (latte macchiato, anyone?). And the coffee I tasted in the Czech Republic was not really acidic, but always quite, quite strong, plus the beans and/or roast and extraction must have been different, since it was very bitter (at least to my taste).
Your coffee-when-traveling observations are very welcome in the comments - I'd be interested to hear what experiences you have had!

Here it is again, my neverending spinning experiment. After my successfull using of ImageJ for the processing of visual survey cards from the experiment, I now have this huge stack of data that is still mostly un-mined. And I am convinced that there is more to be had from it, much more.

So I'm having another look at the data, and consequently at several programmes that might help me in tickling more insight out of the stack of numbers that I have. During my browsing of the net, however, I found this introduction into statistics and data mining - which is a very nice, easy to understand intro explaining all the things that data mining GUIs offer.

It's on my reading list now - while I go hunting some more for the perfect programme for my needs. There are still a few on the list that look promising...