What the Heck was I Thinking!?

Merlin Mann, host of the 43 Folders blog on productivity and technology, posted recently on an interesting sounding book. “It’s All Too Much,” by Peter Walsh.

Merlin used several fascinating phrases in his post that caught my eye:

• “…an overdue existential bitchslap for me.”
• “I was also what Cory Doctorow calls ‘a craphound.’ “
• “But it wasn’t just ephemerabilia…”

(emphasis added)

 

My War on Clutter | 43 Folders

This bit from Chapter 3 of Walsh’s book is typical of the sections I’d credit with highlighting my awareness of the need for a change: The things you own are a distraction to getting started on the right path. The key to getting - and staying - organized is to look beyond the stuff and imagine the life you could be living. Put most simply: It’s about how you see your life before all else. Good stuff.

The problem is about more than just cubic inches of physical space - it becomes about cubic yards of mindshare when the state of your surroundings starts to define the promise of your future. The mindless junk of your past crowds out opportunities and sets pointless limitations. Pretty soon those “collectibles” start to seem a lot less valuable, and the baseline junk begins to look a lot less harmless. At least that’s been the revelation for me: clutter is not without its very real costs every day. (emphasis added)

This clicked in my mind with the frequent discussion in GTD circles (of Which Merlin Mann and his site are active participants) of the cost of keeping things in your head.

Committing thoughts and actions to paper help to unclutter the mind. Committing things to charity, the dump, a yard sale, or even a friend who needs it more than I, helps to unclutter the house. If I want to remember something that I intend to discard, I can write down where it went, who has it, or how to get another IF I need one ever again.

The thousands of notes with names and phone numbers or addresses (both e- and snail-mail) can all go onto that PDA, or the address book I already own.

I might have to get that book, after I make space on the bookshelves by getting rid of the things I’ve kept but will never read again.

Maybe the library could use my copy…

Source: My War on Clutter | 43 Folders

it would only be decried for negativism and spectacle chasing.

While reading Matt Sanchez’s post at the National Review Online, I was struck by a paragraph that got me to thinking about press coverage:

Matt Sanchez on Iraq & Media on National Review Online

In 2004, the Iraqi prime minister banned Al Jazeerah from the country for “presenting a negative image of Iraq.” The Al Jazeerah spokesman, whose first name is Jihad (no joke), called the ousting ‘unjustifiable’ and ‘contrary to the promises of freedom of speech.’ Presenting a negative image of the United States is hardly grounds for dismissal and it may even earn an ambitious journalist a Pulitzer Prize, but the men and women fighting in this war have consistently protested against biased coverage that ‘never shows all the good things that happen.’

That’s true. And Mr. Sanchez’s post is a very interesting read.

What got me to thinking, though, is that it isn’t just the bias for spectacle and negative stories. It’s the unbalanced examination of the situation that consistently ignores the atrocities of the terrorists, or fails to examine the political agenda of a “source.”

So, if it were just that the reporters want to find negative stories, or look for sensational events, that would be understandable, although not honest reporting.

What we see, though, is an agenda from reporters that only looks for bad things from one side - the US, its allies, and partners in this war.

This is either witting or unwitting suicide on the part of these reporters, or it is the result of coercion. Either the reporters are knowingly or naively weakening the one set of institutions that protects them from the depredations of terrorist and totalitarian regimes, or they are afraid to say anything against a group they know won’t play by the rules.

Report negatively on the terrorists and you will surely lose sources, and may lose your head.

Source: Matt Sanchez on Iraq & Media on National Review Online

NRO pointed to a NY Times article about the new librarians.

One paragraph struck me as the geekiest thing I’ve ever heard: 

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers - New York Times Ms. Murphy was speaking of Jeff Buckley, a reference librarian at a law firm, who had a tattoo of the logo from the Federal Depository Library Program peeking out of his black T-shirt sleeve. (emphasis added)

That is just, plain wierd!