So Leif let out my dirty secret, that I regularly carry three moleskines with me, so I thought I’d better come clean about my burgeoning habit. As all GTDers know, coming up with a system that works for you is an evolving process. I have been through a digital phase (wasn’t free-range enough for me) and several incarnations of an analogue phase. My current system has been stable for a month or so and, you know, it just feels like it works.

Since they say it’s bad to apologise for not posting, I’m going to try not to do that, but instead ‘fess up to a massive gtd-reversal, wagon falling-off incident, and general deadlines-looming stress. In the next few days, a project that I have been working on for over a year finishes, and a tender has to go in for another piece of work that will start in March if we get it.

About three weeks ago I decided to give my Sharp Zaurus a well-earned rest and try going back to a paper-based approach to project planning and time management. Well, I say “going back” but in all honesty I’ve never tried the paper-based approach, it’s simply that I have never managed to find exactly what I want in a PDA to-do list/calendar, and there is always that low-level worry of data loss and breakage.

This morning I took delivery (thanks to the nice people at Amazon UK) of Time Management for System Administrators from O’Reilly. I’m really looking forward to reading it, because I could do with something to help me deal with the many different calls upon my time at work. The trouble with being a sysadmin (in everything but name) AND working on GIS projects is that I find it difficult to focus on any one task when I am constantly being interrupted for assistance with Microsoft Word, printers, changing backup tapes, getting together deployment kits of computers and associated gear for remote sites, etc, etc.