On diligence

Today's class discussion, particularly the points on recording & entering study data in a timely manner, was very interesting/relevant to me. While I haven't done a lot of research, I do keep track of a lot of "data" (some of it numeric, some of it just info that I need) in my daily life. A lot of this stuff is scribbled down onto scrap paper, into a notepad file, or onto my computer's desktop (more on that in a second), and unfortunately, much of it is forgotten. Of course, I know that I should transfer into whatever its final form will be (be it in a spreadsheet, Quicken, my Amazon list, an email, assignment, blog post, my cell phone) as soon as possible, but rarely do so. It was good to hear this reiterated.

So, I decided to clear up some of the information that's clogging up my computer right now. I have a folder on my desktop devoted to 2.5 yrs worth of notepad files, ranging all the way from from "$ spent updat" (which not only has records of money spent, but some weightlifting workouts and part of a to-do list??) to "YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST BY 11-05" (in reference to some magazine subscriptions I had to cancel to avoid getting charged). However, there are 318 files. So... I decided on an easier task to tackle first.

I have a program that lets me put virtual post-it notes on my desktop. These notes tend to accumulate and the problem is exacerbated because whenever I have too much into cluttering up the space, I just stack all the notes on top of each other and forget about the bottom ones. So I decided to clean this up and sort all the important data. After separating all of them, here's the diversity of information I found:

• Distances to a bunch of landmarks on the levy bike path that I measured with Google Earth.
• Training paces for various kinds of running (easy, tempo, long, speedwork, etc) calculated based on my mile time.
• Data for some stuff I sold on ebay (listing fees, final value fee, paypal fee, shipping, price charged, profit).
• No less than 48 (!) songs to download. This list has been in progress for a long time.
• Information about a job on craigslist.
• A list of features I was looking for in a heart rate monitor (despite having already bought one that satisfied these requirements nearly two months ago).
• A to-do list (only one! a good step for me!)
• Some motivational training quotes.
• Six identifying phrases/sentences from different song lyrics so that I could google them to find out what the songs are, for eventual download.
• A library call number. To what? Don't know.
• Two phone numbers. Whose? Don't know.
• Some order numbers. For what? Don't know.
  
• Random workout information from ages ago, identified in time only by the day of the week since I suppose I expected to have it all entered in my spreadsheet well before I forgot what week it referred to.
• A few websites I heard/read about in some context and planned to visit. Almost a year ago.
• The titles of a few studies I wanted to look up.
• A list of all the categories of information I planned to include in my excel workout log.
• The numbers "12" and "6166537". Ok...

Kind of ridiculous. But after a bit of work I have it pared down to four notes: a to-do list, stuff related to exercise, stuff related to music, and a quote that I like to see.

If you stay on top of things - entering data as soon as you get it - you're more likely to maintain that, whereas if you make a habit of jotting down quick notes in different places without timely follow-up, that's something you're going to stick to as well. The conclusion I've come to is, if the information is important to you, and you're taking the time to monitor it - whether it be for research or just personal stuff - then it should be worth the extra 2 seconds (or even, god forbid, 2 minutes!) to make sure that it's in a format that will be useful to you. Now hopefully I'll be able to abide by this philosophy!