Sometimes we never get to see the impression people have of us, but when I do I always find it interesting. I consider it a top honor to be in my niece’ thoughts. It is a bonus that it is during her playtime and an even bigger bonus that her thoughts of me are humorous. I just love making her smile…!

Saved!

Doing Things

With so many things vying for my attention, there were times when my system would go into overload and I would just sit there like a giraffe at a ping pong tournament, craning my neck at this task and that, without getting anything done. I decided that I needed some advice. Based on a recommendation I saw on the web (I don’t remember where), I decided to read Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. The book gave me some ideas on how to organize things to reduce stress and clutter. The biggest treasure I found in the book was instructions for setting up a revolving file that requires little maintenance to automatically put important items on my daily agenda. I set up two of these files: one at work, one at home.

Leashing the Mail Mann

Taking a tip from the book, the next big distraction I needed to remove was email. In previous jobs, email had been a central communication hub. I had made a habit of stopping everything when email arrived. In my new career, I value large blocks of uninterrupted time. My obsession with email worked against this. To add to the stress, my email organization system was failing. I kept anything and everything. In theory, this is great, but the reality resembles that spare room in your house with all of the boxes. Yes, everything is in there, but getting the door open and then finding something is an all day task.
I looked around for some great ways to tame my inbox. I found Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero. This site contains a series of blog entries designed to teach you how to manage email in a productive way. After implementing most of the techniques, I now maintain a well organized filing system. My email folders contain only what I need, and my Inbox never contains more than a few unread messages.

What Is Stress?

After removing these two large stress producers, life became much simpler. I no longer have to remember as much as before (I hate remembering short-term things!) because the techniques I use to organize things are tried and true. What about you? What are some ways you cope with life’s chaos?

You can find it in the menus, or by visiting here.

Is this some shortcoming of public education?

The staff at Killentime almost unanimously participated in public education. We all know where the United States is on a map. In addition, the staff is acquainted with several public school teachers–all of whom know where the United States is on a map. These facts have led us to the conclusion that the shortcoming does not lie with public education; however, testing is still being done on the publicly educated to see if the shortcoming might lie there.

Are mapmakers suffering from spacial amnesia?

We don’t know any map makers–so we had to use references from popular culture. It is a well-known fact that there has never been a map maker in any soap opera. We can logically conclude from this that map makers do not suffer from amnesia. This question seems moot.

Did aliens steal the United States?

No. We checked and it is still here.

Have the men in black finally erased everyone’s memory?

Get real, folks. Agents J & K and their “flashy-thingy” were part of a fictional movie. Just because a film seems real doesn’t mean it is.

Is the federal government employing some new anti-terrorist stealth technology?

Probably not. The United States is run by politicians, eliminating cool things like this from ever being considered.

Has the United States ticked off National Geographic?

We don’t think so, and this is why: It is called “National Geographic”. If they were upset, their initial reaction would probably be to change their name to something more memorable–like “? Geographic”. Think how cool their logo would be with the ‘G’ and the ‘?’ intertwined!

Late Breaking News

As this story was going to press, we were alerted to the fact that another research team was investigating this issue and has already presented their findings at the Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant. Here is the video from the presentation:

After further analysis, we believe that the explanation presented in the video is the most plausible. We are a bit embarrassed that we didn’t reach these conclusions first. We know both of our readers are counting on us and we pledge to try and improve our response time when researching such pertinent questions in today’s world.