Saturday, December 11, 2004
(10:31 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
My Efficient Workflow
Following Kieran Healy's lead, I've decided to write a brief précis of my workflow.Music
For music, I use a combination of a six-year-old Bose Wave Radio, which I hope will last for the rest of my adult life, and Winamp. Since the DVD-ROM on my rapidly deteriorating laptop no longer works, I can only listen to CDs on the Bose, which is in the living room, while my "workspace" is my bedroom. I feel rude playing CDs, particularly classical CDs, at sufficient volume to hear them across the house when my roommates are home, which means that I only rarely am able to listen to classical music while studying or writing. (I would move the Bose into my room, but it's the "family" stereo.) Although the credit card-sized remote is always an object of fascination for new visitors to the chez Kotsko, it does not work from my room to the living room.
For music-stealing software, I use the AOL Instant Messenger client, with the free "Robb Schuneman" plug-in. Keep Robb in your thoughts today, because he's sick -- he thought he coughed up part of his lung, but it turned out to be merely part of his nose. I'm sure that a full-length treatment of this incident is forthcoming, once he's restored to full power.
Blogging
I use Blogger, combined with Mozilla Firefox. I've thought about upgrading The Weblog to something cooler like WordPress, but I promised myself this semester -- no messing with the damn computer! I don't use Firefox's tab feature -- I just open up as many windows as I feel like I'll need and let the taskbar be my tabs.
Research
Several of my ongoing projects require constant research, primarily my Zizek links page. In order to track down new articles, I sit back and wait either for Amish Lovelock to link to them in comments or for Matt of Pas au delà or Mark Kaplan to link to them on their blogs. Then I edit my file using emacs and upload it using Microsoft's FTP client. Similarly, my way of keeping up on the latest conferences and general academic gossip is to wait for à Gauche to tell me about things.
For scholarly research, my method has been to sit down with a journal or book, and type quotes or relevant thoughts into Microsoft Word, under a heading that contains the book's bibliographic information pre-formatted into MLA. (I know Kieran would argue that this is an error-prone process that should be automated, and I agree in principle, but I am skeptical about the idea that a computer could do better MLA format than me at this point.) I know that this is a stupid way to go about it, but I came up with it while I was at Oxford and could not justify to myself the idea of developing some kind of database system to handle my research on Spenser. Now, of course, I need to dig out those quotes on Spenser constantly, so I'm kicking myself.
Writing
For writing, I use Microsoft Word. I have completely changed every aspect of the program, and I make very disciplined use of styles. Before starting a paper, I always set up its "infrastructure"; in some cases, I have my projected Works Cited page written out before even putting in the title for the paper. It occurs to me that templates could help here, but again -- no messing with the computer!
Conclusions
I started off my academic career as a hardcore computer nerd with a relatively inactive social life, and now, in a tremendous Aufhebung, I am behind the curve technologically and primarily use the computer to maintain social connections. Kieran's post really did make me think that I need to invest some serious time and thought into how to make the computer work better for my needs, and perhaps this summer, before heading off to a PhD program (I mean, at least one is bound to accept me, right?), I can get that under control. For now, though, I'm sure that Kieran would tremble in fear at the sight of me sitting down to write with stacks of books, pausing, each time I think of an apt quote, to dig through and find it -- "No, no, I remember, it was on the bottom half of the right-hand page!"
Feel free to share your workflow management methods in comments. I recommend that you use HaloScan -- I know it doesn't have all the features that we might want (for instance, e-mail notification to individual commenters), but it's there, and it works.
