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03/26/2003: disorganization
So, as part of my feeble spring cleaning efforts I set out to clean up my desk at least so far that there will be once again enough space for two sheets of paper and maybe a book (my desk is about 2m x 0.8m so in itself it's not all that small), and I have to go through those piles with notes and junk and whatever, and all that would be much easier if I wouldn't simply write down stuff chronologically on the nearest available scrap of paper. As it is I'm finding pages that have rough first outlines for term papers, mixed in with thoughts on their presentation and notes, which so far wouldn't be that bad, if in-between weren't also vocabulary translations (which don't look like they belong to any of the sources for the outline), something that looks like a scrawled, partial shopping list, and on the backside of that same sheet of paper are some time notes which belong, I think, to planning a radio broadcast, or maybe they're notes on cutting raw source material, no idea, a note reminding myself of a book recommendation, and some scribbled bash shell syntax. I also have the bad habit to write stuff partially overlapping. And most pieces of paper are like that, with varying themes, i. e. some contain a mixture of physics formula, with jotted down dream fragments, and doodles, others appointments, Spanish vocabulary I meant to look up, price comparisons for something, and comic issues (I have actually no idea why I wrote down some of those comic titles), others yet again blog or mail drafts overlapping with partial plenum notes and unrelated phone numbers.
And it's not like I don't have different note books and plenty of paper for different things, and it's not like I don't know it will eventually annoy me (because inevitably I can't really sort the notes and it is much harder to throw them away too, because I usually still want to keep one third of what's written or drawn on them), but somehow a lot of the time I still end up writing down things on the next piece of partially free paper that lies on top somewhere within my reach.
