Phew! Just got back into work today after a major (for Oklahoma) ice storm shut down the state for the last 4 days. Classes don't resume until tomorrow at the earliest (and I've a sneaking suspicion that they may just wait until Monday), so I'm spending the day finishing up a few task I left off on friday afternoon when they closed campus, and taking care of a few housekeeping chores as well. However, my time off and return today taught me some good things about GTD, as well as my strengths and weaknesses in implementing it...
1. We were prepared for the storm. When I saw the forecast on thursday morning, I had a good idea in my head of what we had and what we needed, and my @errands list helped too in putting together our list of provisions. A quick run to the store over lunch on thursday (a good 6 hours before the mobs hit, according to my friends in retail) got us the few odds and ends we needed to weather the storm in comfort.
2. I had things to do (mostly). My to-reads and personal projects were all noted in my system, and I spent the weekend catching up on blogs, doing some weeding in my bloglines, and working on some personal projects as well as a little housecleaning. That said, by Tuesday morning I'd pretty much run out of stuff to do, and I was not unhappy to get to go in today, even though it was for a shortened day.
3. Coming back to work was a snap. Seriously, the hardest thing about this morning was crawling out of bed and into the 15-degree weather. While my desk was a bit messier than I would have liked when I got here (when we got the call to go home, I pretty much dropped the project I was working on and ran for the car before the roads could ice up), it was literally a matter of 5 minutes to get the clutter corralled into the inbox and start processing. If anything, the unexpected sabbatical and utter lack of students has made me more productive than usual today--I've accomplished more in the not-quite-2 hours I've been here than i do some whole mornings!
Moral of the story--Organization is handy, not only in managing the day-to-day grind, but also to make sure you're prepared when the odd stuff comes. We're on our second major winter storm of the season, here in a state where it's wierd if we even get one snowfall that sticks to the ground per year. I'll be back either tomorrow or tuesday with that promised post on Library 2.0 and the digital divide--until then, stay warm! :-)
