Checking in on GTD: One Month Later

Time to Confess...
Its time to confess exactly where I am in my major GTD overhaul. MANY things have been put in the right place, new file cabinets are set up, new files created, old files re-organized, many files are vaguely color coded (there are so many categories it gets confusing now and again, does this go under "social psychology" or "evolution?", a 4 drawer file system right next to my main "work station" (a great chair in a great office, two lap-tops fired up and always ready), a well-used labeler (yes I followed instructions and bought a good Brother's labeler), and many many decisions later..

OK I confess, not all the files are put away. I found my husband had hidden a large number of already filed items in file-boxes, in a back back room that I can't even get into, and there are still some file-boxes full of filed articles and old papers in the living room in-box. You can rest assured that the minute all is completed, I will be posting another picture, so you get the full "before" and "after" scene. But I'm not ready for that kind of documentation, and its been 31 days since I began the project. Progress not perfection is the slogan I tell myself every day.

Distracted
I got seriously distracted by the preparations required for my upcoming class of 55+ students. As part of my GTD transformation I decided that being seriously over-prepared for my class this year was the way to go. I spent weeks on the syllabus, collecting the articles assigned by me and all the visiting professors who speak to the class, all in a well-labeled (thank you D.A. and Brothers) reader, made duplicate readers, and to top it off I developed a class listserv ("Cognition 2007") to which I sent off everything yesterday (the end of the past trimester), including the syllabus and all the articles. I hope that all this material appearing in the students e-mail in-boxes will inspired them to do the reading, get a head start on the class. And I am also reading each article (most of them are new) in great detail, taking notes, so I can be the over prepared master of the ship. I will be surprised if I hear any complaints about being disorganized or unclear, although one never knows. I am now preparing the first lecture on my own research, and I think I'll then show Kindness of Strangers, a documentary made about people who came to Sri Lanka to help in the relief efforts, and in which I am one of the "talking heads." Since survivor guilt (broadly defined) is my primary area of empirical research, the documentary written and directed by a brilliant Australian filmmaker Rhian Skirving is bottom line, about altruism and international survivor guilt, and the course is "Cognition, Emotion and Personality" (survivor guilt is an emotion involving specific cognitions), it seems appropriate to present the film along with the research lecture. I hope it is well received and the students find the first class both informative and entertaining.

This then, has interfered a bit with single minded focus on my GTD implementation project. The reading alone is time consuming, but it will allow me to orient the students to each article with a degree of expertise I usually don't have but I should have always had. Its GTD in action I figure, so if the implementation (aka filing) is not going as fast as I had hoped, it is what it is.

Reading scientific articles is both fascinating and hard

I can understand my students' difficulties in tackling the literature of psychological science, however I find it do-able and exciting, particularly as I cover the "methods" sections of the articles. I am reminded of how important it is for me, as an active scientist, to read and read more, in order to get novel ideas and methods of investigating a topic, or even re-investigating old data sets I have collected. I find myself going slowly as I take notes on methods, that is exactly how a study was conducted, down to the smallest details. Scientific articles are remarkable in that they are like recipes from a good cook book (when they're good research reports). I can read, take notes, and have a template for replicating the study, or for making small changes in the plan, to accommodate what I'm aiming to study. This morning I read a report of how a group "coded" some data, and discovered the first author did some of the coding herself, and that was acceptable as long as she was blind to where exactly in the data collection the sample of behavior came from, and she didn't know what the particular samples she was coding correlated with, in another part of the study. I hope this doesn't sound technical because its a simple research protocol, and probably is replicated in many parts of life.

Survivor guilt: Life in the Office

Our current research: Life in the office when lay offs are happening
In a recent experimental Internet-based (online) study which is now moving into the final stage of data analysis, we had a story, which varied in one way, providing four different conditions. The story is about a woman, Sara, who works in a high tech firm. She is a manager in one department. The second character, Andrea, is also a manager in the same company but in a different department. Sara and Andrea both work extremely hard, have been with the company for over ten years, rarely missing work, and both are exemplary workers. In one condition Andrea is Sara's sister. In the second condition Susan is Sara's best friend. In the third condition she is Sara's acquaintance at work, who Sara is unlikely to ever see outside of the company, and in the forth condition Andrea is a rival who has traditionally behaved unethically towards Sara. Then, the technology crash happens, and lay offs are pending in all the tech firms. In the midst of this, Sara finds out she is being promoted to a higher level of management. Meanwhile Andrea is informed that she is being laid off. Sara hears from her boss of the lay offs and finds out that Susan is among those being dismissed.

Participants are ordinary people from the Internet, on CraigsList
The participants of the study (they were invited to participate on CraigsList, an online community advertisement service that is located in many US cities) are asked to pick a condition according to the month in which they were born, with the months for each spanning the year --so for example, condition one is for birthdays in January, May, September, etc. This provides a random assignment of the conditions. Participants, after having read the story for their condition, are asked "When Sara learns of Andrea's dismissal from the firm, what do you think Sara would feel, what do your think she would think, and what do you think she would do?" Participants are asked to write a narrative with as much detail as possible, answering these questions.

Is survivor guilt experienced beyond the family? What about acts of altruism?
We are trying to find out if everyone, across conditions, feels guilty about Andrea's dismissal, (survivor guilt broadly defined, since obviously Sara is surpassing Andrea), even in the rival condition. We question as to whether Sara would feel more guilt if Andrea were a sister (kin in other words), than if she were a friend, an acquaintance, or a rival. We are in part testing out the common evolutionary theory that altruism is more often extended to blood kin, than to others, with the hypothesis that in our culture, friends and perhaps even acquaintances, are the recipients of acts of altruism. We are trying to test out the evolutionary theory that altruism is a form of selfishness, when it is primarily extended to kin, as helping kin may often serve to help one's own genes.

From GTD in the classroom to problem solutions in research methods
In reading an article this morning I realized that I can be a rater of the narratives written, as long as I am blind to which group the narrative comes from (sister, best friend, acquaintance or rival). The narratives are randomized for the raters, so that there is no way to tell automatically to which group a narrative belongs. Realizing that I could be one of the raters simplified my life, I don't need to locate as many other raters familiar with the construct of survivor guilt. The raters will be asked to rate how guilty Sara feels, how much personal responsibility she seems to take for Andrea's dismissal. Surprising though it may seem, and illogical as it is, on glancing through responses I saw that many people felt that Sara would somehow feel responsible for Andrea's fate, even though she had nothing to do with it and she is not even in the same department in the firm.

Thank you, thank you universe for having me read the research articles assigned to my class so closely.

Are details from my work generalizable to other fields and work areas?
I don't know how generalizable this description of my current project is, or how it might apply to work people in other fields are doing.

GTD in the lab: A project needs immediate attention
The project has to be completed immediately, --I'm presenting this at a conference at the end of April, I have to get a move on. I have preliminary data already analyzed and that was included in the proposal to the conference, but I need to have this detailed analysis done and done right away. All by way of excusing myself for putting the hardcore GTD implementation --putting all the files away-- on the back burner.

In the background: GTD crawling into the closets
Coming attractions include the fact that I have been throwing catalogues from the Container Company all over the house, and asked my husband to measure all of our closets. He says "Well we can make do with a renovation of your part of the closet." We share a closet, a large walk-in absolute heap of "stuff" with clothes falling off open drawers, huge piles on top of unused dressers, jumbles of wrinkled clothes on the floor, piles of disorganized towels over on one side, yet more file-boxes way in the back. I look at him, my eyes narrowing, "That is not what I had in mind." He argues back: "Well I'm fine with what I have." I look at his seemingly "agreeable" countenance indicating he has no idea of what I've been talking about when requesting measurements. I counter, "Apparently you don't get it, I am not walking into a well organized closet on one side, and a completely disorganized mess on the other side, that would not encourage my new GTD lifestyle." He makes his point again, trying to exhibit neutrality, "Well I was just suggesting options." Half a closet is not a GTD option. I look fierce I hope, "Every closet in this house is being redone." OK, I made my point. He muttered about arranging for space in a public storage company for the even larger number of file boxes and old files in the basement. Finally, he's getting the picture. GTD implementation may go on for another six months, and I hope I make it by then.