Not a lot of exciting stuff in the last few days. I've been busy writing the introductory chapter of my thesis. It's really more of a background information chapter than anything else. because the work was informed by a biological model for neurons, I need a bit about that; because it's about statistical weight dynamics in neural networks and it's in the CS department, I need a bit of
background on artificial neural nets and the applications of statistical
weight dynamics to them; since it deals with Markov models, I need some
background on that. Finally, because the biological model for
which I'm looking at the statistics is
based on other people's work, I need to describe that. With any luck, I'll
be able to finish these sections by early next week. Since i already have
most of the informational portion of the research I've performed finished,
tacking them together should be done by the end of the following week. I'll
keep y'all posted.
I promised a messy vs. clean steel cage match. Unfortunately, since I'm a bit short on time, I'll just have to give a quick summary:
A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman is a messy book. I found the book far too anecdotal, with too little emphasis on a central thesis. However, the main points are (a) that the world is inherently messy, (b) that there is a large amount of anecdotal and scientific evidence that humans are actually adapted to a messy world and that trying to make things too orderly decreases efficiency and creativity; (c) that our society has a bias towards order that makes people who are disorganized feel as if they have a character flaw; (d) that this feeling is wrong; and (e) most of us live our lives via a mixed strategy, where we mainly live our lives in a messy manner, organizing only critical projects, and that's OK. This is a case that, as a messy person with a messy life, I think needs to be made. I just wish it were made in a more forceful (and unmessy) manner.
Getting Things Done by David Allen is not a messy book and one loved by people who want to get their life on track. Allen's thesis is that stress is caused by keeping too many things within one's head and that these "open loops" of activities can be closed by putting them down on paper, organizing projects and their materials so that one always knows what the next thing to do is, and that by keeping things organized in this way, you can lead a happier, more productive life. His latest book, Ready For Anything, seems to be a rehash of much of the information in the first, but in a list form. My recommendation - just read the first one and, if you feel you really need to read the second one, borrow it from an Allen-head (most businesses have a few running around).
My first bone to pick with Allen is that he discounts sources of stress other than disorganized projects. Yes, lowering the amount of disorganization in one's projects will bring a modicum of happiness, but some people may have more important stressors in their lives and dealing with those might make them much more happy. Allen's retort would probably be that dealing with these issues are projects in themselves. However, let's see how that works out in practice: A low-income mother is over-worked and cannot feed her children on her one and a half McJobs. Allen's approach to problem solving would be to tell her to make improving her life a project, with possible next steps in this project being going back to school to get more training, finding a better job, etc. However, the first step in all of these "first steps" is finding time and resources for performing them. Unless one can realistically have a chance to fulfill these projects, Allen's prescription simply rubs a person's face in the fact that they cannot (and the assumption is always by some moral failing) find the resources to fulfill that plan. Moreover, one has wasted time and energy in trying to do so. In fact, quite often, knowing all of the obstacles can overwhelm and cause procrastination or complete backing away from a project.
The next bone to pick is that not all activities in one's life should be projectized and those that are might not want to be optimized. Working on one's sex life as a project would probably take a lot of joy out of it (and from who worked on that basis when my wife and I were trying to conceive our first child, I can tell you that it does), and quite often removes serendipitous discovery that occurs when one is less organized.
In short, Allen's prescription for ordering one's worklife may work fine for simple projects in a simple environment, but one should not attempt to move this style beyond the workplace, like many Allen-heads (and indeed many newly converted Org-heads) do.
In general, what works best for most of us is a mixed strategy. We live our lives until the mess in one portion overwhelms us. We organize and straighten out that part and move on. Most of us have few "high criticality" projects in our lives and are probably happy living out life with the few "open loops" we have rather than turning everything in our lives into projects. It is good that Abrahamson and Freedman are trying to remove the social stigma from doing so and it's a pity that Allen doesn't seem to promote this.
That's about it. Back to work on the thesis...