Here's your giant time-waster for the month

You will recall that a couple of weeks ago I tweeted about the GIF IT UP contest, and that Europeana was generous enough to tweet back with the animated gif of G.F. Lichtenberg himself.  It's October now, and the contest is open.

Here are the details: GIF IT UP.

If you are like me and have no clue as to how make a gif, here are lessons!

And do you need free stock video clips?  Try Videvo.  You never know when you're going to need chickens on a green screen.

I myself will not be indulging, alas.  I have a ballet to write and a burn to manage, plus Peter & the Starcatcher looming in January, plus another project for December that's beginning to materialize.  I'm beginning to feel some pressure.

So much pressure, in fact, that I've started using a neatly bizarre variant of kanban to keep me from running shrieking through the streets or curling up with one too many Smoky Topazes.  I will explain this one weird trick; you may find it useful.

First, I have the major projects on cards sitting on this nifty note card bleacher that I got years ago from Levenger.  Immediate projects on the front row, upcoming on the second row, and so on to the back, where those projects may never get past "random idea" stage.

It's a cool device, but for my purposes it has its flaws.  For example, it sits far over to the right, in my peripheral vision, and since one of the basic ideas of kanban is to "visualize your workflow," that isn't useful.  Also, I can create a card for RED DRESS, for example, but all the tasks and side tasks get written down on the card and then I really have to look hard to see what I should be working on next.

So a couple of days ago I had a scathingly brilliant idea: instead of writing tasks down on the card, write them down on little sticky notes, which I can then move to my monitor.

My TO DO "column" is on the left side of the monitor.  I can scan the sticky notes on the cards, decide what needs to move into the chute and put those sticky notes up.  Then my DOING notes across the bottom—only three to five at a time, of course.

(My DONE column is the trash can.)

This way when I have those flashes of "man, I have to get X done," I can scribble them into my Waste Book on the spot, then transfer those ideas to sticky notes to go on their project cards.  From there, it's a matter of triage.

So far it's working—I'm not panicking. As much.