Project Steev

Rural Retreat

For the past couple days I've been just outside of Shellsburg, Iowa, at the house of my father and stepmother. It's a comfortable place, and I'm looking foward to relaxing and also getting lots of things accomplished, most importantly getting my Juarez documentary finished, or mostly finished.

Above is a photo from the large backyard, looking past my father's robotic telescope observatory (not quite finished) up the hill to the house. When the observatory is done, he'll be able to remotely control a telescope and take photos of the sky, via wireless internet. He started putting it together last summer, but didn't quite get it working before the weather got bad.

Is it any wonder why I'm so geeky?

Anyway, so I've been trying to get "organizized," to quote deNiro in Taxi Driver. I've started trying this new method invented by David Allen, called simply "Getting Things Done." A friend gave me some audio files of Allen doing a presentation about the whole method. It's pretty exciting because he seems to really have a handle on how our minds work and how to be more productive and less stressed-out.

One interesting tidbit he mentions is that people who are intelligent, creative, and sensitive tend to procrastinate more than others. Which makes total sense - people who can clearly visualise how difficult something will be or the possible failures involved will be scared off and delay doing that thing, whereas dumb oafs who can't imagine anything but simplicity will just blunder on ahead. I definitely know several people in both categories...