I’m very finicky when it comes to organizing. None of the popular
organizing forms quite fit the weekly schedule + TODO list that I
want to use. Custom letter-size forms are easy to make. I’m not sure
how well I can translate to a smaller size; maybe if I do one week
per page and then have the TODO list on the next page…
Last week was find-a-group week. I tried Toast IT, Zero Gravity
Circus and JCSA. Toast IT was the best in terms of social
interaction, self-improvement and networking. That’s something
that’s earned a fixed place on my calendar. I can join the other two
groups maybe once a month.
I’m pretty good at impromptu speeches and networking, but not really
social small talk. I work best when the context is well-established
and I feel I have something to offer people. That’s why Toast I.T.
works very well for me, but social chats like JCSA language
exchanges don’t really do the trick.
Keeping track of my expenses is a breeze with Gnucash, a free and
open source program that makes record-keeping fun and easy. I just
sent my mom a summary of my credit card transactions and a detailed
transaction report for everything involving a credit card. Whee!
Working out my finances is scarily fun. I’ve just finished drawing
up yearly and monthly spending plans based on a general guide for
international students and my expenses for the past two weeks. I
used OpenOffice.org Calc to recalculate remaining monthly
budget automatically as I put in my initial estimates and then
adjusted them based on my spending goal. I’ve decided to allocate
more money to groceries and books than I had previously spent, and
I’ve built in a small splurge allowance for little things I want.
I’ll test that spending plan this month and post additional
reflections in September.
The calendar I’m using right now really works for me. I should look
into making an electronic version of it so that people reading my
website can get a better feel of how I like to plan my day. I also
need to work on a good contact management system to keep track of
all the people I meet (and it turns out that I meet quite a number
of new people each week)…