gloriouscowMar 20

the adhd organizing experience

  • buy plastic stacking organizers for your electronics stuff
  • realize you want to label said organizers
  • hand-write a few labels, realize it has been a long, long time since you took that drafting class in high school
  • try to find that label maker you bought back during the 2008 housing crisis
  • find it and realize it has a USB-B cable
  • steal the one from your printer
  • try to find the label maker software
  • won't install
  • dig back through the sedimentary layers of the backups of every computer you have ever owned on your NAS
  • find the original installer from 2008
Show thread🔏 Matthias WiesmannMar 20
@gloriouscow in my case I got the label printer as an extra with a printer, and when I tried using it, I could not because I mistakenly switched it to mass storage mode. The part about aliexpress labels is spot on.
Show threadgloriouscowMar 20

@thias

My ultimate solution was to just print "labels" on my laser printer, cut them out and secure them with packing tape. This actually is probably what i should have done from the start since i can make them much bigger and more readable than the label maker could.

I know they make adhesive label sheets for printers, but I have had the pleasure of tweezering bits of mangled label out of the roller guts of a laser printer before, so that's sort of a "never again" thing for me.

Show threadgloriouscowMar 20

@thias

Slowly getting there. Im going to need some larger bins to label 'abandoned projects'

Show threadLykso

@gloriouscow @thias I personally just number my bins, give IDs to my things, and keep a TSV file of IDs, bins, and descriptions for grepping through (via a web interface now, because finding stuff via my phone is important).

I also write important contents on the bins so I don't have to refer to the spreadsheet for things I access often.

Has worked well enough the past few years. Things get messy sometimes, but cleaning up is dead simple.

Mar 20 at 6:56pmWeb
Show threadgloriouscowMar 20

@lykso @thias

you are far more organized than me.

Show threadLyksoMar 20
@gloriouscow @thias It took a long time to get the system in place, but it has the advantage of not needing to be done all in one go.
Show thread🔏 Matthias WiesmannMar 20
@lykso @gloriouscow I use text labels, ideally with some icon / symbol. I really want to minimise the computer interruptions when I'm building stuff. I managed to get the label printer to work.
Show threadLyksoMar 20
@thias @gloriouscow My trouble with category bins was finding categories that made sense to me. At one point I tried keeping "project boxes," but I have a lot of projects with overlapping tools and components that didn't fit cleanly into one or two boxes. Having a virtually mindless system seems to be what has worked for me.
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMar 20
@lykso @gloriouscow @thias sounds a bit like HomeBox
Show threadLyksoMar 20
@c0dec0dec0de @gloriouscow @thias Yup, looks pretty similar! If I didn't already have a system that works the way I want it to, I'd probably be tempted to use that.
Show threadLyksoMar 20
@c0dec0dec0de @gloriouscow @thias Here are screenshots from the Guile Scheme script I'm running.
Show threadgloriouscowMar 20

@c0dec0dec0de @lykso @thias

this looks cool. i would probably update it diligently for about two weeks and then never touch it again

Show threadLyksoMar 20

@gloriouscow @c0dec0dec0de @thias Yeah, this has also been my problem with fancy systems. If there's too much, or it's not exactly fit to how I think about things, I end up not using it. It has to be a project in itself, and it has to exactly conform to my preferences and way of thinking, or it's gonna get abandoned.

HomeBox looks great for someone, but to me it just looks like more administrative headaches and a bunch of code that I won't be able to easily fix when it inevitably breaks. 1/

Show threadLyksoMar 20
@gloriouscow @c0dec0dec0de @thias It's also likely that *writing* the code in the first place provides a framework for me to interrogate what I'm looking for and how things hang together, and creates enough investment in the first place for me to develop an attachment to it. If it were easy and convenient and someone else's project, I wouldn't care about it so much, maybe. 2/2
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMar 20
@lykso @gloriouscow @thias task must be exactly this difficult, and this mental shape or the brain won’t do it
Show threadgloriouscowMar 20

@c0dec0dec0de @lykso @thias

I will be so amazingly organized once I spontaneously change all my habits and personality flaws overnight

Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMar 20
@gloriouscow @lykso @thias same, until that marvelous day… where the fuck is my pen? I bought two boxes of the very specific pen that I like, why isn’t there one on my desk?
Show thread🔏 Matthias WiesmannMar 21
@c0dec0dec0de @gloriouscow @lykso I have kids, so pens *not* disappearing is strange.
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMar 21
@thias @gloriouscow @lykso oh, family members absolutely play a role here, but even if they didn’t I would still have this problem…