Over the last couple of days, I’ve been doing what is sure to become an annual event: the purging of the office.

First I did something that’s been languishing in my to-do list for six months: I got all of my client data out of Excel/Word and wherever else it was hiding and into one single database. That was an enormous relief. I’d been looking for a CRM that would let me add an unlimited number of fields so I could enter info about URLs, logins, passwords, software installed on the server, IP addresses, domains, etc. and had never found anything that worked the way I wanted.

A few weeks ago I finally found the one true customizable DB platform for me (Filemaker Pro) and learned how to use it. Yes, I’m a PC user and yes, I do have Access on my desktop - but I don’t like it. I’m not an Office-basher because I love Word and Excel, but Access is not for me. I got Filemaker to do what I wanted in about 1/5 the time I spent screwing around with Access.

So anyway now I have a great-looking little DB form with tabs for all of the pertinent categories and all of my client data is in one compact place. Wonderful!

Second, I went through my file cabinet and discarded anything that could be trashed. I reorganized all the tabs on the folders so I could actually see them without them overlapping each other. I consolidated a few folders and made some new ones.

Third, and I just finished this: I went through all the dogeared design and web and IT magazines stacked in various places and cut out the articles I wanted to save. I made new folders for the file cabinet for all of those articles, probably 40-50 of them. And the magazines are going out the door.

My office is in much better shape now. I feel really good when I open that file cabinet and see all those tabs neatly arranged and also that the big stack of magazines beside the printer is, for the moment, no more. It’s a ‘working-with-your-hands’ feeling and I’m pretty satisfied with the results.

I keep my to do list in Franklin Covey Plan Plus, which I really like. But I’ve noticed that my to do list has never actually gotten any smaller. Whenever I seem to get it cleaned out and down to just a couple of items (things that, typically, I’m waiting on an outside party to complete), five more things spring up. Or ten. Or…

I read an article this week about to do lists that made me think about mine. The point of a to do list, the author wrote, is not to finish, but to prioritize.

This is rather profound, especially if you’re the kind of person that keeps an unordered list of the things you think of while driving around, talking on the phone, having breakfast, reading the paper, etc. That unordered list - is it really valuable, without any focus?

My planning software has a neat function built in, in that you can code items in the to do list. The default is A, B, C and 1, 2, 3. That is, an item coded A1 would be higher in priority than A2. And you can enter as many numbers or letters as you like.

I’ve mentally categorized my system like so:

• A = work stuff that is client-related - tasks to complete or start or work on
• B = business stuff that isn’t client-related, like office matters and insurance appointments
• C = personal stuff (why is this one last? hmm?)

This seems to work well. But lately I’ve noticed that I’ve started throwing things into my list as just A’s, B’s or C’s, without numbers (or, with no priority).

This is a bad idea. I used to diligently number them, but it’s been so crazy busy the last few weeks I haven’t taken the time. One day this week I wound up with 11 A’s with no hint of the order I should try to work on them.

So… today I deemed my business cleanup day. I actually went through and got all my accounting in order (that is a major accomplishment for me) and started moving all my client data over into a new database. Both of those tasks have been on my list for months.

And I took a look at Plan Plus and put numbers on the A’s - all ten of them. Plan Plus is cool because it shows you the items in order, once you number them. Now I see what I need to do next, not just overwhelmingly what I have failed to finish all in a pile of A’s.

Does this mean that I’ll diligently follow through 1, 2, 3 in order? Nope. I just looked at the first item on the list and thought ‘this is Sunday, I’m not doing that for that client on a Sunday…’

Monday (after a very long day at the machine) my right hand and wrist were tingly. That’s the first time that’s happened so naturally I go looking for information on carpal tunnel symptoms. I found many, many sites and a few solutions that I’m going to try - the first one I’m trying today.

I have a really great, very adjustable keyboard tray that will fit my mouse, but my keyboard is wide, with a number pad on the right that I don’t use that often. Subsequently my mouse is way off to the right and that’s not good for wrists.

The idea I’m trying today is - mousing with the left hand. I plan to become an ambidextrous mouser. According to one site, it takes 2 days to 2 weeks to become proficient with a mouse in the off-hand. I switched the buttons so I can click with the inside finger, and yes, it’s going s-l-o-w-l-y today but I’m beginning not to think about the mouse so much after the first few hours. And it’s much more comfortable because the left side of the keyboard has no number pad (less reach to the mouse).

I plan to keep this up for two days at least, and if I have to any precision work may switch to my pen tablet for awhile.

Having to do a clean install of Windows can be a good thing – it gets rid of amazing amounts of accumulated junk on your system. But if you’re not prepared, it can be terrifying - you can lose all of your work and personal files if you’re not careful.

Just recently I installed XP Pro on a new motherboard and to prepare myself, I wrote up a checklist of things to check, save and print before getting started. I hope this helps you as much as it helped me.

• Open up Windows Explorer, navigate to C:/Program Files and take a screenshot of all your currently installed software. This was integral to making sure I reinstalled what I really needed, and also let me know what I could afford to get rid of (approximately 3/5 of what was in that folder). Print a copy or two so you can mark it up, and save it to CD-ROM.
• Take a screenshot of your desktop – this will help you remember what icons you had and where they were placed (if you don’t care, don’t bother. But if you’ve carefully arranged your icons, take a screenshot). Print it and save it to CD-ROM.
• Get a free program like drivercontroller.exe, which will let you save all of the drivers on your machine to CD-ROM in one folder so you don’t have to go hunting them down later.
• Pull out the CD-ROM’s for all the boxed software you want to install (including your Windows XP disk). Note – if you purchased Windows with a computer from a manufacturer and are installing to a non-manufacturer computer, be prepared to go buy a new copy of Windows. Yours probably won’t work.
• Pull out the CD-ROM’s that came with your printer, graphics card, sound card, speakers, monitor, wireless networking card and any other hardware you’ve installed.
• Put registration keys, licenses or serial numbers for downloaded software into a text file and save it to CD-ROM.
• Obviously, save all of your documents – spreadsheets, word processing files, photos, music files, etc. either in a backup set or to an external drive that you can access later. Preferably both.
• Export favorites from your web brower(s) – Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc. – and save them to CD-ROM.
• If you’ve downloaded fonts in addition to what comes standard with Windows, zip them up and save to CD-ROM.
• I recommend you save the following to CD-ROM by folder, and put a little text file in each application’s folder reminding you where to install this information on the newly-formatted hard drive. You may need to visit the software manufacturer to find out how to do this:
  • Export mail and contact information from your mail software (your profile if using Thunderbird).
  • Backup financial files from Quicken/Quickbooks or Money.
  • If you use planning software, make a backup.
  • If you use project management or time tracking software, make a backup.
  • If you use FTP software, save the profile if you can.
  • For any specialty software you use (in my case it’s HTML, server and Adobe Creative Suite), save your settings if possible. You will probably need to check out the manufacturer’s site to find out how to do that, but it’s worth the time if you spent time getting your software configured just right.
  • Any other databases, like a client management system – make a backup.
• If you’ve made a number of Exceptions in your firewall software, save them by taking screenshots. Print and save to CD-ROM.
• If you have a complicated home network, consider taking screenshots of the settings screens. Print and save to CD-ROM.
• Anything you’re not sure of, if you can back it up or take a screenshot of it, better safe than sorry.

Here’s an excellent guide from Paul Thurrott about clean installs of Windows XP.

Note especially the need to defragment your hard drive after getting XP up and running. It’s good advice; I checked my new hard drive before starting to reinstall software and it was 27% fragmented just from all the XP updates….

Good luck! Reinstalling your operating system is a pain in the neck because of all you have to remember, but hopefully this checklist will save you some time and worry.

We’ll start with Create Magazine since their web site just crashed my browser for the umpteenth time and made me lose this post that I’m now irritably rewriting.

• Create Magazine. This regionally-focused magazine is okay, but nothing that jumps out as being very special. They have a web site that doesn’t work - I wouldn’t look too deeply if I were you, particularly on their Awards section. I’m not providing a link because I don’t want to tempt you.
• Website Magazine. I’m not sure how I got on the mailing list for this one, but this free trade publication is certainly worth looking into. This is really the only print magazine I know of that focuses on the business of being a web professional with all of its broader roles.
• Photoshop User. This is a good if you want to get better at Photoshop. Join NAPP for $99 for a year and get the magazine for free.
• Business 2.0. This one’s from CNNMoney - I like this magazine and have subscribed for a few years. Basically tech news.
• Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business and Inc. Similar to BusinessWeek Small Biz, these are all pretty good but I like Entrepreneur and Inc better than the other two. I like their clean layouts and these two tend to have more articles about online businesses and the digital realm than the others, at least lately.

There are a few titles that I’ll only pick up occasionally - Communication Arts‘ Design Annual is full of eye candy and worth its high price.

So today I’m going through the ridiculously tall stack of recent magazines that I’ve read and kept because they have an interesting article or two I wanted to save.

What magazines do I read, you ask? Can some of them be useful to me too, you say?

Perhaps. Here’s what’s in my stack:

• PC Magazine. I’ve subscribed to this off and on since I was in high school. Most of these are keepers, at least for a few months.
• GDUSA (Graphic Design USA). This one I’ve gotten for about a year, but I’m probably not going to resubscribe. It focuses heavily on print, is overflowing with ads and always has this huge section about all the major stock photo companies - I don’t need to see that every month. Sometimes there are pretty good articles; this month’s issue had a big feature on trends in logo design. Their awards issues are worth keeping, however.
• Practical Web Design and .net. A British import that’s packed with code examples, free software, and usually some good articles. This is a pretty good magazine but it’s very expensive, so I don’t get all the issues. And I’m not sure what’s going on with this mag right now - supposedly it was closing down in favor of sister magazine .net in January, but I’m sitting here with a March 2007 issue…
• Dynamic Graphics. This is one of my favorites and definitely a resubscription is in order. A lot of good, practical info for both digital and print design, and not so many ads.
• BusinessWeek Small Biz. A pretty good one for entrepreneurs, tailored to small and micro businesses.
• Print. I won’t be renewing my subscription to this one - way too much focus on (duh) print design, and way too many ads.
• HOW. This on the other hand is a keeper - big on creativity, great awards issues. Always a few interesting articles on things like typography…

Okay… back to sorting and I’ll finish up this article in a bit.

I’m a perpetual student and right now I have two new books on my desk - ‘Teach Yourself Javascript in 24 Hours’ (like I have that kind of free time) and ‘Learning PHP5.’ I also have ‘Head Rush AJAX’ which I haven’t read yet. I’m halfway through the Javascript book.

I was wondering, in what order should I read these books?
I went hunting on Google this morning for ‘web designers important skills’ and found this article in Slashdot’s archives.

Now this is a long one, and there are some strong opinions about what to know and what’s useless information. But I found myself reading a lot of it this morning and thinking about where I want to be with my work in 5 years.

Right now, I call myself a designer/developer, since I do it all. But I do the graphic design and (X)HTML/CSS parts better than the PHP/MySQL parts. I know only enough Javascript to modify scripts I get elsewhere. I know enough PHP to comfortably customize open source e-commerce, CMS and other scripts without much of a problem - I can generally figure out how most things like that work, but couldn’t write it myself without a lot of hair-pulling.

So if I want to increase my level of understanding on the development side, what should I concentrate on, technology-wise? What should I not waste time on? Is it better for my future career to pick one or the other (design over development in my case) and focus mostly on that instead? Will getting better at JavaScript do me any good down the road?

I love my job because it encompasses so many areas. I’m guessing that I’ll be leaning more and more toward standards-based front end development, user interface design and information architecture as time goes on. But since I’m still a one-person shop for the time being, I need to be as fluent in PHP, MySQL and a few other things as time allows. I want to be a well-rounded designer that understands a bit more than just the basics of back end development.

There’s always so much to learn. I like that part too - it gives me an excuse to buy books.

I’ve just started the first chapter of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Immediately it strikes me as very Zen - it’s all about hyper-organization for the purpose of clearing one’s head so that one can more easily achieve flow at work, whatever that work may be. I get that, and I’m interested.

One thing struck me as amusing. David Allen says that ‘work is whatever we want or need to be different than it actually is.’ And Buddhism suggests that ’suffering comes from wanting things to be different than they actually are.’

Is work therefore equal to suffering? Sometimes I think it is, but other times, work is effortless, when you crank on something for hours and then suddenly look up and notice that it’s 5:00. This is the best way to work - without distractions, totally focused and in the zone. That’s Zen, and it’s definitely not suffering - it’s more like joy.