Once again I've been silent for a while. A lot of things have happened, including a visit to my parents, a new computer, and planning my schedule for the new academic year, as well as more Law Review work than I'd really planned for. I've just not felt like staring at a computer screen for long enough to write anything recently.

Indeed, I'm having an organizational problem that, with any luck, you can advise me on. I have little problem scheduling projects with definite end dates, such as clerkship applications. (That was done using MS Project and Excel.) Day to day tasks for things like coursework, personal accounting, or remembering to back up my PC can be put into an Outlook task list. But there's a kind of intermediate category of tasks that fall off my radar.

There's a number of projects I've started that are second-priority: updating the Journal of Law and Social Parody, updating Three Years of Hell to be compatible with the new Sixapart style system, or working on a novel. These "when I have a minute" projects slip through the cracks and never seem to make much progress. Because they don't have definite due dates and generally are a bit amorphous, I don't set them up in Microsoft Project. On the other hand, if I were to include them on my Outlook task list, it would go on for more than the two pages it already covers.

Some of you will be saying, "You've got to be kidding me? You use the task list in Outlook? I can't even keep that up to date." But I'm sure one of my readers has a pretty good system for keeping themselves focused on these second-order tasks. Some of you might even have little techniques you use to make sure such things get done. Feel like sharing?