It’s no secret that I get tired of the vintage computer systems with which we’re saddled here. Nothing says progress like IE6 circa 2001, and waiting 5 minutes for the the Outlook calendar to load is not my cup of tea. Sometimes you just need to look at (and write on) a big calendar to block out times for leave planning, transferring, working on a major project, what have you.

I’m glad I found David Seah’s compact calendar (via Lifehacker), because it’s already helped me make the case that I should go on R&R when I want to. The Excel file is customizable, and you can add in host country holidays to the template. I had a bit of trouble because we’re on a Sunday-Thursday work schedule here, so I modified his a bit to make it work. If you’re in a Western country, go to his page; otherwise give mine a shot. Sorry folks in Saudi…no love for that Saturday to Wednesday nonsense.

Download: Compact Calendar for Sunday-Thursday work week (.xls)

Prerequisite: Inbox Zero

Diplomatic Security imposes an IT lockdown on computers connected to OpenNet–that is, you can’t install software, you can’t use a non-DoS owned device on computers, and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on any official machine. Most GTD ideas, including Inbox Zero, require additional software or websites that don’t render well in IE6. In this post, I’ll guide you through how I manage to keep my inbox empty while keeping tasks moving.

Read more on this Article!

I’ve been putting off writing anything for the past week for a few reasons: nothing much is going on with me in the admin world, so I’m not thinking of anything to write. Also, I want to give myself parameters on what I can and can’t write. I don’t simply want to be a re-hashing of things that the Department already does, but I am willing to do a consolodation of stuff that’s found in five different places or is so unclear a plain-English explaination is due. I’m also interested in workflow and process, especially within our IT world. There are some good blogs that deal with Getting Things Done (GTD)/Lifehacking. I see no problem with incorporating some of that into this blog so long as it is done in a way that is useful in an IT-lockdown environment where archiving is often required by regulation.

So, as this all gets more complicated, I decided that some posts might have a prerequisite. If the tip is kind of complicated, I’ll put another link at the top so that they can build on each other. And since I’m fond of stretching analogies, I offer up the following “summer reading list.”

1. A primer on Getting Things Done
2. Inbox Zero – process your email and get rid of it all by assigning actions to each one. If you have 20 minutes, I recommend watching the presentation part of the video. It will save you much more than 20 minutes over the course of the first month alone. I’ll talk later about how I implement this on OpenNet computers.
3. The Overseas Briefing Center’s excellent, if hard to find on the internet website, “What do I do now?” publication has many of the forms, steps, and checklists you’ll need to head to an overseas assignment.
4. If you’re on an OpenNet computer, click the AskAdmin link on your left. A lot of good, if incomplete, stuff there.
5. Make friends with a good GSO. Seriously, I learned a lot from just being around some of our excellent GSOs in Colombia who either knew a reg on the tops of their heads or knew how to get an answer quickly.