Visa application - or - Why I want to quit before I start

I'm going on a research trip this month, and have a bunch of grant money coming in to pay for it.  Unfortunately, the money doesn't arrive until early in the month, so I haven't been moving very quickly on booking things like flights or applying for visas.  Now, it's a week before I intended to leave, and I'm running around like a crazy person trying to make up for the fact that i put things off so long.  I think it will be fine, but I could do without the extra stress.  

In fact, this pre-travel planning always makes me wish I was just staying home.  I love travel and do quite a bit of it, but every time, I just want to lay down and pretend it isn't there.  I guess this is why people go on all-expenses-paid tours rather than doing things themselves!

This is the same as grant applications, scholarships, and all the other things that an academic has to do in order to survive, and I dread it.  Ugh.

Life!! Ack!!

Well, life has taken over.  The past week has been really stressful for me - mostly because I've been feeling overwhelmed.  As a result, I've been making use of the tried and tested method of a to-do list to keep track of things and reduce my stress level.  I find that when I write the list of things down it means that I can focus on doing something without worrying that I'll remember to do the other things.

That being said, I am slowly starting to feel back in control of my life because I have:

Prepared and given the 4 lectures I needed to

Prepared and printed the poster for the poster day next Friday

Taken care of some admin things for grants

Called the Syrian Embassy

Gotten a handle on a timetable for my research trip

Met with my supervisors

I still need to:

Plan and book research trip

Including: apply for visas, book flights, ensure grant payment

Work in office

Poster day (Fri)

Practical teaching (2 Fridays)

Work on thesis (any spare moment)

Go to Stonehenge (Fri/Sat)

Go hiking (next Sat/Sun)

Sleep - presumably

All this to say, life is busy and I'm running around quite a bit

Transition

I am currently in the downtime between submitting a draft chapter to my supervisors and meeting with them to discuss their opinions. This time, the gap between submission and meeting is going to be almost two weeks, and I'm finding it hard to get moving on something new. And there are many things to be doing. I could be working on getting my theory chapter written, I could be combing the literature for all the published sources of the next site I'll be focussing on as a case study, I could be preparing the 4 lectures I'll be giving over the next two weeks, or I could be preparing my poster that has to be given at a mandatory university poster day for research students.

Instead, I'm floating around reading articles aimlessly, generating new ideas for things I could do to my poor abused sites, and generally feeling overwhelmed by all the things I *could* be doing. Of course, once I've met with my supervisors, that list of things to do will increase as they give me edits to do and advice on the next things to focus on.

Bah

Alright, time for a plan. This weekend I will prep the lectures. Today and next week I will start organizing my theory chapter and get writing. Everything else can wait for a while.

Drowning in Articles

I am a year and a half into my PhD and am coming to the end of writing my background chapter.  For an archaeologist, this means writing about the historical context of my research and the current state of knowledge about the time period.  I have been tackling this in thematic chunks and my material has been organized in these sections.  Now I'm starting to integrate these sections by writing the more specific contextual sections and I'm finding that my filing system is starting to break down.  I'm spending too much time trying to find a particular article as stuff is spread across the themes.

I think I need to reorganize my articles and take a close inventory of what I have and where it is.  I use EndNote and am very diligent about entering reference information.  I would like to try keeping better track of where each article is in my system and whether I have printed it off or if I've moved it into a thematic collection for some purpose. 

I think the best system for me to adopt will be an alphabetical system by the first author's last name.  I have avoided this in the past since often sets of authors write together multiple times about similar things but alternate who the first author is.  This can make it difficult to keep track of all resources on a particular topic, but clearly keeping things by topic is no longer working.  I guess I'll have to give it a try and give myself permission to redo it if it isn't better.

Now, I have a filing cabinet in my office in the department that I can use, but I intend to work from home when I move in June.  At that point, I will need to devise a filing system to use there, but in the mean time, I can use the hanging files in my office.

I guess I will be spreading my paper out on the floor sometime soon and alphabetizing and cross-referencing it in EndNote.  I'll be sure to take some pictures of the before, during, and after and keep you updated on the progress.

How do other people keep track of articles and resources?