So, is it really procrastination if you're surfing the web, reading articles about how to use your time better and how to keep yourself from wasting time surfing the web?

I got inspired by the articles and comments I read and set myself a list of major goals and tasks for the day, categorized by project. Then I took one project on that list at a time and decided how long I would work on it, as well as writing down things like how I would set up and which tasks I intended to accomplish. I found that going over these details helped me prepare mentally to focus on that task. It's neat to have a record at the end of the day of just what tasks I accomplished. Of course, the problem with writing down the times I plan to work on things is that I can see just how much time I spent goofing off in between.

What was on my list for today:

• Paper:
  • I created a reasonably detailed outline for my final report.
• Bar graph:
  • I heard back from the author of our graph module about the "phantom data." He asked for an example, so I prepared a test case and sent it to him, along with a link to a screenshot of the problem.
  • I put together a short readme for the calendar of all the little tips I've been saving, meaning to put in some documentation somewhere.
  • Also on my list was to finish fixing the bar colors, but I am waiting to hear back on my problem with phantom data.
• New visualization - referred to as "patchy," a weak pun on "Apache" and somewhat descriptive of this visualization:
  • I tried to figure out the best implementation in Catalyst for a certain piece of this, but I had to ask the mailing list for help. Waiting to hear back.
  • I began putting together the query that I will need to pull one row's worth of data. I had hoped to finish this and Catalyst-ize it.

I also finished a couple of things that were not on my list:

• Paper: I found several papers to use in writing the section on prior and related work.
• Bar graph: I looked into another way of doing my query that was sent to me. It's not a big change, but it makes the code a lot clearer and therefore reduces the chances of programmer error. As far as I can tell, the results are still identical.