I have one OneNote notebook called Dissertation.  Within it, I have 8 sections:

A few things about this:

• The first 5 sections reflect the 5 chapters required in my dissertation: Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Findings, Conclusion
• I have a tab called Media into which I put less scholarly discussion around my topic. I probably won’t use this stuff in my Lit Review but may use it for context in the introduction.
• Meta is where I put notes on things like how to write a literature review, what constitutes a good one, etc.
• Old is where I put notes related to things I may not end up using.  In this case I am looking at changing the specific focus of my dissertation, so the prior focus is under OLD now.  I don’t want to lose that work, but I don’t want it cluttering things up, either.

Within each section, I am creating multiple tabs with notes on specific sub-areas.  For example, here is the literature review pages:

Notice that the first tab is labeled structure.  I am working on an outline of what the eventual document will look like on that tab. That tab also contains search terms I am using for each section of the outline so that later I can revisit and see if I come up with any new ones.

Below that, each 1st author has a tab.  If they have just one applicable paper, the title is part of the tab name.  If not, then I’ll throw in the word Multiple.

Within each tab, I take notes on the paper.  I am trying very hard to make those notes brief, useful, and as much about my observations on the paper as a restatement of the paper itself.  Here is an example:

Key things to notice: the bibliographic reference is at the top.  I am using Zotero to track my references, but including items here just to make sure I take no changes on losing the information.

In this case I copied the abstract in, since it did a good job of summarizing the paper.  I then put in a number of bullet points about things important to my work.  In this case, there were several methodological issues, such as the data used and the lack of confounding variables included in the study. I also put in a bit about the theoretical approach, which was interesting in this case.

If I see a specific number or quote that I believe I will use, I include those in the page.  In general my goal is to keep each paper to under half a page.

OneNote automatically enters the times and dates when the document was started, so that I can revisit items on which my perspective may have changed.

I have done some playing around with tags, but find that to be OneNote’s weakest feature.  In the end I find I’m not using those much.  In fact I don’t even recall what some of those tags were intended to mean.

Today my goal is to put some more thought into the structure given the modified topic.  I had a really good structure for the old review, and am genuinely mourning it’s loss today.  The new one is nowhere near as thorough or well thought out.  Without that structure go guide my reading I feel as though I’ll be wandering around blind again, so while I will certainly update it as the process moves forward, for now I want to get enough down to guide my work.

In the end I picked the Nexus One for a couple of reasons.

1. Better hardware specifications and the most recent version of Android
2. Doesn’t force me to have Motorola Blur on my phone (which, for me, is really bloatware; I don’t twitter or have time to spend on facebook, and integrating it into my  phone is just going to make that worse all while eating the battery life…)
3. Laziness;  T-mobile had been fine so far, and they make switching phones as easy a switching your sim card, whereas changing carriers sounded like work for a phone that wasn’t as good.
4. There are freeware apps to do almost all of what Blur does, for far less overhead.

I LOVE it.  Screen is gorgeous, easy integration with google voice and my gmail, a number of fun games to keep me busy while standing in line, a number of great apps from the android store that let me do all sorts of things on it, such as quickly read all my rss feeds, make a GPS unnecessary via maps, scan and comparison shop barcodes, browse the web, check news and weather, find a local restaurant and see it’s reviews, etc.

There remain a couple of issues that I hope to find solutions for in the near future:

1. Exchange email: On the blackberry I knew immediately if my boss pinged me for something.  The native mail client doesn’t really provide the same kind of notification/home screen visibility.  I’ve been testing a 3rd party tool (Touchdown) which would cost a bit ($9.99) but integrates well with exchange, but then I have two separate inboxes.  What I WANT to use is K-9 mail, which provides for a single integrated inbox, but which can’t seem to talk to my work exchange server.  Still working on this one.
2. Task management: I currently have a bunch of things running to deal with that, with varying success.  Remember the Milk has an app that isn’t bad.  There is another task manager called Astrid that will sync with Remember the Milk that is amazing, but not necessarily as timely as I might like.  And GTDAgenda, which I reviewed previously, has their first version of an android app out.  It needs some improvements (which I’ve sent to the developer) before it will work for me, but if he makes some of those changes I may well make GTDAgenda my one and only task manager.  An Android app resolves several of the concerns I had before by providing easy remote access.  (Full disclosure:  Use of the android app requires a paid account, which starts at $39.45/year.)
3. The perfect home screen:  I’ve tested two apps meant to help with this organization; Executive Assistant and SlideScreen.  Executive Assistant will be pretty close when they add task management (which I’m told they are working on), but there is still an issue with the dual mail boxes right now.  Slidescreen turned out to not be customizable enough and too social-networking heavy for me.  In a perfect world, here is what I want to see when I turn the phone on:
   • A small calendar widget so that I can see what appointments I have – I sync google calendar and my exchange calendar, so either is fine.  Agenda Widget is perfect for this and has lots of sizes.
   • A somewhat larger email widget that shows me the most recent messages for BOTH accounts.  Not there yet.
   • Time, date and local weather widget.  Beautiful Widgets does this while providing me with a bunch of nice widgets for doing things like setting the phone to silent.
   • A small task management widget.  Astrid has one, and I’ve asked the guys at GTDAgenda about adding one.
   • Optimally a little extra space for a couple of small widgets – one for silent mode and a shortcut to call my husband.

However these aren’t showstoppers; each of the three things I want to resolve works now, just not quite as optimally as I might like.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting about how I am changing my organizational system based on the integration of my day job, academic work and teaching.  The phone will be at the core of that because I’m at too many different computers to localize my work to one place.  Hopefully you will find this  useful.

If you are an android user and have any app or use suggestions, leave a comment or email me!

Most likely it is the grey time I am now in.  There is no longer the structure of class work, there is a HUGE project to be done, and (particularly in the case of working students) there are lots of other demands on our time.  The dissertation drops to the bottom of the list.

This past semester was especially difficult in that respect for me, as I prepped and taught a new course for the first time (one that I hadn’t taken since 1984).  I have piles of notes on what I did wrong and only a few on what I did right for that class, but I also know it won’t take nearly as much time this upcoming semester.  (Heck, if I don’t get a few more students signed up it may get dropped from the schedule, which would not be the worst thing that could happen.)

While I am no longer convinced I started my PhD for the right reasons, or even that I want the exact job I’m being trained for, I don’t want to just be another statistic either.  The dissertation is a HUGE project, but it is, in fact, just one project.   I have completed more complex, demanding and long projects in my work life and I need to start treating it as such rather than as a demon to be fought.

To help myself do this, I am going to spend the next week reading Demystifying Dissertation Writing: A Streamlined Process from Choice of Topic to Final Text.  I will post a review when I’m done and begin working through the process.

Of course, that isn’t the only thing I need to do this winter break.  I need to:

• Read Demystifying Dissertation Writing and write a review.  You are my accountabilibuddy for that.
• Choose an SPSS 17 book for my statistics class this upcoming semester (I have samples of 4 and just need to pick one)
• Revise the first few classes of the Psych 101 class using more active learning techniques
• Clean my office (which is showing signs of a semester spent tossing things into random piles rather than putting them away)
• Write up my course assessments for the past semester
• Start working through the techniques in the book, particularly those related to note taking, using the system I started last semester involving OneNote

I can and will get through this grey time of graduate work and finish.  What I do then is open, but I will not become a statistic.

What is gtdagenda?

gtdagenda.com is a web-based implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology.  The site gives you the ability to track, work at and associate tasks with all different levels of goals.

At the top level you can set broad goals (such as Finish my PhD) that guide your choice of projects.  These can be defined with a time frame, a category (such as Academic, Family, Work), and a priority (which GTD purists will recognize as NOT being part of the core GTD methodology but a piece I have long thought was missing).  Goals can be viewed sorted by either priority or category, offering the chance to see if things are out of balance (for example having far more goals in the Work category than the Family category).

One thing I really like about the application is that the top two goals remain at the top of the page as you move through other parts of the application.  This helps in keeping them always in focus.

Within each goal you can define Projects.  These conform to the standard GTD definition of a project, are associated with one of the larger goals, and again have a priority.  Again, these can be sorted by either priority or the goals to which they are related.

One neat feature of the Projects list is that it shows you how many tasks are associated with each project.  Projects with no tasks need to be revisited or have their priorities changed to reflect their lower importance.

Interestingly, notice that my top two projects are related to a goal that is not in my top two goals.  Something for me to review.

Anyway, within each Project there are Tasks. (No picking on my task lists; the details are in the notes, but each is actually just a single sit-down-and-do-it activity I should probably add some action verbs though.)

There are a few neat features to the task list display.

• Starred items are next actions and they always float to the top of your task list.  There is also another view that shows you just the next actions.
• Contexts are immediately visible, as are the project to which the task is associated
• You can mark multiple tasks as done by putting a check in the box and clicking the button for Mark as Done
• You can schedule repeating tasks (such as grading), add notes to yourself, and set a due date if that makes sense for the task.
• Overdue items have bright red highlighting of the date the item was due to increase visibility.
• You can modify many settings (priority, setting as a next action, moving to someday/maybe) from the menu.  This lets you make the change to several tasks at a time without having to edit each one.

So far all these have been in the left pane of the application.  The right pane brings a number of other useful features.

Let’s start at the bottom.

You have a list of your projects.  Clicking on any given project will give you a list of the tasks for that project.  Notice again that the number of tasks is shown clearly next to the project name.

Above that you have a list of your contexts.  Clicking on a given context will allow you to see only the tasks for that context.

On top there is a calendar, and it’s there to show you more than just the date.  You can schedule things like standing appointments (classes taught) on there as well has scheduling tasks for or due a particular date.  When you click on the date, the tasks for that date open up.

An interesting addition is the Checklists.  This is an implementation of the personal development concept called “Don’t Break the Chain” (sometimes attributed to Jerry Seinfeld), wherein you get a check mark for each time you do something that is unscheduled but a habit you are trying to build.  You add each one, set up the days you intend to do them, and check them off as you go.  Given the struggle many of us have with these types of habit-building activities, this is a good way to track them.  Notice also that you can have checklists at different levels – things like “give the dogs their heartworm medication” can go on the Month frame.  When the due day of the week (or month or year) comes up, these items appear on your task list.

There are a few more features that most potential users will find very helpful.  First, there is an email address you can send a task to and have it added to your lists.  There is also an iCal feed so that you can show your tasks on your google calendar or any other ical-compatible calendar program.

There are several settings for your account; do you want tasks and/or calendar items emailed each morning, what view you want opened when you log in, your timezone, etc.

Finally access from your phone has been streamlined on their www.gtdagenda.mobi site.  While not full featured (yet), it offers quick and easy access to your task list from anywhere.

What works well

I am very impressed with the combination of productivity and organizational tools offered here.  The integration of two items I’ve though were long missing from core GTD (priorities and  checklists) works well, and I love that checklist items show up on your tasks for the day in question.

I am particularly impressed with what a great job the tool does of keeping you focused on properly using the system and not getting too buried in the day to day task list.  It is very easy to get focused on a list of next actions and forget the larger goals; these items are in constant view and attached to each project, so that the larger purpose of what you are doing is always there.

Performance has been fine, and I have not stumbled on anything I would call a bug.

Dan (the developer) has been very responsive to questions and/or suggestions for improvements.  He continues to actively improve the application, taking into account the comments of current users and soliciting their opinions.

What could use some improvement

All that having been said, there are some items that need improvement.

• There is no syntax that you can use to enhance emailed tasks the way Remember the Milk allows.  This to me is the biggest current flaw, because while I can email myself a task I have to go back in later and add all the attributes.
• There are no start/end dates for schedules.  I would prefer to be able to put my academic calendar in far in advance, but can’t because the items begin showing up immediately.  This is my number two current biggest flaw.

Other items that should be addressed, but which I don’t consider to be a big deal.

• No file attachments, so if it isn’t a short text you are out of luck.  An oversight, but not one that is critical for my purposes.
• I find the schedules feature very confusing to use.
• Entering lots of tasks is a bit tedious as far as overhead goes.  Supposedly a new feature is on its way to address this.  Bulk upload would be terrific.
• I personally would like a way to mark a task as delegated/waiting for and make it disappear until some future date when I need to check on it.  I can use contexts for delegated/waiting for, but the item will remain on my task list.
• Right now when I “Mark as done” one or more tasks, the tool crosses them off but doesn’t remove them from view, even when my current view is Active only.  I would like them to disappear without having to refresh my screen.
• Two-way ical integration (so that scheduled items from google calendar can be picked up) would be very nice.

Pricing

In a perfect world this tool would be free and open to all.  In the real world, developers of new products often need to charge in order to support development.  Such is the case with gtdagenda.

Anyone can sign up for a free account, but it is limited in the number of goals, projects and context.  If your life revolves around a few large projects this may be enough.

Most people will need at least the Basic level.  At a few dollars per month (less if you autorenew) the cost is relatively low for the completeness of the application.  All payments are through paypal and they offer a 30-day money back guarantee for you to try the full product.

Premium is for those who need a LOT more goals / projects / contexts or checklists.

Recently they have also added 2 different shared accounts for work groups, one with 5 and the other with 15 users.  These offer, in addition to the features of the premium level, your own subdomain, message board and branding.

Overall Assessment

Despite desired improvements, gtdagenda.com is the  best consolidated GTD implementation currently available as a web application.  It implements the methodology in a clean, usable interface and adds the things that many GTD users have long thought were missing from the original specification.  By managing all the cross-referencing between goals, projects and tasks, GTDagenda makes it easy to keep an eye on the big picture while working through your daily activities.

As mentioned above this review was based upon a free premium-level membership.  Were this being paid out of my own pocket, my review would not change but I would choose the basic membership instead.  It is generous enough in terms of projects and goals to meet the needs of my life and nothing I do is secretive enough to require SSL security.  When they add file attachments, my guess is that the Premium pricing will be more attractive for those with lots of (or large) files.

This week, however, I got some perspective.  In order to enhance my qualifications for the classes I’m already teaching, I signed up for an online class on cognitive psychology this semester.  I’m dropping it.  There are three reasons:

1. The instructor is not instructing.  She assigned the readings (a chapter and 2-4 research papers per week, often the ones that are the root of major theoretical models), assigned us to write a summary of each research paper (a couple of paragraphs) and a 5 question multiple choice quiz on the textbook each week, and that’s it.  No feedback, no discussion, no additional perspective on how to integrate the materials.  If we didn’t figure it out ourselves, we were out of luck.
2. She then proceeded to base the mid-term on the type of integration questions that you would expect to have come up in the course of a classroom or message board discussion.  Since we have neither, the class is pretty much on our own to do it.  I put in 8 hours on it yesterday and would have had to put in all day today to do an adequate job.  Of course, I don’t HAVE all day today, as I also have to grade labs, post the next tests for both classes, write up a study guide for one of the tests and review my lectures for the week.  Oh, and work on the major group project she assigned as due on thursday.  I calculate that I would have needed close to 20 hours today to get that done.
3. Of course, it isn’t all her fault; I also overestimated my ability to get everything done and stay sane at the same time.  I leave at 7am and come home at 9pm four nights a week, leaving essentially no time to work on weeknights.  Until now I’ve been able to squeeze it all in on the weekend, but there was no chance of that this weekend.  Worse, I’ve been running myself ragged to keep up, something that is not good in the long run.

So I’m dropping.  I’m OK with that – I overestimated my capacity given that this is the first semester teaching one of these classes, and I’ll revisit in the future when teaching the new class becomes less week-to-week preparation effort.

Overscheduling myself, however, wasn’t the only piece of my life I got perspective on this weekend.  Prior to this weekend I had gotten bored with my dissertation topic, bored with working on my lit review, and uninterested in the entire thing.  Then I got a look at this midterm, which includes 4 questions along the lines of this example:

Peruse the results sections of your articles from the first half of the semester, looking for a set of results from a multi-experiment paper that you were particularly impressed with.  Describe how the statistical tests were performed, and how they supported the hypotheses.  Explain why you were impressed with this set of results.  Now, look for a set of results that produces the opposite effect on you, meaning, you are not at all impressed or convinced by them.  Explain your reasoning.  Finally, how might the experiment be altered such that it could produce impressive results, that you feel are worthy of publication in a major psychology journal?

I read that and caught myself thinking longingly of my lit review and getting back to work on my dissertation.  I actually told husband that if I wanted to work that hard I would just write the damned dissertation.  After all, isn’t that what the work of reading a paper for a lit review is all about?  How are the results, are they convincing, what would have to change to make them convincing?

So with that jolt of perspective, I am letting go of my key overcommitment, refocusing on the core things I have to do (work, teaching), and putting any remaining time into my re-energized interested in my dissertation.  That effect alone may be worth the (thankfully low) tuition cost.

• The internet and all the amazing information it brings to our door
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook and social networking sites
  • YouTube
  • Wikipedia
• A new TV season starting up
• Books and/or magazines on every possible topic
• Free education via things like Open Courseware or ITunes U

It is easy to get overwhelmed or want to do more than any one human could do.

Over the past few weeks I have begun a practice of laser-sharp focus and elimination of the unnecessary or reschedulable.  My current commitments allow nothing less, and frankly it has dropped my stress level more than any other single change I could make.

My current commitments are not trivial; a full time job that expects around 45 hours per week, teaching 2 different classes (4 nights per week total) at a local community college, taking 1 course toward a Masters in Psychology, and doing a small yearly consulting data analysis job for a local school district.  I get up around 7am and get home around 9pm most days, then spend my weekends grading homework, preparing for the next week’s classes, doing my own homework and catching up on sleep as I move into the next week.

This would be incredibly stressful for most people, and frankly it would have been for me as well until I realized a few things this summer:

• It’s ok to say no sometimes; your friends will still like you
• You may WANT to do a lot of things, but some are more important than others
• There is great satisfaction and relaxation to be gained by letting yourself off the hook for some things.

In my case, that meant

• I would blog (here) when I had the time AND something meaningful to say
• I would not worry about keeping up with my RSS feeds and would, in fact, trim them back substantially to just the ones that are of special interest or relevance
• I would not try to keep up with facebook or other social media, at least not in anything that passes for real time.  (I get facebook updates in an RSS feed and try to scan them for big events in my friends lives a couple of times per week.
• I would carve out a single block of time each week to spend with friends and not feel bad if that meant I had to pick which friends to see on a given week.
• I would not worry about my dissertation literature review for the moment, but just continue to collect articles and references that I will read later.

Mostly though, it meant that I chose to focus on the critical things and not feel bad/guilty about what I’m not getting done.  Would I like to be able to do all those other things?  Of course I would.

But sometimes less is more, and this is one of those cases.  I’ve committed to certain activities in my life as having priority for the next 3 months (until christmas) and will focus my attention on those activities.  After the semester ends, I will revisit the targets of my focus for the winter holiday.  After that, I will again review my targets for the next semester.  These are not static choices, but fluid ones that can respond to my top priorities at any given time.

In doing so, my stress level has dropped and my productivity has risen. I work through each week step by step and never feel overwhelmed by all that I do.  That, to me, is true productivity.

I have reverted to paper note taking for a class I am in this semester (Cognitive Psychology).  For some reason, the act of writing the notes in pen helps them make the jump from short-term to long-term memory. (I blame this on growing up in the pre-digital age and training myself to learn this way.)  I’m doing the same thing at work; despite taking my laptop to every meeting, I am carrying a small Circa binder into which I make notes and add to do items.

The reason this works better is because, short of getting myself a tablet pc, there are things I just can’t do with a keyboard that I do all the time on paper.

• Draw myself pictures to help me remember something
• Draw lines between a current thought and one noted earlier to make it clear how they are related to one another
• Color code my notes (do-able on screen, but takes a bit more time than just trading pens)
• The occasional mind map (again, do-able on screen but requires learning  a new tool)

Having said that, all is not quite where I want it to be.  This method works well for taking down information and getting it into my head, but the to do aspect is not working nearly as well.  My work to do list still lives in email primarily, although I try to write one out every monday, and my home to do list *blush* lives mostly in my head and my gmail.

Therefore I am going to try using GTDAgenda for the next month.  It is a pay service, although the cost is relatively low, but of all the electronic implementations of the GTD methodology this one includes all of the core features plus a few others that seem highly useful to me.  For example, it gives you the ability to create checklists for repetitive tasks such as dealing with the administrative items for each of my classes every weekend. At the end of the month I will be posting a full review of the product along with results of my new approach.

In the meantime, however, I want to make it clear that paper has its place in my system.  Research on memory has shown that making connections between new information and what we know already is critical to memory, and paper provides a more free-form way for me to do that.  Further, the act of writing for me is an input device for my brain, whereas the act of typing is an output device.  That makes taking notes on paper a better option even if I never look at them again.

Ah, the good old days as an undergrad when you got your summers off.  I wish.  Summer for a graduate student is often as hectic as the rest of the year, and if some things (teaching) are reduced that merely means that other things (research) are expected to step in and make up the difference.

These melancholy thoughts are due to the fact that today is August 1st.  Classes begin again on August 24th.  Almost every grad student I know is having that “OMG I GOT NO RESEARCH DONE ALL SUMMER” panic attack at this point.  And maybe that is true.

But here is a piece of advice that I wish someone had told me my first summer:

This is a marathon, not a sprint, and that means you need to take rest breaks from time to time.

It is really easy to think in terms of graduation as a specific goal, and that you’ll “rest” after you graduate.  What you quickly learn is that you can’t rest then, because you have to find/start a new job, prepare to teach classes you may never have taught before (not insignificant as you will see below) and start to build up publications toward tenure review.  So really, it’s more like you can “rest” after you get tenure.  That’s a minimum of 10 years from the start of grad school.  Do you REALLY think you can run flat out for 10 years?

More importantly, this is your career; your life; the pattern you will be in for many many years.  The semester schedule is, to some extent, an artificial layer on TOP of your life and work.  It’s important to get OUT of the habit of letting it determine your goals. There will always be projects, and there will always be the temptation to think about summer as down-time since there is less teaching and advising to be done.  But perhaps that down-time is better used as down-time; time to recharge the batteries so that you can come back to your research fresh.

My goals for this summer reflect this type of new attitude:  I wanted to work on my literature review and to prepare for the new course I will be teaching this fall.  This 2nd item is more work than it sounds.  No amount of expertise in a subject gets you out of:

• reading through the textbooks the students will have to read
• writing up lecture notes/slides that add something to the material
• devising exercises/assignments that encourage them to learn rather than regurgitate
• organizing any supplemental materials you will need (videos, equipment, etc)
• setting  up said class on whatever course management software the school uses (blackboard, webct, etc)

For me, I am finding that it takes 8-10 hours for each week of class (2 classes per week, 1 chapter per week) to adequately prepare the material, plus another 2-3 hours to chose questions from the test bank for the exams (about every 3 chapters).  (If you have to WRITE those questions from scratch it can be much more time consuming.)  Now imagine starting at a new school and having to prep 2-4 classes for your first semester.  Summer will be busy.

Would I have liked to get more done on my lit review this summer?  Maybe.  But more important was recharging my batteries and being properly prepared.  I will have my notes all complete prior to the start of the semester so that each weekend I can review them to refresh the material in my mind, add any new references I may have found and go into a new chapter with the relaxed confidence that comes from knowing my material AND knowing how to deliver it.

In between I’ve spent a couple of weekends out of town with my husband, the occasional day shopping instead of working, and baking some amazing stuff, all things that relax me.  Not what an undergrad would consider a break, but all in all a productive time.

It is for this reason that keeping good backups is paramount to success as an academic.

There are a number of techniques for keeping good backups as an academic.  I want to not have to think about them at all,  and my history in the IT world makes me want redundancy for the most important items.  Since I got to spend this weekend restoring due to a fried power supply killing a motherboard, I wanted to share some of the variety of things I do to make sure my work is safe.

Secondary/External hard drives:  Just because your machine only came with one does not mean you can’t install more.  And they aren’t expensive or hard to install either; if you can plug something into a USB port, you can add 1 Terabyte of external storage for $87.00.

Once the secondary drive is in, you can use a free piece of software such as Syncback and configure it to back up all of your documents to your external drive on a regular basis.  Lifehacker has an excellent explanation of how to backup your hard drive using Syncback.

A secondary drive accomplishes two things; first, it provides a backup of your drive and second, it is easy to move to a new system when the old one breathes its last breath (as mine did this weekend).

However, I’m paranoid.  What happens if my house burns down?  Or my computer is physically stolen?  Or I take multiple power spikes and both drives get fried?  These things are less likely, but not impossible.  For that reason, I also use off-site backups.

I use  Jungledisk for my off-site backup software.  Jungledisk makes use of Amazon’s S3 or other network storage solutions to back up my drives automatically.  The result is an invisible background backup solution for all your data to a remote location.  A few clicks and it has begun its restore.

I picked Jungledisk because Amazon S3 is very reasonably priced and I wanted to back up, well, everything.  Moreover Jungledisk gives me web access to every file I have backed up, so that I can get items when I’m not at home.  If, however, you only want to back up some key stuff (your writing, lecture notes, but NOT data or downloaded PDFs of research articles) there are a couple of free ways to do that.

• Mozy is an online backup service that gives you 2G of space at no cost.  You can, of course, buy more.  To my knowledge you can’t get to the files except through the Mozy backup tool.
• Dropbox is actually more of a file syncing tool; you can put your key items into your drop box and it will sync them to as many computers as you want.  I am currently doing this for my OneNote notebooks and my lectures in process.  Dropbox also provides web access to those files, so that I can get to them from anywhere.

I use Dropbox because I like it’s immediacy and web access for my most crucial files.  However pre-Jungledisk I used Mozy’s free service for my key files and was very happy with it.

One last important thing; if you are using Zotero for reference management, be sure to check out the version 2.0 beta.  I have had no problems with it, and love it’s ability to sync my files and library.  I use it with my Jungledisk account to keep copies of attached PDFs.

In the end the least productive thing you can do is re-do all your work because of a technology glitch.  Making sure you have extra copies of everything is one of the most important, productive things you can do.