Listen to Ben Franklin

My goal for this week was to transition towards a workflow that more equitably balances research and writing. More specifically, I had hoped to draft at least a page or two of my first dissertation chapter, which will be on the 1946-47 Jewish Welfare Board survey conducted by Prof. Oscar I. Janowsky. Yet somehow it is now Friday, and I have yet to write a single sentence. The past few days were spent getting organized, and I find myself with at least another few hours worth of prep work to do before I can feasibly begin writing.

I did not expect that this process would require so much preparation. As I have written about before, I'm pretty meticulous with my database, my notes, and how I organize sources. When I sat down to draft the chapter outline, however, I became overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of sources that I have on the JWB Survey. Over the past few months of research, I tagged all of the documents in my database that are related to this topic with "JWB Survey," and so I can quickly and easily call them forward and view them in isolation. Furthermore, I can organize all of the documents tagged "JWB Survey" by the year they were authored, because "19XX" was the other consistent tag I applied. That still leaves me, however, with hundreds of documents from 1946 alone! I now realize that I need to review all of these documents (briefly, quickly, expeditiously, stat!) and add more specific tags such as "Survey Committee Minutes," or "Field Visits to Centers," or "Progress Reports." My chapter will progress chronologically, and so by adding these tags I will be able to quickly isolate only those documents that were written at the moment I'm writing about--for example, in the lead-up to the survey, or later while conducting the survey, or  from after the survey was completed, etc.

I'm trying not to get frustrated or anxious, and to instead focus on the adage from the ever pithy Ben Franklin: 

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

I'm telling myself that this is not productive procrastination, but rather a foundational step that will yield exponential benefits when I actually begin writing. Hopefully next week.

Research Trip Recap

My ten-day visit to the Center for Jewish History was incredibly productive. Despite being in New York for two weeks, time felt limited and I took the "smash-and grab" approach to archival research. I know I generally grabbed photos of relevant and valuable documents, but it will take me a few weeks to read through them all in detail and see if my first impressions were correct.

I photographed around 1500 pages of Annual Agency Budget Files from the records of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York (UJA-Federation). This humongous collection was just recently processed, and I'm one of the first historians to go through and see how JCCs like the Y of Washington Heights Inwood, Educational Alliance, and Bronx House negotiated annually with the Federation's Distribution Committee. This process was highly regimented throughout the 1950s and '60s. Executive secretaries (god bless them) saved all the important paperwork related to the application, including agencies' initial budget proposals, the Distribution Committee's announcements of annual allocations, and thorough accounting worksheets for each fiscal year. These files are thus a great way to ascertain the health of each individual agency throughout the tumultuous years of the urban crisis, because they report figures like: membership numbers; income from dues; number and kind of programs offered; number of full- and part-time staff; and size and condition of facilities. 

While incredibly rich, these budget materials are also dense and tedious. I am going to have to give myself a crash course in accounting, which is a foreign language to me. I've always been better at spending money than keeping track of it! Ideally, the experience will familiarize me with organizational budgeting, which is a useful skill to have. 

I'll end with a pitch for the American Jewish Historical Society archivists' excellent blog, This Can Go Back to the Archives, which chronicles the processing of the UJA-Federation records. Susan and her team highlight some of the most dynamic and intriguing documents from the collection, and I'm always surprised by what they dig up!

My Week, As a "Best-of" List

Best Chair: Last summer, the Center for Jewish History "refreshed" its reading room. Part of the face lift involved purchasing new chairs for patrons. They are, hands down, the greatest desk chairs  I have ever sat upon. They're not "ergonomic" in the way that some chairs prop your lumbar spine into alignment--these chairs actually support your spine starting with your tuchus. The seat somehow inspires your core to get itself together and sit you up straight. The back panel lightly brushes against you, gently encouraging you to keep it up (pun intended). Despite sitting in these seats for hours each day, I never experience any discomfort. Is this the longest you've ever heard someone wax poetic about a rolling desk chair? Trust me, I could go on...

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And a profile shot, so you can see the elegant curve of the chair back:

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Best Coffee: With a few clear exceptions*, I think that the best cup of coffee is the one that you're currently drinking. My endorsement this week goes to Think Coffee, which opened a location on 6th Avenue at 16th Street a few months ago. I finally tried their house brew for the first time on Monday, and then went again on Tuesday, and again on Thursday. Excellent coffee, convenient location, and I also recommend the carrot muffins.

*Instant, gas station brews, weak diner coffee, etc.

Best New Restaurant: Harlem Shake. They serve up a diner-style burger with two thin patties sandwiched around a perfectly melted slice of American cheese. The secret sauce and pickles are a pairing on par with chocolate and peanut butter. Also, the fries are crisp and perfectly salted. Milkshakes and fountain Diet Coke are a must. And you'll need to take a long walk afterwards, followed by a nap. Listen to me: you'll want to eat it again the next day. Don't bother resisting. If it makes you feel better, sub in the kale caesar salad for the fries.

Best Restaurant, revisited: A tie between Lido and The Meatball Shop. Both are consistently excellent Italian-inspired fare.

Best Document: Apparently the Board of this Jewish Community Center came down with a mysterious ailment in December 1968....

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Best Customer Service Experience: The Genius Bar at the Apple Store on 14th Street. My computer problems did not end last week, and on Monday I had to leave the archive early to seek professional help. I couldn't get my photos to transfer off my iPad, and everything I tried just slowed my computer down until it was practically unusable. I walked 4 avenues over to the Apple Store and after only a 15 minute wait, I had a Mac Genius setting it all straight. I still need to upgrade my memory (RAM) when I return to Pittsburgh, but everything is now functional (if pathetically slow). 

Best Dog: Ruthie Bader Ginsburg, of course. 

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Ruthie likes: long walks, squirrels, and sleeping in my lap.

Ruthie dislikes: being ignored while I work on my computer. 

No Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

My enthusiasm for the the Mac operating system has been tempered since I last wrote on Tuesday. I actually had great blog posts planned for the past two days, but on Wednesday I realized that iPhoto wasn't loading the pictures from my iPhone that I planned to post. Trying to figure out why my iDevices weren't iConnecting turned into an "If you give a Mouse a Cookie"-type headache that lasted 24 hours. 

To make a long story short, I realized that I needed to upgrade my operating system to OS X Yosemite* if I wanted my photos to continue syncing to my MacBook Pro. In order to install the upgrade, however, I had to do a lot of maintenance and backup on my laptop. I do try to stay on top of these things, but I try to be extra cautious right before sending my hard drive under the knife. As a result I got no work done yesterday. My laptop was in a constant state of loading, downloading, or spinning the rainbow pinwheel of death.

One good thing did come out of the process. I now have a great app to recommend: Memory Clean. It's an unobtrusive little icon that sits at the top of your screen and monitors how much free memory you have. When it runs low, you can ask it to clean out file caches and app memory stuff (I don't really get what that is, to be honest) so your computer can process faster. For a free (!) app, it's stupid easy to use and I've been pleased with what its done for my tired old laptop. 

I'm choosing, resignedly, to think of yesterday's upgrades as an investment in the health and future well-being of my laptop. What's one day of work if it means that I have a more efficient system for the next few months? It's just been a strange week and an unproductive few days, between grant deadlines, events, and the computer situation.

For example, on Wednesday I co-coordinated a Tu B'svhat event for graduate students. We fed everyone a free falafel lunch and provided terra cotta pots and succulents so that grads could honor the holiday by planting a little aloe for their office. Most of grad students don't really have the space to plant a tree, which is the traditional observance, so we decided to be figurative and have some fun with it. Over 15 students came during their lunch hour and it was lovely to spend time with Carnegie Mellon's Jewish Masters and Doctoral candidates. 

On Sunday I'm heading back to New York for a longer research trip, and I'm looking forward to the quiet studiousness of the archive. 

*My current assessment of Yosemite: My first impression is that the only major difference between Yosemite and Maverick--besides the cartoonish design--is that Safari and iPhoto are now more connected to my iPad and iPhone and it's easier to continue browsing the web/photos from one device to another. I'm not experiencing WiFi connectivity issues (which are widely reported in the App store reviews). When I upgraded to Maverick I saw a dramatic decline in the speed at which my apps loaded, but so far Yosemite hasn't seemed to make it any worse. 

New Discovery

I'm having an interesting week with my computer. Knock wood, so far it's only the good kind of interesting. This weekend I was working on a Word document and I needed to refer to something in a window behind it. I clicked the window I was working in and moved it to the side. All of a sudden, I was in this new desktop! It was just me and my active Word document, and nothing else. No browser with 100 tabs open. No Mail. No iCal. 

After I freaked out for a second, I realized that I could just drag the window back towards the edge and return to my original desktop. Upon my "return," the desktop seemed so busy compared to the serenity I had just experienced. I still had no idea what had really happened, so I went to Google and typed in the most ridiculous search term: "second screen feature mac?" Most of the results were actually about using a second monitor with your Apple computer, but this article clarified that what I had stumbled onto was the "multiple desktop" feature within the "Mission Control," which is what Apple calls the window rearrangement function of their operating system. Mission Control is also what enables "corners," which is a feature that allows you to see all the windows open in an application (or on the desktop) just by navigating the mouse arrow to the corner of the screen. Corners is one of the most useful tools in my workflow, because I often move between documents like chronologies or indexes or notes and the document in which I am actively writing. 

There are two ways to access Mission Control. The easiest way is to press F3, but I hate taking my hand off the trackpad so I prefer to swipe three fingers upward. All of your open windows are displayed, and you can move them to the desktop you would like to view them in. For example, over the past few days I dedicated a new desktop to grant materials, but all other Word documents opened in desktop 1 (except for my chronology document, which opened in desktop 3 along with my database). When I was finished with writing and editing, I moved the Word documents back to desktop 1 to turn them into PDFs and email them off. 

Here are some clear benefits to the "multiple desktop" feature that I've seen so far:

1) Escape the web browser. I often have multiple tabs open in my browser when I'm doing research, and they can distract me from writing. I have now set Safari to only open in my "original" desktop (desktop 1) so that when I'm writing in desktop 2 or reading documents in desktop 3, I do not en up checking my email every time I catch a glimpse at my Gmail account. If I do need to look something up on the web, I can easily swipe three fingers left or right to move between the desktops quickly and easily.

2) Isolate projects or tasks. If I need to focus on one thing, It's nice to have it all together in one place without additional clutter.

3) Novelty. Starting new desktops is fun and keeps life feeling fresh. 

There are some drawbacks, of course. When you use corners with multiple desktops you are still shown ALL of the open windows in that application, regardless of which desktop it will open in. If you accidentally click on a window that's active in a different desktop, you get dragged over immediately. So it's not completely isolating or zen. Plus, the icons at the bottom do not disappear when you're not using an app in desktop 2 (or 3, or 4, etc.)--so you are still tempted to click on the Safari compass icon and end up back in the original desktop. 

Also, I really think the best thing I could do to minimize distraction would be to shut down all but the bare minimum of windows and focus on what's necessary to get any particular job done. I usually lack the self control to implement that advice, so this multiple desktop feature gets me a few extra minutes of focus without feeling like I'm denying myself the pleasures of the internet and apps. 

Has anyone else used this feature? Are there other ways to use it to improve a research workflow? I'd love to know!