Stay on Target with Activity Tracker

Today I started using a new Google Gadget to boost my productivity in my writing process. One productivity activity that I sometimes use is alternating between activities every 15 - 20 minutes. This is good if you are bored or stuck. Using Activity Tracker I set up several sections of my dissertation as activities. I also included 3 non-dissertation activities that I needed to work on today. I set up Activity Tracker to prompt me every 15 minutes to change activities. You can choose different time levels and different languages and voices you would like for your your prompt. In addition to this, Activity Tracker tracks how much time you spend on each task. You can view your results on a graph, print your results, or export them to an Excel file.

Here's the office description from the Activity Tracker site: Track all your daily activity and find how you spend your time with this cool little punchclock gadget. Print cool graph and get a log or timesheet of all your activities. Punch-in when you start and punch-out when done. Let the gadget alert you when you forget to punchin or punchout. Use it - for improving productivity, as a recorder, as stopwatch, to jot down all tasks, for project management, for time management, as a counter, timer,simple tracker, to track todo list, to simply track your progress, to find time spent in meeting and appointments, as a graphing tool. Be productive and effective with this gadget. Perfect for anyone - student, consultant, employee, employer.

Download Activity Tracker for your Google homepage

Gearing up to write . . . again!

It has been awhile since I've done some serious work on my dissertation. The holiday's came and then I had an illness. All of this taken together through off most of what I had hoped to accomplish during the holidays. So, there is nothing left to do but regroup.

Once again MindManager had been a useful tool. I had to devise a plan for finishing my literature review. It was as simple as adding due dates to the branches of my literature outline map. Here's the map with the plan.

State of the 21st Century World - Part 1

Heading into the last two years of the first decade of the 21^st century, global problems weigh on our collective consciousness. J. F. Rischard (2002), former World Bank vice-president for Europe cites twenty contemporary global problems (p. 66).

Table 1: Rishard’s 20 Global Issues

Sharing our planet:Issues involving the global commons	Sharing our humanity: Issues requiring a global commitment	Sharing our rule book: Issues needing a global regulatory approach
Global warming	Massive step-up in the fight against poverty	Reinventing taxation for the 21st century
Biodiversity and ecosystem losses	Peacekeeping, conflict preventions, combating terrorism	Biotechnology rules
Fisheries depletion	Education for all	Global financial architecture
Deforestation	Global infectious diseases	Illegal drugs
Water deficits	Digital divide	Trade, investment, and completion rules
Maritime safety and pollution	Natural disaster prevention and mitigation	Intellectual property rights
		E-commerce rules
		International labor and migration rules

These problems are by-products of two major forces (a) demographic explosion and (b) the new world economy. According to Rischard these major forces will introduce unprecedented stresses on the world. At the same time, the technological and economic revolutions fueling the new world economy will introduce unprecedented opportunities (p. 7). Nevertheless, Rischard asserts that, “for many urgent global issues the turnaround time is now, in the next two decades, not in the next half century” (p. 200). Additionally, he argues that there exists “an undeniable failure of the entire international setup and the world’s nation states at the task of fast and effective global problem-solving” (p. 201). This is the case because the exploding population causes an exponentiality of scarcity. Simultaneously, the new economy offers an exponentiality of plenitude. Together these forces create a crisis of complexity, because the rate of change exceeds traditional institutions capacity to change rapidly (p.38).

Although Rischard insists on a 20-year window of opportunity to deal with these global issues, he does not specify the consequences of failure to address them. He does offer a solution. Rischard calls for a move from hierarchal government to a system of networked governance. Central this concept is the creation of Global Issues Networks (GIN). Each GIN addresses a specific global problem. The composition of the GIN is comprised of three types of partners: (a) national governments concerned by or experienced in the issue, (b) international civil society organizations who can contribute individuals with deep knowledge of the issue, and (c) businesses that have both knowledge of the issue and the ability to represent other business (p. 172).

In summary, Rischard uses twenty global issues which he admits is not an exhaustive list, to call attention to the crises of complexity caused by exponential growth in world population and creation of wealth by the new world economy. Fueling this crisis is the inability traditional nation-states and other international governance institutions to keep pace with the rate of world change. Rischard’s work appears grounded on three assumptions (a) a general sense of global crisis of complexity, (b) a perceived inability of nation-states and other international governance organizations to address the sense of global crisis and (c) and an implicit failure of leadership (national and international) to effect the necessary changes in nation-states and international governance organizations.

Reference

Rischard, J. F. (2002). High noon: 20 global problems 20 years to solve them. New York: Basic Books.

Starting the Literature Review Today

Here's a draft of the introduction to the Lit. Review


The central concern of this study is “What does organizational leadership mean in a chaotic, nihilistic, and apocalyptic era?” I posit that applying Paul Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation to John’s Apocalypse offers a relevant response to this concern. This chapter provides a foundation from the scholarly literature supporting the appropriateness of the data source and the method of analysis in addressing this question.

Beginning this foundation, I answer from the literature two questions:
(1) Does the state of the 21st century world support the research question’s underlying assumption of a broadly chaotic, nihilistic, and apocalyptic contemporary reality?
(2) If there is support of this assumption, what evidence of chaos, nihilism, and apocalypticism exist in contemporary organizations?
In the course of answering these questions, I define chaos, nihilism, and apocalypticism.

Continuing the foundation, I turn to an examination of the current philosophical and theoretical models generally applied by leaders within their 21st century organizational realities. I explore the apparent inadequacy of positivistic epistemology to respond to the contemporary organizational context. Within the literature, Chaos Theory and theories of spirituality rooted in postmodern epistemology emerge as alternatives to theories grounded in positivistic epistemology. Consequently, a thorough discussion of these two theoretical orientations follows. As a part of this discussion, I define organizations and organizational leadership.

Furthering the foundation, I show from the literature how Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology philosophy offers a step forward in constructing theories and best practices in organizational leadership within contemporary reality. Here I discuss the current application of Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology to organizational leadership studies.

Concluding the foundation, I demonstrate from the literature the potential of John’s Apocalypse to speak meaningfully to contemporary reality in general and in specific to the realities of 21st century organizations. Finally, from the literature, I offer an explanation of the appropriateness of Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenological philosophy, and the theory of interpretation derived from it, in explaining and understanding John’s Apocalypse.

A Milestone - first chapter draft complete!

Since my last post, I've spent two weeks working in Africa. However, before I left the USA, I finally finished a reasonable draft of the first chapter of my dissertation. It got a good review from my dissertation chair. It's nice to have something about this dissertation that I can call somewhat finished.

In order to graduate in May, I really must finish my proposal by the end of December. That means two chapters must be finished in the next 20 days.