When I see something interesting on twitter or tinternet I email myself a link. This happens a lot when I’m busy – I snatch five minutes to mess around on the interweb but have no time to read that interesting article or blog post. And often that kitkat time is somewhere with a dodgy signal so I see a tantalising tweet and spent an age trying to load the article it is referring to.
The upshot is an inbox full of emails that I make a conscious effort to lead marked as unread until they are read and discarded or read and acted upon (for example by incorporation into a blog post). This is efficient but anxiety provoking. I cannot stand having unread mail. That little red circle on my iphone burns a hole in my handbag: “7 unread messages. 7 unread messages. 8 unread messages. 10 unread messages”. It cannot be ignored. It is an easy task left undone.
And so I need to purge. Today I have a number of unread emails (not to mention a multitude of browser tabs). All of which I have sent myself by way of masochistic self-reminder. Humour me (in reverse chronological order):
4 Jan – a series of tweets relating to a twitter spat between other legal bloggers / journalists, which I was struggling to comprehend but which I do not care sufficiently about to unpick.
8 Jan – a link to a webpage about a “Mother who published confidential family court papers on Facebook charged with contempt of court”. I’m not linking to it because, on review, it looks like it could contain material subject to an injunction or general privacy rules (who knows, but those of us at the mercy of the LSC for our income are naturally risk averse). And as a rule of thumb I never trust any website with a black background, particularly if it puts me at risk of contempt of court.
That’s not, I acknowledge, an exciting start.
9 Jan – Family lawyers warn of the devastating impact of legal aid changes – a Resolution press release about that dratted LASPO.
9 Jan – link to a Guardian article about the King’s study showing that the Government has done it’s sums on the back of a fag packet: Legal aid cuts will save less than half government’s forecast, study finds
Today – a link to my offspring, which I thought I might investigate further. But not tonight.
Also today – a link to http://www.divorcefinancetoolkit.co.uk/ for reasons which now completely elude me.
A link to the recently published Q3 court statistics showing (in a nutshell) that private law, dv and ancillary relief work is in decline whilst care is up (again).
Safari reminds me that I was going to do something with the recently published guidance about MARACs and disclosure into family proceedings. I haven’t, but here’s a link and a cut and pasted excerpt which looks useful:
Three key principles underpin this guidance –
A MARAC is not a legal entity and therefore the owner of information shared at a MARAC is the original supplying agency;
MARACs should only be required to disclose information by an order of the court;
Any request for information must be an informed request setting out the nature of the information sought i.e. there must be no ‘fishing expedition’.
It also says requests for information should be addressed to the MARAC chair.
Also languishing in a long forgotten browser window is an article by Vera Baird about how “The coalition does not understand women”, an article that I really OUGHT to have read by ObiterJ on a case concerning children, and a piece in Community Care suggesting that Social Workers are critical of the work of Guardians.
Do with that what you will. I am now down to only 3 open browser windows and have no little red “new messages” circle. I feel much better now, thanks. Sleep well.
Oooh – it’s a slippery slope emailing reminders to yourself. It started with links for me too (although bookmark sync in Chrome has largely removed that) but it’s now got to the stage where I email general notes, reminders or ‘to do’ things to myself – often on a daily basis.
That’s in addition to my general ‘to do’ list in google docs of course.
The whole ’emailing yourself’ is a messy 2001 kind of way to work, but it’s the one sure-fire way of adding a reminder which I’ll be sure not to miss.
And deleting that email once you’ve done the task is hugely more rewarding than striking it through/off your to do list for whatever reason.
I guess if it ain’t broke… 🙂
I know there are slicker ways to do it, but it works when you are out at court and realise you need to do something when you get back. I have a tendency to forget to look at my to do list, but I always check my email when I get back.
Actually there were some handy links in your list. I’ve now found at least two other blogs I didn’t know existed and which I really must read!
I’ve taken to ‘favouriting’ tweets which have links in I wish to read. It means I can find them easily again but avoids the dreaded ‘unread emails’ issue.
I used to do that, but it’s a very public way of flagging tweets, and it gives the impression that you approve of their contents or the material they link to, which sometimes I don’t!