Me and My Day Planner

I have a green day planner and a black moleskin notebook and they go with me everywhere. The moleskin is where I take interview notes, because audio recording makes most people uncomfortable here, and because direct quotes are not as important at this stage as the essence of the information conveyed. In the front of that notebook I have my cell phone number and an exorbitant reward for anyone who finds it (lost or stolen) and returns it to me…no questions asked.

I have a planner, which is a good thing, because I would be hopeless managing my schedule here without it. Every day contains notations about who I am interviewing where and when, plus usually some indication of the directions to get there because there is no such thing as a rationalized address. The day usually also includes indications of who I am supposed to call to set up an interview, as well as who referenced me to that person. Days often also include details that I want to look up and download from the internet: a report from the Ministry of Finance’s webpage, a paper from The Bank of Ghana, the survey summary from the Association of Ghanaian Industries, the CV for a particular academic who does related work and download articles. That sort of thing.

This planner is the el-cheapo-est one that they had at Target on the day that I decided I needed a planner. I think it was $2.50. But organizationally it is fabulous. I love the way it is laid out, so it has always fit the bill. It is laid out by week, and the boxes for the days are beg enough to write in. it has a section in the back for recording to-do lists. Anyone who has seen me make lists knows how this warms my little heart. But recently I noticed a feature I had previously overlooked: each week has some motivational quote at the top.

Some are kind of touchy feely: “Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge” –Audre Lorde. Or overly obvious and cliché: “I believe that life is a learning experience” –Gail Devers. But the last few weeks, when I have been out getting interviews have been more a kick in the butt towards action:
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
“Distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.” –Marie Anne Du Deffand
“To tend, unfailingly, unflinchingly, towards a goal, is the secret of success.” –Anna Pavlova

This has been strangely useful, because my dissertation involves at least two distinct phases, plus pheriphery informational interviews throughout. First I have to survey approximately 20-30 local experts on their perceptions of bureaucratic quality in the Ghanaian government. Then I use that information to select cases. This means I have to start over again and again. There is no getting in with one group and then comfortably returning to that group day after day. There is just getting up the guts to call another person who has not yet heard of you and sell the project and convince them to give me time. Then when I have cases picked out, there is once again the starting of asking permission to study that group from several supervisors in the hierarchy. The work is fascinating and engaging, but all the starting can sometimes be trying. Especially when it is 95 degrees outside and I am already caked in alternating layers of sweat, dust and pollution.

I’ll grant that some of the quotes are pretty decent, and the part of me that did public speaking in high school still has affection for a rousing quotation from some long dead source of wisdom. Ultimately thought, there is something motivational, but it is not so much from the quotes themselves: rather it is the hovering threat that my potential for inaction might be shamed by some hinky quotation in some cheap day planner.