Life Saver

Finally, I have time to blog because I took this piece of advice...

So it dawned on me to group my feeds by the way in which I want to read them, not by topic. If there were some feeds that I didn’t mind missing, and some of which I wanted to read every single word, I should organize them that way, not by their putative subject areas.

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Call Me OCD If You Want

...but some days, this is the only way I stay sane at work.

3 Steps to a Permanently Clear Desk

The important thing to remember is that you must have a system in place, and you must teach yourself to follow the system. Otherwise, you just clean your desk, and it gets messy again.

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Your Own Worst Enemy

Once again, someone says something I always knew but never knew how to put into words. This is why you are your own worst enemy.

From Dar Kush:

Your ego identifies itself with whatever your “steady state” is—usually your current self, but if you are in a state of flux, whatever your most stable condition might have been.... Whatever your automatic habits would turn you into? That’s your ego. Take your concentration off for a few weeks, and you’re right back where you started.... Remember: if you don’t change your internal image, your ego-identity, you’ll have to use conscious attention to compensate. And trust me: your conscious mind is the smallest, weakest part of you. Eventually, it will LOSE. [emphasis mine]

Pretty much falls in line with the whole GTD idea about how smart your conscious mind isn't. This is why it's never just a matter of sheer willpower, but of executing a methodical plan to accomplish whatever you want to accomplish.

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Getting Things Done Sunday

Not much reading or scribbling done so far today. But what I have done is dumped my brain. Most of it, anyway. Between that and moving a couple of major projects forward today, I’ve been feeling a lot better.

This is why I’m going to try to get back into some habits I’ve let slack lately.

1. I bought a discount copy of POWER SLEEP by James Maas. I need to get my sleep habits back on track.
   
2. My days have to begin and end at my desk, processing my virtual and real inboxes.
   
3. I need my weekly reviews again.

Of course if you’re not up on the whole GTD thing, you can get up to speed here.

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Google's Bitch

Geek To Live: Getting Things Done with Google Notebook - Lifehacker

Fans and followers of the Getting Things Done personal productivity system have hacked all sorts of ways to GTD in different applications, from Microsoft Outlook to plain text to Gmail. But one of Google Labs' less-hyped applications, Notebook, is very well-suited to instant capture and easy processing of your GTD lists.

This article just came out the other day, but it's already been what--a couple of weeks--since I've turned into Google's bitch.

I don't use Google Notebook in exactly this way (I do this with my email), but it's this kind of thinking, this kind of ease that's kept me more or less organized.

Next time (eventually): Maybe some screenshots of all the different Google services I use.

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Inbox Makeover

Well, email's not quite a home, but I gave my main inbox a makeover, deleted a bunch of folders, eliminated 2/3 of my filters, and junked over 1,000 old messages with information I acted on, couldn't file, or that I had no further use for whatsoever. It was about 90 minutes of work spread out over a day, and that's only because I was such a packrat. Now, it's all streamlined.

Of course, part of the streamlining process meant deactivating the forwarding of the blog's email account (incidentally, the same addy I use for message boards and stuff) to my main email. So, if I'm a little slow(er) to respond to comments and such, I apologize now. But don't fret. I'm experimenting with gmail's POP access, so I'll be checking that account (along with my RSS feeds) on a regular basis.

Anyway, check out the article. Keep yourself sorted and sane.

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Fill In the Blank

I've come across a few things lately that were designed to make your life easier. For me, at least, they seem to be living up to that promise. It makes me wonder, to paraphrase Tom Baker a la his Symphony voice-over outtakes...

How did the world ever exist before fcuking _____________ came into it?

DEL.ICIO.US
My first and favorite Web 2.0 app. Yes, it's meant to be a "social bookmarking" site where you can share your links with whoever. Fine, fine, I'm not (all that) greedy about my links. This saves me the trouble of not only saving bookmarks, but having to organize them. This does it all for me.

SCRAPBOOK
This is by far my favorite Firefox extention! Ever wish you could save a webpage on your hard drive and cut out a bunch of unneeded crap or plaster sticky notes on a particular section of a page? Now you can. No more jotting down a link or saving the freaking webpage on my hard drive, and then forgetting what the heck I wanted to do with it! It's invaluable if you do even the slightest amount of research using teh Intarwub. Now, I can clear out my bookmarks!

DIY PLANNER
Based on David Allen's Getting Things Done, I've come to love these forms. No, I haven't given up completely on the old Franklin Covey planner. I deliberately paid about $100 for the thing about seven years ago because I knew that was the only way I'd keep using the thing. I can't let go of some of their calendar layouts, though--I'd rather keep buying them than printing them out anyway. But I don't know how I've gotten by without some of these DIY Planner forms. Actually, it's not just the forms. They're nothing I couldn't custom-make myself using a myriad of the tools at my disposal. But, I've always hated reinventing the wheel. Anyway, it's the concept behind the DIY forms that I like--for example: To-Do lists with enough space to make note of the context of that task.

BACKPACK
I've heard people rave about Backpack, which is a nice little Web 2.0 application that's basically a nice task list. So, I decided to give it a whirl. I wouldn't depend on it, for the simple fact that it's all online (although there is a downloadable version for your HD for Mac). But, it's nice for seeing everything about a project all in one page; no flipping through sheafs of notes and lists. I've chosen to rely on something offline, but people could do a lot worse than to use this as your project organizer. If nothing else, I can now take those annoying little text files of lists and random info (I thought I was the only one who did that. I was wrong) and put them all in one place. Really, do yourself a favor and check it out.

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