Two elements have been missing where I live (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) :  1)  A good clear brand to catch people's attention and 2) Someone to just make it happen.

Well, two elements have been missing until now. . .  announcing the dawn of Wikifax, the Halifax wiki.    Already there is a good amount of information and an amazing number of edits for a service that has only been out there 2 days or so.

If you didn't already know, a wiki is a website that can be editted by anyone.   The most famous Wiki is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.   In fact, Wikifax uses the same content system that Wikipedia uses (it's called MediaWiki), so if you are familiar with one, you will be familiar with the other.

Letting anyone edit the site is great because it enables a great deal of content to be added to the website without the bottlenecks that come about as you hire people to create copy, edit information, fix typos etc.   The only disadvantage is that wikis can turn into rotten messes if they do not have enough people engaged to "prune the bushes" and keep things organized.   That's why I'm promoting this thing -- because Wikifax needs you to help make sure it doesn't end up looking like my office desk.

Now, for my geeky purposes, I hope the wikifax people will look into providing a little api of sorts, so I can bring the content to the websites I manage.   How's about it, Wikifax?

• Poor Quality of Work
  • Procrastination on important tasks means that you have less time in which to complete them, which invariably leads to a rushed, poor quality of work.
• Time Pressure
  • Leaving things until the last minute results in anxiety and time pressure as you go all out to complete tasks before the deadline.
• Failure to Achieve Important Goals
  • This can be one of the most depressing and frustrating aspects of procrastination. Procrastinators may have goals and aspirations like everyone else, yet never get around to pursuing or realizing them.
• Missed Opportunities
  • Procrastination causes you to miss wonderful opportunities that you never even consider or explore. This can lead to guilt and regret as you realize what you are missing.
• Waste of the Present
  • Wasting the present is probably the biggest cost of procrastination. Consistent procrastination leads to an unfulfilled life lacking in accomplishments and enjoyment.

However, there's one problem with Todoist: it's great for ants, but humans shouldn't be "mere" ants. I mean of course that humans should have a vision that views the big picture & not just the track of tasks. & the big picture includes possible targets one can navigate to, & the predicted value from reaching them. As GTD sensei David Allen says, one should have the Imagined Outcome in mind, & not just the next actions to execute.

This is why I wish to switch to tools such as LifeTick, which are goal oriented & value(s) driven. LifeTick seems to be following a clear methodology, enforcing the user to derive concrete reachable goals from his core values, & their weights. This should enable users to focus on targets, & their importance, & not just on the next task at hand.

Compared to Todoist, the interface is a bit more slick & user-friendly - optimized for new users. But I like it as well. Unlike Todoist, LifeTick isn't completely free - the free edition has limited features & other limitations, but I'm more than pleased to pay them the 20$/year for the unlimited version & would have probably donated it anyway.

So, I wish to migrate to Goal oriented tools, such as LifeTick. Will I make it? Am I more than an ant? Not sure, I'll post an update if/when I find out.

For those of you who haven't been following my trial of a GTD Hybrid System - that is, one using paper combined with electronic tools - you may want to check out my original post on the subject first. To read some of my observations as the trial unfolded please check out my first update, my second update and my third update.

Let me say upfront that this has been an interesting exercise for a person like me who loves electronic gadgets and is around technology all day. However, I have had just as much fun writing in my Moleskine Cahier and I'm very pleased with this choice. I looked at bulkier notebooks initially and they didn't feel right. This was slim, light and yet not so tiny that I felt like I was writing on a postage stamp. Using a good pen made a difference too.

The page divisions by context worked quite well - at this early stage I haven't used too many pages for each one and so haven't come close to running out. The small Post-It tabs have not bent or frayed. My most recent weekly review flowed really nicely using my Moleskine, my BlackBerry to access my calendar and a coffee in a noisy cafe. The last point is not trivial. My hybrid system is very portable and allows me to leave my workspace more quickly, easily than my all electronic one did. And by changing locations, even to a noisy cafe, I was able to really focus, uninterrupted. It was a great feeling when I walked back into work an hour later.

I had thought I would miss the ability in Outlook to drag an email and automatically create a task out of it (which is a great feature). Instead I have found that I'm really focusing on what the next action is from the email and what I write down to accurately, succinctly define it. I didn't pay that much attention previously. I am definitely reviewing my next action lists more frequently than I was and as a consequence getting more done. Next actions that have been hanging around a while stand out and I have been having lots of conversations with myself to work out if I'm still committed to them or if they should be moved to Someday/Maybe....or even deleted!

So, overall this trial has been a great success for me. I was feeling no attraction to my electronic lists and therefore not feeling good about what wasn't getting done. Now I feel reinvigorated. I feel like and I am getting more done. I think it has been important to allow enough time to really evaluate a different way of working properly. It does feel like a habit now to use my Moleskine for next actions and I am going to continue my GTD system this way for the foreseeable future. At some point I am sure my circumstances will change and I'll need to re-evaluate my setup again.

Now if I could just work out a reason why I need an iPhone......

Got any thoughts or ideas of your own on the shift to paper?

Please use the comments area to discuss.

I am trying to implement GTD (Getting Things Done) as my productivity system.

I am hoping that if I do I will be able to make more blog posts. I always find that I do not have enough time to make blog posts. The following link is a good place to start to learn about GTD: http://www.triptronix.net/ishbadiddle/archives/2005/06/19/01.53.20/

If you're into personal development blogs, you've probably heard about the 30-day trial and you've probably heard that it takes approximately a month, or 30 days, to make a habit out of something. And if you've read any blog post about this 30 day idea, you probably know how adamant the writers are about focusing ONLY, making it a really high priority essentially, on that one item for 30 days straight to form a habit.

So if we go by the 1 habit every month idea, we're limited to 12 habits per year. How could we ... raise that number?

I approached that question, while smoking outside before bed, with some solid modeling software in mind. At work, five times a week, I'm rubbing noses with this modeling software called Pro/Engineer. I've learned a lot of pro-tips from the experts (people I work with) without even having a firm grasp of the basics - I'd never even heard of the program before three months ago. With this software, there is the significant feature of "assembling" parts. And, most of the parts will have a parent part. THATS MY ANSWER RIGHT THERE! In pro/E, if you delete the parent part, all of its children parts will be deleted as well.

Flip-flop and then apply that same parent-child relationship to a 30-day trial. How could one have a parent 30 day trial that had, lets say, 12 children parts which were part of the parent? Think for a sec about that ... if you want.

My theory is that if you could schedule out, on paper, a list of items to repeat every day for 30 days, and make your 30 day trial be something like "DO THE LIST FOR 30 DAYS STRAIGHT" with the understanding that the list will not change in those 30 days, you could theoretically kill 12 birds (the 12 daily items on that list) with one stone (or schedule/paper/whatever).

How's that for efficiency!

Now, all of this is coming from a person who has never done a 30 day trial. Anyone wanna test out my idea? Or has anyone tried something like that?

Here's some reading material from blogs that like the 30 day idea with 1 item every 30 days:

30 days to success
the beginners guide to the 30 day trial
the beginners guide to the 30 day trial part 2

Were you looking forward to all the cool GTD apps (that's "Get Things Done" for those of you not in the geek loop) for the iPhone 3G / iPhone / iPod Touch 2.0 so that you could keep your increasingly hectic life organized, but have had to let those dreams die because it wasn't in your budget, well here is a good alternative.

The Hipster PDA is a concept put together by Merlin Mann (AKA Hotdogsladies) on his site 43Folders.com. Basically it is a dozen recipe cards held together by a binder clip. The Hipster PDA supports such apps as, Notes, Sketch, Lists, and Long Division, unfortunately like the iPhone it doesn't support copy & paste, unless you upgrade to the version with scissors and a glue stick.  Merlin also recommends picking up The Fisher Bullet pen, which I have to say looks pretty awesome, I've always wanted to be able to write through butter, or in zero gravity.

Seriously though, isn't it a good idea for everyone to carry around some kind of pen and paper type configurations? Think about all the times you've needed to write down someone's phone number, email, or address. I know that I could benefit from carrying something like this... Although I do have an iPod Touch.

Alle meine geliebte Applikationen haben eine Inspektorpalette. Kaum hat man sie kurz benutzt, schon steht sie einem im Weg. Sie ist immer im Weg, selbst wenn man sie gerade nutzt: dann verdeckt sie im Zweifelsfall das Fenster, das die Informationen hat, die in den Inspektor übertragen werden sollen. Also muss man sie greifen und zur Seite schieben, wo sie das Fenster verdeckt, das man als nächstes aufzurufen gedenkt. Also muss man sie schon wieder packen und in die andere Richtung verfrachten.

Ehemals (»früher« und »damals« unterliegen je mittlerweile zahlreichen Trademarks) war bei MacJournal der Inspektor fest verankert. Das waren noch Zeiten. Da wusste man, wo alles steht und das das seine Richtigkeit hat. Heute schwirrt auch bei MacJournal der Inspektor abgehoben kreuz—die—quer über die Displays.

Das ist doch kein Zustand!

Einzig Scrivener und StoryMill machen den Inspektor noch zur festen Größe. Darum:

Liebe Softwareentwickler …

(das ist jetzt ein offener Brief oder Aufruf)

gebt uns Nutzern doch die Möglichkeit, frei zu entscheiden. Das wird doch kein allzugroßes Ding sein, den Inspektor einen festen Platz am aktuellen Fenster der Applikation einzurichten, mit gleichzeitiger Option, es da abzurupfen und dann frei auf dem Display zu verteilen.

OmniFocus is too structured only because it doesn't allow enough depth in controlling deep projects (projects with sub projects that have their own sub projects...ad nauseam...).  It does have folders (aka groups), but that's a completely different concept and is a manual organization operation.  And, as I'll get into more when looking at Things, automation is OmniFocus's BEST feature.  It does, however, allow for hierarchal contexts.  This is a good thing overall, but even there I'm looking for a simple cross between relational organization and hierarchal organization.  Then again, nothing that I'm aware of offers that right now, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Things has projects, areas, tags, and people.  All good things, allowing finer control over tasks than OmniFocus.  But it doesn't allow for anything but tags to be entered (associated) during task entry.  Odd.  What this means is that project and area associations must be manually created after the task is created.  But not by dragging (although that is supposed to be coming).  Instead it's all down via a wizard-like menu system.  This is the definition of kludgy and is Things biggest limitation.  Why?  Because when I'm entering new tasks it needs to be very fast and I shouldn't be required to do ANYTHING else to organize them beyond that initial entry; unless of course I want to change something because I didn't do something initially--like entering too little information, the wrong information, or whatever.

...and they're both only on Mac.  I think Macs, and more specifically OS X, is great.  But I do have Windows machines both at work and home.  Why, oh why, must I use a Mac to have good task management software?  Despite my criticisms I do like both of these programs and think they're better than anything available for Windows.  At a minimum a nice Ajax enabled web client is in order...at least they both have iPhone apps.

So now I'm back to Things, from Cultured Code, which I had tried before. It has a much looser implementation of GTD, which put me off the first time I tried. But it uses tags in a way that allows them to serve as contexts (part of the GTD methodology), as well as tagging tasks for other purposes. Since I understand GTD well and have used it for a couple years now, I have internalize the use of contexts and I don't need the tool to discipline me to use them, so tags work perfectly for me. Cynthia and I have been lusting after iPhones and will be getting 3G iPhones soon, so this week's announcement of Things for the iPhone was a trigger to take another look at Things.

I think that Things will be my GTD answer but the choice of a GTD application is very individual since it gets down to not only your approach to GTD but aesthetic and work habit considerations that are different for every person. I found an excellent review of four of the key GTD apps for the Mac and commented on my experiences with Inbox and Things at greater length at Putting Things Off, a blog labeled by its author, Nick Cernis, as "The laid-back productivity blog." Since Nick has gone the paper route, as described in his eBook todoodlist, it is interesting that his review of the Mac GTD apps is one of the best. If you are looking for a GTD app for the Mac, check out the review.

If you are interested in GTD and use Outlook on Windows, I highly recommend the NetCentric GTD add-in for Outlook which I have been using on my Windows work machines for several years. It is a very faithful implementation of the GTD methodology with outstanding integration with Outlook's tasks.

I have the book and the audio book and use both to help me out.  Getting Things Done (GTD) is a philosophy of life in many respects and a system which is very very practical and useful.  As with most things that require you to do something on a regular basis, you have to get a system implemented if you are going to be efficient about it and not loose yourself in the mundane details.  GTD gives you a grid through which you see your tasks helping you to focus on what is most important.  His philosophy is first of all that you need to get everything out of your head and not use your memory, faulty as it is, to keep track of everything.  Everything must be put into a system that you both trust and use regularly.  If it is put into something to track tasks that you do not trust or you do not use regularly, your mind will subconsciously hold onto that task and it clutters your mind up more than you can imagine.

Here is a simple chart that you will find in the book which give you an idea of what the process that Allen uses is all about.

At $8.99 for the paperback, this is a no brainer purchase which will help your productivity more than you can imagine.

I do get a little up in arms when I hear about pretentious snark about someone's idea.    More of it was thought to appear on librarian.net, although it seems it may not have been snark after all?

Having skimmed over the forum, one of the concerns I have at the outset is that the ideas appear to be mimicing, rather than replacing the DDC.     I would like to see people using their minds more about this issue.   Mimicing is a definite no-no from an aesthetic point of view, and it makes me question what the point of such a replacement in the first place?   I say if you are going to do something new, make it new.   Make it noticeably 2008, rather than an updated 18-hundred-whatever.

The other issue I have is that thinking about book order in the abstract is quite different from action thinking.   Considering that this replacement will be largely about placing books on a relative shelf order, I think we should be developing that standard while actually shelving books.   So, here is my idea:

• Go to your local public library's catalogue and using any random selection process of your choice, place a hold on 20 or more books.
• Put those books in a shelf order, that makes sense to you.
• Try an alternative shelf-order.
• One more alternative shelf-order.
• Post those titles and shelf orders to the Library Thing forum on this issue
• Explain how you came to these shelf orders, which one you liked the best and why.

Or you can do something else similar.   The broad point i want to make is that, if this thing is going to replace DDS, then it ought to be based on some sort of new foundations, hopefully considering not only what the user thinks, but how the user will eventually use the system.  The only way to get at how people use something is through action.

All in all, I love this idea and kudos to Tim Spalding for proposing it.    And by the way, he is looking for a leader for this project -- someone who will facilitate the process without dominating it.   You got the guts?  Go for it!

최근 노무현 전 대통령이 재임 기간 남긴 기록물이 800만건이 넘는다고 한다. 개인적인 메모까지 포함되어 있는 지도 모르겠지만, 어쨌거나 대단한 양이다. 개인 적으로 짐 정리를 하다가도 생각하고 싶지 않은 기록은 버리기 마련인데-물론 나중에 꼭 후회한다-그런 일이 있을 것이라 상상하더라고 대단한다.

관련하여 청와대의 e지원(知園) 시스템은 노무현 전 대통령이 직접 개발에 참여 한 것으로 알고 있다. 실제로 프로그래밍이나 디자인에 어느 정도 관여했는지는 모르겠지만, 예전 부산 시장 선거에서 토론회에 나왔을 때, 당시 시정 운영에 관련하여 연구한 내용을 바탕으로 개발한 소프트웨어에 대한 소개를 한 것이 기억나는 걸로 보아 최소한 나보다는 뛰어난 컴맹이 아닐까 상상된다. 그리고 그는 누가 시장으로 당선되더라도 시스템과 그 정보를 제공하겠다고 했다. 물론 그때 누가 당선되었는지 기억나질 않으며, 소프트웨어가 제공되었는지는 모르겠지만 분명 사용되지는 않았을 것이다.

이명박 현 대통령은 얼마나 많은 기록물을 남길까?

Você já teve dificuldades em se concentrar para escrever um texto no computador, como um post, por exemplo? Existem alguns programas que facilitam nesse momento, como o WriteRoom, (para Mac, $25) e seus similares gratuitos, como o PyRoom, escrito em Python + GTK, e o JDarkRoom, feito em Java. Há ainda uma opção online, o Writer.

Todos estes programas, de uma forma geral, fazem com que a tela fique livre de distrações, para "fomentar o processo criativo". Não fica tão fácil perder a concentração com o editor em tela cheia, com uma letra verde e sem precisar do mouse.

Ein gutes Tool um in der weiten Welt des World Wide Web am Ball zu bleiben ist die Bookmarking Funktion. Ist doch klar: Wenn euch Passagen in einem Buch wichtig sind, dann markiert ihr die auch durch einen Marker oder durch ein Post-It, nicht wahr? Deswegen benutze ich Mister Wong, eine Lesezeichen Plattform im Internet, die es mir leichter macht, Seiten auf die ich im Internet stoße nicht zu vergessen. Wichtig ist die Tag (sprich: Täg) Funktion: zu jeder Seite gebe ich mindestens einen Begriff/eine Assoziation ein, die ich mit dieser Seite verbinde. Finde ich zum Beispiel einen Musiker, der coole Songwriter Musik macht, tagge ich dieses Lesezeichen auf der Social-Bookmarking Plattform mit "musiker", "singer", "songwriter" und "gitarre". Wenn ich dann später nochmal auf dieser zentralen Sammelplattform nachschaue, um einem Freund die Seite zu zeigen, grenze ich meine Suche einfach mit "songwriter" ein und habe dann unter den suchergebnissen auf alle Fälle den gesuchten Musiker.

Vorteile:

• Webbasiert, also von jedem Rechner aus erreichbar
• schnelle, unkomplizierte Speicherung des Links
• Leichte Suche
• Kollaborative Arbeit möglich, indem mehrere zum gleichen Thema Links setzen
• Erweiterte Suchfunktionen durch User-übergreifende Suche
• Zusätzliche Möglichkeit zur Google-Suche zum Auffinden von relevanten Internetseiten

Also, meine Empfehlung ist Mister Wong, jedoch sind vor allen Dingen im Amerika del.icio.us, digg.com und technorati.com sehr beliebt.

Übrigens: Bookmarks, die ich häufig besuche

• toby-faix.blogspot.com
• Multimediablog.net - Mein Multimediadozent an der RFH, wenn du Web 2.0 kennenlernen willst ist das eine gute Adresse
• tautoko.info
• Ehrensenf.de

Adding to-dos

I usually add to-dos using the Quick Entry panel.

I have this mapped to F2 and it can be activated no matter what application I am in (so long as Things is running). I don’t usually add any details such as tags at this point. I just click return, the to-do will be sent to the Things Inbox, and I can get on with whatever I am doing.

I often turn emails into to-dos. If you drag an email onto the Things dock icon it will open the Quick Entry panel with a link to the email as a note. (There is a bug in Things at the moment - you have to drag the email onto the dock icon twice.) Similarly a URL can be dragged onto the dock icon to create a to-do with the link as a note.

And of course I sometimes create to-dos directly within Things.

Organising to-dos

Next I add tags which are analogous  to GTD contexts. I find tags most useful for keeping track anything I want to read. I then add a work or leisure tag and another with an estimate of how long it will take to read. Then, say I find myself with a half hour spare that I’d like to spend reading. I select reading, 30min and either leisure or work depending on the mood I’m in. And, hey presto, I have a list of suitable articles to peruse.

If a to-do is part of a project I drag it to the appropriate project in the Projects list in the sidebar. If it is a single task I drag it to the Next list. The Next list contains all active to-dos (whether individual or part of a project), not just next actions. I have my Next list set to display only the top item in a project thus creating a Next Action list.

My favourite feature of Things is the Today list. First thing in the morning I quickly go through Next and tag anything I intend to complete today with a yellow star (by clicking command-1). These will then show up in the Today list. I find this tremendously useful. During the day I only need to look at Today. Only once everything is ticked do I look at the Next and Project lists to see what else I could be getting on with.

The Scheduled list is also extremely useful for me. All my recurring housework jobs are here: daily, weekly and five-weekly cleaning rotas. I also have other recurring reminders such as to water the houseplants every week. The Scheduled list also allows me to create to-dos for a future date. For example I have created a reminder to book my daughter’s swimming lessons. The pool won’t be taking bookings for another two weeks so there is no point having the to-do in the Next list at the moment. Instead it is in the Scheduled list and will added to Today on 28th July.

Finally the Areas list. 

I use this to keep a list of projects that are ongoing and will never be completed. Take “Things to read for work” for example. This isn’t a project that can be completed. (Well, not until I retire and that’s well over twenty years away!) It is continually having new items added (and at a much faster rate than I am managing to read them unfortunately). I like that I can separate these ongoing projects. It keeps everything nice and tidy.

Things is still a beta application and as such there are still features missing. There are only two features that would really improve it for me. Firstly, iPhone access (which is coming soon). Secondly, the ability to postpone or set a due date for a to-do within a project (rather than the whole project). I’m sure this will be dealt with by the time Things is finally released. It is due later in the summer and I will be very happy to hand over $39 for an application that not only is a pleasure to use but also makes my life a lot easier.

Firefox only: Our favorite bookmark syncing Firefox extension, Foxmarks, can now sync select sets of bookmarks to certain computers you set up, like at home or at the office. To get started with selective syncing in Foxmarks, log onto My Foxmarks with your usual login, and in the Tools menu, choose "Manage Sync Profiles." Assign bookmarks to your sync profiles—like family bookmarks to the Home profile and office links to the Work profile. Then, on each computer you use Foxmarks on, make sure you've got the latest version 2.1.0.12 installed in Firefox. In the settings dialog, on the Profiles tab, choose which profile that browser instance should sync. While Foxmarks doesn't sync anything else of your Firefox user profile other than bookmarks—the way Google Sync used to, and Mozilla Weave does—this is still a really useful feature for compartmentalizing your bookmarks and making sure sensitive or personal links only show up on the computers you want them on. (via lifehacker)

Related Posts

All but two of the categories suit me. Can you guess what they are?

Also, if you use other DIY links on a frequent basis, would you mind sharing them in the reply box to this post?

• Isaac Newton Organizer
• OrgMode
• DevTodo
• Remind
• todo.txt