David Seah - Better Living Through New Media » The Printable CEO

David Seah has a very clever method for making sure he stays focused on the kinds of activities that bring him and his growing business the highest value. He basically scores himself a weighted grade for how valuable each completed task is to his core goal of growing his business. Ooooo...SAT bubbles!

As stupid as this system may sound, it’s actually working. When I get to fill in a bubble, I feel a little surge of pleasure…I’ve been conditioned by standardized testing, apparently. I also get visual confirmation that I’ve done something to move my business forward. This is an interesting example of feedback in a game design sense; over the course of a week, it’s easy to evaluate your progress at any given time. It’s also easy to pick something to do, based on what you’ve done before. The bubble chart becomes a kind of game board in itself. Instead of feeling guilty for not getting to all your tasks on your ToDo list, feel good that you did make progress. Look upon your worksheet for the proof, and feel the sense of accomplishment in your gut!

He reports back a month later:

You can't spell "success" without "suck." A technology update full of laughter, tears, and Yosemite Sam-like hollerin'. And you might just learn something.

I live in browser tabs. Whether I'm in Safari or Firefox, I'm constantly sending links to a new tab (CMD-click in either app). It's something that most geeks take for granted but--I can tell you, I've seen the browser stats--there's still a lot of folks out there living in one Window. (*observes solemn moment of silence*)...My question to you is: how are you using tabs and tab sets?

There's a really good, evolving page on the Wiki about tips for Watching Less TV. Some of the most immediately useful advice comes in the "Dealing with channel surfing" section:

43 Folders: The 'to have done list' (mp3)

Don't get freaked out by the items on your to-do list; think of your tasks in terms of what they'll mean to you once they're done. (07:36)

A quick round-up of some recent 43 Folders posts people have enjoyed:

Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times

_New York Times_ Select subscribers (coughFreeTrialcough) can login to preview an article by Clive Thompson that runs in the Sunday Magazine. It's called "Meet the Life Hackers" and it's a terrific overview of how people, companies, and products are responding to information overload and our (sometimes self-imposed) culture of interruption.

Danny and I pop up, as well as heroes like Mary Czerwinski and the late Bluma Zeigarnik. Clive did a hell of a job with a big and complicated topic, and I'd encourage you to check out the full article when it becomes available for free (Saturday night?). It's really good--I'd never heard, for example, about the research on interrupting telegraph operators. Awesome.

Update 2005-10-15 19:04:08

Now available online for free: Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times

Extended excerpts on Danny and the Genesis of the life-hacking movement:

rethink(ip) - Controlling RSS Overload...Animal House Style

Good idea for managing the RSS feeds you think you might be able to live without:

Most aggregators allow you to create "groups" for your blogs. I have groups for "blawgs," "bored," "technology," etc. (see a picture below). The most important group of all is called "Probation." Into the Probation group goes every new blog I add to my aggregator. EVERY one. Consider it a quarantine tank for your RSS aquarium. Once a month, go through your Probation group and cull the herd, promoting some to the big leagues, while giving others the boot.

At a more byzantine stage, I did something kind of similar to this--but in less-effective reverse.

Escape My Head: TTTk, Travel Tinker Trouble Kit

Justin has been working on a "Travel Tinker Trouble Kit" (TTTk, natch), which he conceived "to provide access to a variety of tools and supplies at a moment's notice." The initial list included:

Boing Boing: Archiving email on Gmail

Mark at Boing Boing shares a great, no-brainer tip for making sure all your mail gets backed up to Gmail automagically.

I asked people to resend certain emails, including Charles Platt, and he gave me this great tip: set up a rule in Mac's Mail.app to send a copy of every email that goes in and out over to a Gmail account. That way, you'll always have a searchable archive of all the email you send and receive.

And, of course, I heartily second Mark's love for the indispensable SuperDuper.

Reader Jeff Click emailed to re-remind me of an idea I'd meant to act on last holiday season and never did: the 43 Folders Geek Gift Guide. Whee, presents! I'm also thinking of opening the floor to people who want to write mini-reviews of beloved schwag for use in the guide.

So, assuming a bunch of you are geeks or have a cuddly little geek that you love, what would you like to see covered in the guide? So far I'm thinking:

Recent sites suggested by you guys.

MailTemplate

This is terrific news. One of my must-have Mac tools has been MailTemplate which gives you a huge amount of flexibility in creating template/boilerplate responses to frequent email messages. Frankly, I use about 30 or so templates that cover 80% of my repeat mail issues, and I simply couldn't get through the day without it.

Unfortunately MailTemplate languished a bit while its talented developer wrangled some legal stuff. Well, now it's been acquired, it's back, and you should shoot straight over and download yourself a copy. Available for both Mail.app and Entourage. $14.95. Licenses start selling on 10/14.

I've flipped on this staged version of the site redesign so I can do some testing, iron out some bugs, and see how the load will be handled by WordPress.

Lifestyle tips, from the weird to the useful - baltimoresun.com

Breezy overview of those wacky sites with their productivity and life hacks.

Especially nice to see digital ink for cool sites like Deeper Motive, Tricks of the Trade, and Slacker Manager (as well as the usual suspects). Diversification: good.

Following on the idea of the procrastination dash and Jeff’s progressive dash, I’ve been experimenting with a squirelly new system to pound through my procrastinated to-do list. Brace yourself, because it is a bit more byzantine than is Merlin 2005’s newly stripped-down habit. It’s called (10+2)*5, and today it will save your ass.

Here’s a quick sampling of Ask Metafilter threads on productivity, procrastination, and just getting it together. (You have to love a question on alcohol and procrastination.)

Eight years of email stats, pass 1

A thought-provoking analysis on the time and attention that a growing pile of email commands. Based on looking at several years worth of archived messages. The hockey-stick spam trends ends up seeming less significant than the raw volume of extra non-email work that email generates.

Marc Eisenstadt says:

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Meet the man who can bring order to your universe

43F confidant Ben Hammersley does a great piece on David Allen and GTD for the Guardian UK. Terrific summary of why GTD works as well as some nice insight into David’s background (DA & I share an obscure alma mater, you know).

Ben writes:

Waxy.org: Daily Log: Yahoo and Upcoming, Sitting In A Tree

Terrific news for Andy, Leonard, Gordon, and Yahoo! themselves; Upcoming.org is moving up to our neck of the woods:

Upcoming.org: Web 1.0 Summit at House of Shields (Wednesday, October 5, 2005)

We are confirmed for tomorrow night at House of Shields from 7-9pm.

Damn. Got a feeling there’s going to be a lot of people there. I hope their Geek Insurance is paid up. So looking forward to this.

Be sure to checkout the updated Upcoming page on the Summit for extra details (esp. with regard to our janky A/V capabilities). See you there!

Mac Geekery - Geektool and Bash One-Liners

I’m an old-school fan of GeekTool, a smart little PreferencePane that lets you trick out your Mac’s Desktop background with a variety of customizable stats, photos, and status info. Most folks’ favorite use is to display the output of shell scripts and simple CLI commands (e.g. “cat ~/todo.txt” or “tail -n 10 /var/log/crashreporter.log”)

To be honest, I hadn’t used GeekTool in a while, but apparently there were some Tiger compatibility issues that were vexing fans. Now Mac Geekery’s rupa deadwyler points to a branched version (2nd item) that provides fixes for Tiger.

He also writes up a good post on a few of his favorite uses for GeekTool:

Kinkless GTD 0.61

I think Ethan J. A. Schoonover may have struck a wonderful balance of power, simplicity, automation, and low-key good looks with his “Kinkless GTD” System.

By combining the stupendous OmniOutliner Pro with a bit of Applescript and pixie dust, KGTD provides a sensible way to manage Projects and Next Actions in one very clever little document. For those of you not already using and loving OO, this is a beautiful chance to see it in action.

The heart of the app lies in dedicated views (top-level outline rows for OO fans) for your Projects and their daughter Actions. Project view shows all related Next Actions, and Action view shows those NAs by customizable context (@home, @shopping, etc.). Additional views for periodic Reviews, Trigger Lists, Someday-Maybe, etc., make this a true GTD implementation—not just a tarted-up To-do list.

Found a bunch of goodies yesterday on The Word Spy.