After reading LifeHacker’s excellent Beginners Guide to Quicksilver I thought I’d try somethings I haven’t asked Quicksilver to do before. Like shell scripts. I know I’ve got one lying around – here’s one – my backup script. Bad idea. Quicksilver is unresponsive while the script is running and completely ignores my increasingly frantic key invocations. […]
Category: Productivity
Failed Ideas as Fuel
“Ideas are easy, so let’s have lots of them.” “Invest in them incrementally.” “Make sure that the ideas we invest in can be “recycled” by adding to the collective intelligence and business capabilities, so that if they don’t work out individually we have created food for other groups to use.” – Adam Richardson
How I’m Getting Things Done – Part 2
It’s been 3 months since my concerted effort to be more organized and productive. Some pretty good progress. Email Inbox: 0 Flagged Emails: 0 Flagged Newreader Items: 0 ‘Clean Out’ directory contains: 12 items Physical Inbox: ignored 43 Folders: ignored As I mentioned in my previous post, every next action is goes into the stack […]
When Not To Do a Holiday Logo for Your Software
Earlier this week, graphic designers everywhere swapped out regular logos for Halloween-themed ones. Google, MacUpdate are just two I bumped into within my browser. Outside of my browser – TextMate – also changed it’s normally non-descript logo earlier this week to a glowing jack-o-lantern. The difference is huge. Each day, I ignore Google’s logo microseconds […]
How I’m Getting Things Done
After years of using Apple’s Stickies as my standard To Do list organizer, I’m a month into an entirely new productivity system. It’s working out pretty well. With David Allen’s Getting Things Done as a foundation, here are the modifications I’ve made: Next Actions:This is a stack of index cards. One thing per card – […]
“If It’s in iCal, It’s Real”
Part of yesterday’s desk cleaning was taking a critical look at my Thing To Do stickie and committing to trimming it down. All the To Do List things I’ve looked at are independent of calendar – aside from some vague notion of deadline. A while back in scheduling a conversation with Dave Slusher, he said; […]
Good Prototypes Remove Everything Else
Back in ’97 I spent some time at a Shockwave game boutique (didn’t we all). One day, a technology vendor sent over a prototype game – highlighting a new interaction model. The game was obviously a prototype but we weren’t sure of what. All the elements on-screen very simple shapes and a random color (is […]
New Years Productivity Tip – Removing On-Screen Distraction
While getting a few things done this holiday season I paid special attention to what was keeping me from staying focused, on-task. To kick this year off right, I’ve made some dramatic changes to my OS X desktop. From the menu bar, I’ve removed applications that change just enough to distract me. Including: clock (replaced […]
Two Quick Reminders About Work
The current problems cannot be fixed by the behaviors, processes, and relationships that caused them. Not completely fixed is better than completely broken.
Introducing the ProjectMaker Dashboard Widget
The ProjectMaker dashboard widget is quick and easy way to create consistent groups across your iApps (Mail, Address Book, iCal) for your projects. Download the ProjectMaker Dashboard Widget Drop your comments and suggestions to the ProjectMaker Widget’s permanent home.