GTD

Can You Sleep on the Cheap?

Life Hack - Thu, 2008-07-24 00:07

When you’re budgeting for travel, there are three major costs: the actual cost of getting from Point A to Point B, the price of the food need along the way and the cost of a place to lay your weary head. It can take hours of searching and comparing prices to find a hotel room, and even then you can get stuck in a hotel that is less than stellar.

You can, of course, rely on the friend, business or conference that you’re travelling for. They might find you an amazing rate on a room. Then again, they might choose the most expensive hotel in town — the one with the ’special rate’ about $100 over normal costs. Even if you’re pretty sure that you’ll go with someone else’s recommendations, it’s worth looking into housing options on your own. You might consider using these tools to find a few better options.

SideStep — Everyone knows that major airfare sites like Hotwire and Orbitz also list hotel rooms, often at very low prices. But you can skip searching every single one of those sites to find the best deal. Just use SideStep to search; this search engine goes through all those other sites in one go.
TVTrip — Want to check the quality of your prospective home away from home before you book? Use TVTrip to see a video of your hotel.
TravelPost — It can be hard to find unbiased reviews of hotels from real guests. But TravelPost does just that, putting together independent reviews from people who really stayed in hotels (and without the preferential treatment that professional reviewers might get).
Hostelworld — Horror movies to the contrary, most hostels are clean and comfortable places to stay. They’re also cheap. Using Hostelworld, you can search over 17,000 hostels around the world to find a good place to sleep.

Still not finding a room at a comfortable rate?

If you just aren’t able to find a hotel room at a price you’re willing to pay and you’ve gone through your whole Roledex in search of a distant relative or college buddy with a spare room, I have five suggestions that might help you find an affordable place to crash on your journey.

Couchsurf — The power of the internet can provide you with a free couch to sleep on. CouchSurfing is probably the best known site. Just by registering, you can connect with individuals who live in the area of your destination and make arrangements to snooze on their sofa. Hosts can pick and choose their visitors, a necessary fact if everyone’s going to feel safe with the whole “sleeping on a stranger’s couch” thing. But there’s no cost and thousands of people have had good couchsurfing experiences.
Rent an apartment — If you’re staying somewhere for more than a few days, keeping the meter running on a hotel room can really add up. But you can often get an apartment for far less — and you can get the benefit of a kitchen and other homey luxuries while you’re at it. Think about it this way: a nice hotel room can cost $100 a night. Depending on the city, you can find a studio apartment (similar in size, even) for $400 a month. If you’re staying more than 4 days, it’s cheaper to go with the apartment, even if it’s sitting empty for part of the month. Many landlords say that they prefer a longer lease, but if you’re willing to pay cash up front and are cool with the landlord showing the apartment while you live there, many landlords will relax lease requirements. You should probably limit your search to furnished apartments, though.
Vacation rentals — A vacation rental is a more formalized version of my third suggestion. It’s a rental property (usually a house or an apartment) that is furnished and rented out to travellers. Pricing on vacation rentals can be fairly hit or miss: some can be much cheaper than hotels, while others can be significantly more expensive. Both Domegos and WeGoRound have good search tools for finding vacation rentals.
Camp out — Pitching a tent under the night sky isn’t just for Boy Scouts. Many park campgrounds are free to use, and private campgrounds have much lower fees than a hotel room. If you’re backpacking anyhow, I’d suggest skipping the hostel on clear nights and saving your money. ReserveAmerica offers listings of campgrounds in the U.S. and many guidebooks list campgrounds for a given destination.
Bed and Breakfasts — Small bed and breakfasts are rarely listed on hotel sites, so you’ll have to search out the ones where you’re headed on your own (BedandBreakfast.com is a good starting point). They’re worth the effort, though. When I was travelling in Ireland, a night at a bed and breakfast cost me a fraction of the price of a hotel room, plus I got a hearty breakfast. My food costs were probably half what they would have been if I had stayed anywhere else.

Budgeting for a vacation seems to be getting a lot harder. The actual cost of traveling — airfare and gas prices — eat up a big chunk of a budget. Food prices aren’t much better. But that doesn’t mean that travel is impossible. It’s just become a matter of cutting other costs and your sleeping arrangements may be just the place to do it. If you’ve had luck with any other tools that have helped you ’sleep on the cheap,’ I hope you’ll share them in the comments.

Thursday Bram is a freelance journalist of over five years experience. She studied Communications at the University of Tulsa and is currently working on her MA in Communication Design. Her work has focused primarily on entrepreneurial topics. More information about Thursday is available at thursdaybram.com.

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MobileMe: A Review of Apple’s .Mac Descendant

Life Hack - Wed, 2008-07-23 14:36

It’s been a rocky start for Apple’s MobileMe, but things look like they’re settling down now and the service is, for the most part, chugging along. If you’re an optimist, the botched launch wasn’t such a bad thing after all, with Apple issuing free trial periods of up to four months before the subscription fee kicks in for affected users.

I’ve been lucky—I haven’t had to put up with any of the teething problems since I signed up for my account a few days ago. Though I suppose you could call that unlucky, since it means I’ve only got a 60 day trial period.

The main complaint about MobileMe has been that Apple billed it as a perfect push solution for all platforms, which turned out to be untrue and Apple quickly changed its tune. If you didn’t hear already, the original claim was that MobileMe would push to and from your Mac, PC, iPhone and the cloud. Unfortunately, Macs and PC can’t do push with MobileMe, whether it’s to push information out or to receive pushed data.

This is really bad form, and seems to me like a case of Apple saying “if you don’t explicitly say anything, it’s not lying,” but they’ve since retracted their claims and despite my disappointment it’s not going to affect the outcome of this review.

Registration

Registration was quick and easy. Enter some personal details and billing information, and you’re done. Go to me.com and log in.

Unfortunately for some, it wasn’t such a simple process when Apple charged the full service fee to credit and debit cards rather than just charging the $1 needed to verify the card. This issue has since (we hope!) been fixed.

Mail

The MobileMe Mail offering looks good. That’s probably the best thing I can say about it.

At a basic level, it does the job. You can send and receive email, (manually) sort it into folders, flag messages, and contribute to the mass of people who send ten thousand forwards a day. It’s so advanced it has a forward feature, but that’s where the technological wonder really stops.

Does it surprise anyone but me that a $99 offering that uses push technology, of all things, doesn’t even have a filtering system? It doesn’t even have the basic Rules functionality of Apple Mail on the desktop. This is ridiculous. It pretty much makes MobileMe’s mail component unusable for anyone interested in productivity.

But the interface is well-designed. It’s intuitive and easy to use despite its utter minimalism, and everything is at most two or three clicks away. If there were filters and rules, I could see myself using this app. I’m a fan of the Quick Reply feature. If you don’t want a pop-up window with the full-featured composer you can click the Quick Reply button in the list view and have a simple overlay appear with a text box, and three options: Reply All, Cancel and Save. Very cool.

Like many, I’m not too impressed with the lack of built-in Send As capability. Especially with 10 GB of storage, which trumps Gmail’s 6 GB, I want to have a central, consolidated email control center.

Contacts

I like Contacts. It’s much like Address Book on the Mac, and it’s pleasantly simple without sacrificing the functionality you need.

Dustin asked me which system I use to manage contacts a few weeks ago. At the time I wasn’t happy with anything I’d tried, so I basically let my contacts rot in disorganization. Granted, this had never presented a problem, hence the continued disorganization, but now I’ve found a solution I’m enjoying that keeps my contacts synced across the board.

That was the main problem before: how could I have my contacts synced on my Macs, on PCs and on my Windows Mobile phone? I don’t have a Win Mobile phone anymore—I was going to trade it in for an iPhone, but it must have seen it coming because the screen cracked suddenly and inexplicably. Regardless, you could still sync MobileMe contacts with Windows Mobile through Outlook and ActiveSync.

Unlike Mail, Contacts has one feature that actually surpasses the desktop version’s equivalent: you can get an overlay Google Maps view of the address in any contact entry (as long as it has an address entered, of course). The closest you get in the desktop Address Book is a Google Map that opens up in your browser. No in-app overlays to be found.

Push on the contacts between the iPhone and the cloud is flawless. That goes for Mail and Calendar too, I should add. I did some tests with various contact details, including grabbing a photo from MobileSafari, adding it as a contact’s display picture on the iPhone and then checking the cloud straight after. It was pretty damn instant.

Of course, the big let down for push lovers is that it doesn’t work with the PC or Mac at this point, and contacts is the only app where I really would love complete, multi-directional push to occur. That said, the desktop synchronization had no problems.

Calendar

I don’t really use iCal a whole lot. I once did, for a task list I managed through Anxiety anyway. Now I use paper for my task list and I never enter appointments into a calendar, so this isn’t something that was a big deal for me either way, except for one thing I’ll talk about in a moment. My usage of the calendar may change now that I’ve got an iPhone, though.

All that said, the MobileMe app is good—it’s probably the most similar of the three main apps compared to their desktop siblings. The way you enter events is the same as in iCal—dragging a selection on the calendar itself—though it could be a little smoother. The animation and creation of the event is slow and sluggish, at least for me.

The killer is that I use iCal for one thing and one thing alone, and it’s not included in Calendar: calendar subscriptions.

Everything else is almost identical. But if you want subscriptions you’ve got no options other than to export your subscription from iCal as a hard, static calendar. What’s the point?

Of course, this also means you can’t share your calendar; no subscription option, and no web-based “sharing” option has been made available either. And in that vein, you can’t send email invitations. If you want any kind of collaborative calendar, stick to Google’s. If you just want to pile your own appointments in, you’ll be fine.

Gallery

Gallery is a nice photo storage and sharing option. It’s probably the least used of the apps for me, since I’m not much into photography nor into the idea of sharing those I do take. But for the purposes of product testing I did give it a workout.

Using my iPhone and iPhoto, sending photos up to the cloud was easy and uncomplicated. It’s also a pretty simple matter to upload photos from the web interface, but I think the uploading aspect of this app is really built around your use of an iPhone or iPhoto and it’s much more pleasant to upload files that way.

The URL for sharing an album or a photo with others is located in the dashboard or “dock” that occupies the top of the MobileMe suite. This is really a matter of copy, paste and send: showing your photos to others in a semi-private environment is easy. If you want a public and social photo-sharing environment, get to Flickr. I personally love this because I (personally) think Flickr is evil and privacy-shattering, and shouldn’t be used by anyone but actual photographers or people who take photos of themselves and nobody else.

This app certainly had fewer disappointing let-downs than the others.

iDisk

iDisk is nice and snappy on my Mac, and the web interface is not much different to the Finder interface. I can’t compare iDisk with MobileMe to the .Mac version because I never used it, but I think I’m going to start using it a lot in the months to come.

The preset folder structure is pretty handy because a) it mirrors the folders commonly used on your Mac and b) if there wasn’t a preset folder structure I’m certain most people would just dump a mess of files in there and never clean them up. Perhaps they still do.

Right-clicking a file allows you to rename it—that’s a nice touch, since renaming files through a web interface is usually a pain. Like the Gallery, iDisk offers some pretty good sharing features which include integration with Contacts.

Deal-breakers

1. Lack of filtering - for the average reader of a blog like Lifehack, the lack of filtering capability is going to be a total deal-breaker. It’s incredibly irritating not to have this most basic of capabilities in a US$99 package, when that capability can be found in pretty much every single free mail account on the web.

2. International prices - what has annoyed me and many Australians is that this product is being sold to Aussies well above the exchange rate. There’s practically no difference between our currencies and we’re expected to pay $20 more. I’m sure many of you in countries other than the US can sympathize.

I know it’s a not a huge amount of money (for most people, anyway), but it’s a matter of principle.

Hey, guess what Apple? There is a world outside of America. And since MobileMe is a solely digital offering there’s really no excuse.

Not that there’s any way to excuse a $700 premium like the one on the MacBook Air. If you’re someone who makes decisions based on principle, this may be enough to turn you off. But enough ranting—back to MobileMe.

3. It’s not a “digital control center” – for a $99 package that bills itself as your life on the cloud, with apps for mail, contacts and calendar, I think the mail offering needs to be much more flexible (I’m talking way beyond mere filters) and it needs to offer plenty more options for information consolidation. I love Gmail because I can run every single one of my email accounts from one webmail interface without appearing liek I use one free email address.

There are cases where it’s totally inappropriate and unprofessional to use an address like jfalconer@me.com (not the real address, so don’t bother trying it), and MobileMe offers no alternative. I can’t consolidate accounts and send-as with them as smoothly as I can with Gmail.

4. Calendar can’t do subscriptions – the only way I ever remember anyone’s birthday is thanks to my iCal subscription. It’s tough to admit, but true. Geni.com, which I reviewed many months ago, would do the trick if it didn’t happen to tell me the day after because of time zone problems. So I depend on an iCal subscription that generates a calendar from the birthdays I’ve listed in my Address Book contacts.

I could always take the route of not giving a damn, but I’m not sure my son would be too happy with the sudden lack of wallet-emptying birthday gifts.

If the product were free, none of these would really be deal breakers because there’d be no risk in using the service. You could use the calendar and contact syncing and nothing else, and still be happy with the purchase. But the mail, while very aesthetically pleasing, is totally useless without even basic filtering and built-in Send As features.

Best Outcomes for Productivity

I wish I could say that somehow, having push functionality is productivity-enhancing. But really, it’s just something cool to show geeky friends, who won’t care because it’s old tech anyway, and it’s a minor convenience. Push isn’t a magic bullet, and chances are it’ll actually decrease your productivity in the case of email. There’s nothing productivity-detracting about calendar or contact push, but if your main email account is interrupting you every single time you get a message, odds are you’ll never get work done.

At the end of the day, the optimal outcome is the convenience of not having to worry about how up-to-date your iPhone’s contacts are.

I have to say the best thing productivity-wise that came out of setting up MobileMe is that it forced me to clean up and organize my contacts. Well, it was also because for the first time ever I have a phone that synchronizes with Address Book.

Verdict

If having smooth sync between all your computers for calendar and contact data is important to you, then MobileMe may be worth the money.

Also, if having a push email account sounds like a good idea even without filtering, then go for it. Especially if you don’t have access to an Exchange server (like most of us), and don’t even suggest Yahoo! Mail. That’s not real email.

I can see how this very limited email account’s push capabilities could be useful for me—give the address to a select few people who I can trust to follow “the rules” about email usage so they can contact me when something really does need my immediate attention.

But as we all know, most people don’t know how to tell the difference between items that require immediate attention and items that don’t. Every “emergency” or “important phone call” is just an excuse to wag chins and get a good tongue workout.

My verdict is that the service is functional and useful in most departments, except for email which needs a lot of work before power users can get any use at all from it. Heck, even intermediate users won’t be happy, assuming that a beginner is someone who reads spam with keen interest.

I’ll stick with the two-month trial for now. The contact sync is convenient enough that if even one of the deal-breakers listed above is fixed and the service and uptime is good during the trial, I’ll pay the cash.

Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.

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How to Ask for (and Get) a Raise

Life Hack - Wed, 2008-07-23 04:33

Asking for a raise can be a fearsome experience. If you’re like most people, you worry that asking for more will make you appear uncommitted. Or that you’ll be talked into settling for what you’ve already got. Or even that you’ll be seen as greedy if you ask to be rewarded well for work you do well.

“The first thing that people associate negotiation with is buying a car,” says career coach Malcolm Munro,”and so they’re always afraid that they’re going to get screwed.” What’s more, he says, the people that usually are most deserving of a raise are the people that are least comfortable singing their own praise.

And singing your own praise is important. In the end, getting a big raise boils down to three simple steps:

Be worth more,
Demonstrate your worth, and
Ask for the raise.

The clearer you are about your value and accomplishments, the more likely your boss is to give you that raise.

Be worth more.

If you’re not already regularly doing more than you were hired to do, start. Take on new responsibilities whenever possible. Build skills outside of work, by taking courses or reading extensively or attending seminars. Make yourself too valuable to lose!

Your value to your company is based on how well you do these three things: solve problems, increase profits, or create and cultivate relationships. Make sure that everything you do at work does at least one of these things.

Demonstrate your worth.

A raise, especially a big one, is an important business decision; treat it like one. Start planning now for the raise you want six months from now. Munro recommends keeping an “achievement journal” listing all your accomplishments on the job. The biggest mistake an employee can make, he says, is asking for a raise without planning it out. You’re unlikely to be well-prepared on the spur of the moment, and most likely to come off as opportunistic, disloyal, or greedy.

If you’ve been tracking every way you’ve saved or made your company money, every big client or partnership you’ve created, every inter-office dispute you’ve had a hand in settling — in short every way that you’ve made your company better off — you can make a clear business case why you should be paid more. Employers and managers won’t respond much to your sense of fairness, but show that you are clearly an important asset and you can count on a positive response.

Ask for the raise.

The best time to ask for a raise is during your normal review, says Munro. If your company doesn’t do formal reviews, make an appointment with your direct supervisor to discuss your performance. Bring your records of everything you’ve done to add value, go over your accomplishments, and then bring up a salary increase. “Once they’re in the habit of saying ‘yes’,” advises Munro, “then you ask for the raise.”

As you approach your review, it can really help to find a “champion”, someone who can sway proceedings in your favor. Bill Adler, author of How to Negotiate Like a Child, suggests you approach someone at or above your immediate boss’ level, mention that you’re planning to ask for a raise, and ask if they have any advice. Once you’ve sold yourself to them, let them sell you to your boss.

Don’t make threats, even if you’re ready to leave for a better offer. Instead, advises Adler, just lay out your case. “Come in prepared to describe all the things you do”, says Adler, and let them imagine the consequences for themselves. Threatening to leave if you don’t get your raise will not only sour the negotiation, it may well spoil your whole relationship with your company. Extortion is not a winning strategy in the long run: if they give in now, your employers will think, what will happen in six months or a year?

In order to thrive, both you and your employer should gain something from your relationship. If you can make a strong business case for a higher salary, most employers will almost certainly work with you. If you follow these tips and think ahead, you’ll be able to approach your boss with confidence and without fear, knowing that you are worth more and that your company will see that.

Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and women's studies in Las Vegas, NV. His personal site can be found at dwax.org.

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7 iPhone Apps to Boost Your Productivity

Life Hack - Tue, 2008-07-22 15:16

The iPhone has been out for more than a week and the hubbub has started dying off and the realities are starting to set in. Not to try and put more fuel on the fire of hype, but I always think the point when the Reality Distortion Field effect starts wearing off* is the best time to look at the technology objectively as well as the application options available to you.

I mean, when an application that tests how long you can push a button gets web-wide coverage, you know there’s some kind of reality distortion going on.

So, I’ve compiled a list of apps from the iTunes App Store that I’ve found useful and good for productivity that you might be interested in trying out. That is, if you hadn’t already done so during the week’s excessive hype. Or if you’re not busy playing Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart.

To find any of these apps and install them, fire up iTunes and run them through the iTunes Store search box. And if you’re favorite productivity application isn’t listed here, it could be because I haven’t tried it or didn’t like it—but then, just as likely, it might just be because of the bone-headed decision to restrict some apps by country.

* I purchased mine well before this point in time arrived.

OmniFocus

I’m bringing out the big guns first, when it comes to productivity. OmniFocus is a great GTD task management application. It’s a “port” (and I use that word loosely) from Omni Group’s popular desktop application of the same name. Though it’s on the pricier end of the available iPhone apps, the functionality offered can be accounted for.

Some developers just want to get a mobile version of their desktop application up at the App Store, but OmniFocus is one of the few that leverage the iPhone’s capabilities as distinct from the Mac with location-based task lists thanks to the iPhone’s GPS location services.

OmniFocus for the iPhone will sync and integrate with OmniFocus on the Mac if you’re running the latest version of the software. If your tasks are important to you, make sure to keep your data backed up, because I’ve read a review or two where an application crash caused complete data loss.

Mocha VNC Lite

Oh, crap. I’ve just got in bed and want to do some reading online with my laptop, to relax before going to sleep. But I’ve left a torrent running on the computer in the home office and the Internet connection is so slow, it’s almost unusable!

I’ll have to get out of bed, turn the torrent off, and if I want it done by morning, I’ll have to get out bed again when I’m done and turn it back on.

Okay, I’m sure you can think of a scenario that’s more about becoming productive and less about pandering to laziness, but Mocha VNC works like Screen Sharing on the Mac does. You can use Mocha to control your Windows, Mac or Linux computer and the level of interaction is surprisingly high. You use the multi-touch finger controls to zoom around the screen just like when you’re using MobileSafari. Best of all, it’s free.

BookShelf

BookShelf is an ebook reader for your iPhone. It does text documents all the way to Mobipocket books. I definitely think this app can boost your productivity because it allows you to get more reading done quicker. You can read any book in your entire library in the living room, on the train, heck, even when you’re pedaling away on your exercise bike. Ever tried to lug an entire library of books around? Not fun. This is simple and easy. I’ve had the iPhone 3G since Friday and I’ve already finished two-and-a-half books thanks to BookShelf.

Mobipocket, the ebook reader I’ve been using on Windows Mobile or CE devices for close to a decade, is apparently coming out for the iPhone in months to come. But BookShelf beat them to the punch and they get a vote from me.

What I’d like to see: a smoother desktop app for shoveling books onto your phone and a revision of the “chunking” process that turns it into a background function you don’t need to worry about.

Evernote

I can barely live without Evernote on the Mac these days. The iPhone version makes it easier to create notes on the go and also easy to view them, but if you want to edit them, you won’t be too happy—Evernote doesn’t allow it. I’m hoping, nay, begging, that they’ll build the ability to edit existing notes into a future version. Please, guys?

You can do snapshot notes with the iPhone’s camera or audio notes. And, of course, you get searchable images as usual once your snapshot has uploaded to the Evernote server.

NetNewsWire

I’m a user of NetNewsWire on the Mac, so this app had me excited. Unfortunately, it’s not quite the experience I had hoped for, and not only that, but it won’t seem to download my entire collection of feeds as synced with Newsgator.

But, where before I spent precious office time catching up on feeds (after I got my real work done, of course), I can now get (most of) them done when I have an idle moment—like when I’m waiting for someone to say something interesting at that dinner party! This frees up extra time to work on new projects or take on another small client project back at the office.

Sidenote: before you lambast me for my previous habit of reading feeds when I could’ve been working on a new client, feed reading is actually an important task for a writer whose work is primarily online. It’s not extra time I was desperate to have before, but thirty minutes a day can add up.

Google Mobile

There may be no Spotlight on the iPhone (yet, the optimist would add), but Google Mobile does the job just as well as a Mobile Spotlight would. That is, aside from the system-wide integration that it obviously lacks.

Google Mobile will let you perform a search that hunts through your contacts and the web and provides you with the most relevant and local results first. Does the job damn well, while we’re waiting on Spotlight. You hear that, Apple? We want it along with copy and paste, okay?

Twinkle

You might be surprised to find a Twitter client in a list of productivity apps, but there’s a good reason for it. Since I’ve installed Twinkle, I’ve stopped using Twhirl or constantly refreshing the tab I have Twitter open in; I know Twinkle will let me know when someone replies to or messages me and since installing it my time spent on the site in general has decreased a lot—without really affecting my participation in the community there.

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Dropbox: A Simple Syncing Solution

Life Hack - Tue, 2008-07-22 02:00

Over the years, I’ve tried syncing my computers any number of ways, from trusting my entire life to a flash drive to uploading everything to Google Docs. Very few options have been idiot-proof enough to make up for my abilities to misplace things, forget to update file versions and generally fail to double check that my computers are all in sync.

I need a forgiving synchronization method — something that doesn’t require me to initiate back ups or juggle versions. Dropbox seems to be that method. I’ve actually been using it for over a month now and have encountered an impressive lack of problems.

Wikis and Security

I use a wiki (TiddlyWiki, to be precise) to handle a lot of my projects in progress. No matter what system I use to keep files in sync across computers, I have to have reliable access to my wiki. I’ve considered using one of the many sites willing to host a wiki for me, but I’ve had some questions about the security of such sites that have yet to be answered.

Dropbox has handled my wiki with no problems. Considering that TiddlyWiki creates a new file every time you save your changes, that can be impressive. Checking up on the file on the Dropbox website in preparation for this post, I discovered that my wiki was not only up to date — about 100 other files were also up to date if I wanted to double check old saved versions. Dropbox simply saved each one of them, without my having to click boxes or mess with the file.

Because of my security concerns, I also took a good look at Dropbox’s privacy policy and security measures. The team behind Dropbox seems to share my paranoia: all file transport occurs over SSL and files are encrypted with AES-256 before they’re stored on the site’s backend. So far, users can’t specify their own private key, but I’m content with the measures that Dropbox has taken so far.

I had to hunt around the site a bit to find Dropbox’s privacy policy. It’s mostly on par with privacy policies for similar services, though it is directly focused on the personal information that a user might supply for their profile — information associated with public files, forum posts and the like. Users’ files are not a matter for the privacy policy because Dropbox doesn’t mess with them. My files are encrypted before even someone at Dropbox could mess with them. I’m more than willing to trust Dropbox on both security and privacy.

Sharing Photos With My Mom

We all have those friends and relatives whose approaches to the internet require absolute simplicity. Anything much beyond ‘click this link’ just doesn’t fly. It can make sharing files, from photos to documents, interesting at best. But Dropbox also allows users to establish a shared folder. Within that shared folder, you can put any kind of file, and get a link that you can provide dear old Mom directly to that file.

Admittedly, there are plenty of other sites for sharing photos. But I’ve had to get everything form Powerpoint presentations to PDFs to my mom and I’d rather not explain a new site every time, or have to fuss with something different each time either.

Dropbox has also worked quite well for projects where I’ve needed to share files with group members. A few services have more bells and whistles, but for files other than the standard .doc, Dropbox has been ideal. It’s also much easier to stop sharing a file with Dropbox than with other services — I just drag it out of my public folder.

Drag and Drop Paradise

Dropbox has a great web interface. But the real use lies in the Dropbox application. You install it just like any other piece of software and it launches a Finder window or an Explorer window — there isn’t an Linux version yet, but Dropbox is working on an alpha version. Dropbox works just like any other folder: you can drag and drop files, which are then automatically synced across any computers you’ve activated and installed the software on, as well as the web interface. There are no problems sharing files between Macs and PCs, either — as long as you’ve got the appropriate software to open a file already installed.

I’ve had no problem working on files while offline, either. Dropbox just updates my files whenever I have internet access. This actually came in handy over the weekend when Amazon’s S3 service went down. Dropbox relies on S3, so there was no synchronization during the outage. But I was still able to edit my files in the meanwhile and, as soon as S3 was back up, Dropbox matched up all my files. According to forum members on the Dropbox site, the application was even able to pick up right where it had left off in the middle of partially uploaded files. Having that sort of outage is a heck of a test for a web application, but Dropbox seems to have managed quite well.

A Few Invites

Dropbox is still in private beta, although they seem to be fairly nice about handing out invites to those that request them. I’ve got five invites, according to my account, though, and I’m more than happy to send them off to LifeHack readers. I’ll email the invites to the first five commenters on this post.

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Categories: GTD

Blog Pimping, or: Who Do You Want to Delight?

43 Folders - Mon, 2008-07-21 18:10

Big Contrarian → Tacky.

My favorite bloggers are great at articulating something I feel in my gut — but they regularly present it better, more clearly, and (on days like today), more succinctly than I ever could. Such is the case with Jack Shedd’s post, “Tacky,” a razor-sharp polemic on the industry of cheese-food manufacturing that “pro blogging” has turned into.

Write top ten lists and whore yourself on many other sites as you possibly can. Don’t be thoughtful, long-winded or interesting. Don’t write about you love, unless what you love is popular on Digg. And for god’s sake don’t even think about writing about more than one topic.

Whether their strategies work or not is slightly beside the point. It’s cheap. It’s marketing driven, instead of content driven. It’s the type of thinking that leads to a sequel to the movie Garfield.

For myself, I think there’s nothing wrong with having a blog and wanting to make money with it. Obviously. But I also hold an increasingly old-fashioned view that you ought to start with something you’re passionate about sharing with people — something besides how to make easy money with a blog — and try to build an audience of people you respect based on producing work you’re happy with or even proud of.

Consequently, I very much agree with Jack’s thoughts on audience-building.

Despite the utter-bullshit so much of the Anderson’s long tail has proven to be, the core idea that everything finds an audience should be held up and remembered. Clung to fastidiously; A life raft for the ignored, for the invisible.

If you’re worth reading, someone will read you. If you’re worth watching, someone will watch you. If you’re worth hearing, someone will listen.

Seconded.

If you do not agree with Jack’s or my opinion on building your audience — or if you think this is an unrealistically conservative tactic for simps and losers — consider this: I learned about Big Contrarian from reading a blogger I trust and respect: John Gruber. Today, the chances are good that at least a few of you might visit Jack’s site for the first time because you learned about it from someone you (theoretically) trust and respect: me. If you like Jack’s stuff as much as Chairman Gruber and I do, I’ll bet you’ll tell others about it through your own sites or through emails, IRL conversations, and what have you. And the music goes round. Organically.

Jack didn’t beg a link, he didn’t pretend to be 50,000 peoples’ “friend,” and he didn’t concoct a bunch of tricks, games, and page-padding bullshit in an attempt to increase views and time-on-site. Jack didn’t do anything except write a great blog. It’s up to his readers to do the rest. If what you’re doing is interesting and appeals to someone, that’s all you need. Seriously.

So, yes, if that wasn’t a clear enough recommendation: read Jack’s blog, Big Contrarian, and tell your friends about it. Jack gets this stuff, and his combination of links and commentary is, not coincidentally, reminiscent of blogging’s salad days. When people were more excited about what they had to say than with figuring out how to make it palatable to readers who’d prefer the entire web be re-formatted as a series of retardate lists.

If you watched The Wire, I’ll bet you walked away with the same piece of wisdom that I did — the thread that ran through every episode of every season, and that was articulated by the show’s creator, David Simon, in the DVD narration of the very first scene from The Wire:

It’s about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how…whether you’re a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you’ve committed to.

This is one of the most insightful things I’ve ever heard someone related to the TV business say, and I happen to believe it’s true of any industry, institution, or, for that matter, adult decision: you make decisions and you accept trade-offs. It’s true if you’re the Mayor, or a homicide cop, or a heroin addict, and damn it, it’s true if you’re a blogger in his or her underpants trying to make bank in a competitive marketplace. You make decisions and you accept trade-offs.

You decide whether or not to run ads. You decide whether or not to include Amazon affiliate links. You decide whether or not to edit posts after publication. You decide whether or not to accept free shit like trips and demo units. You decide how black of an SEO hat you’re willing to wear. You decide whether people will notice (or care) when your ten-paragraph link post is spread out over 11 pages (“It’s a Gallery!”). You make, erase, and re-draw lines until you’re comfortable with the mix. You evolve and you struggle to find your place in the system.

No one is perfect 100% of the time, and sometimes we all change our minds, realize we’re dead wrong, or we just try different things for the hell of it. At least that’s been the case for me on every point.

But, ultimately, our most important decision may be deciding who we want to please, and what we’re willing to do, allow, insert, or put up with that potentially will make those people love, hate, or even feel indifferent toward our sites and our work. Not only must we contend with the institution, we also have to figure out who we want to delight and how. That’s where the art is, and it’s arguably the turning point for whether a young blog will get noticed or won’t.

Want to build a great audience, composed of people you respect? Be picky about who you decide to overserve. Then do it with all the skill and enthusiasm you can muster.

While it might seem dim to say “the rest takes care of itself,” it is entirely true and fair to say “smart readers will always bring along their smart friends.” It’s why you’re here, and it’s why I am very grateful that you allow me to try and delight you as best I can. Even when the posts are this long.

UPDATE 2008-07-21 11:08:47: Fixed a dumb typo on Jack’s name.

Categories: GTD

Chronic Procrastination and the Cost of the "Ding!"

43 Folders - Mon, 2008-07-21 16:05

Guadian UK: Hi-tech is turning us all into time-wasters

(via Rich Siegel)

A few weeks ago, I pointed you to a startling stat in the New York Times stating that 28% of the average worker’s day gets blown on unnecessary interruptions — helping contribute to a crisis that a company like Intel now considers a $1 billion per year problem. From yesterday’s Guardian comes more numbers on the growing cost of distraction:

Ferrari says that chronic procrastination is now so serious a condition it needs to be recognised by clinicians. In a study to be published later this year, he estimates that 15 to 20 per cent of people are chronic procrastinators. ‘We now have data on 4,000 people, and it doesn’t seem to matter what age you are, or your sex or background.’

Of course, as the Inbox Zero guy, I think a real eye-opener sneaks in with this passing note about the cost of all those noisy email notifications you created:

Even the beeps notifying the arrival of email are said to be causing a 0.5 per cent drop in gross domestic product in the United States, costing the economy $70bn a year.

Although the headline wants to point the blame squarely at “hi-tech,” the last graf talks about your brain’s own role in how that nasty new technology is allowed to be abused:

It appears that the brain is divided into two parts. One triggers ‘automatic responses’ which take precedence over everything else - such as fleeing sabre-toothed tigers. The other governs ‘deliberate responses’ - writing that report due next week or booking a visit to the optician.

Do yourself (and your company) a favor this morning: try just briefly shutting off the “Ding!” and give yourself authority to schedule your next email dash.

Just for one morning, see if you can’t get a bit more actual work done if you’re not mentally scanning for sabre-tooths.

Categories: GTD

Readers Recommend: 15 More Productivity Blogs You Probably Never Heard Of

Life Hack - Mon, 2008-07-21 04:29

Last week, I recommended over 60 productivity blogs, from the big name sites to some of the little-known discoveries I’d made in my travels through the productivity Web. At the end, I asked readers to recommend the sites that they’d come across that they felt deserved wider recognition, and this is what you came up with.

Aim for Awesome: Vern Lovic shares his simple recipe for life (“smiles + smarts + success”) with an odd but interesting mix of high technology and spiritual seeking.
Avani Mehta: Avani Mehta offers “Food for Mind”, with posts on motivation, stress and relaxation, and “mind hacks”.
Chief Happiness Officer: Alexander Kjerulf answers questions, shares tips, reviews books, and indulges in a little bit of silliness on this blog dedicated to living happily ever after – and today.
Encouraging Greatness: Jeff Hurley focuses on office relations, with tips and tricks for coaxing success from any staff.
Effing the Dog: A blog and podcast offering a not-so-slightly offbeat take on productivity: Eventualism, which as far as I can make out, holds that eventually everything gets done. Filled with interviews of productivity greats (that he eventually gets posted…).
Get Everything Done: The blog of Mark Forster, author of Do It Tomorrow and other books on personal productivity and time managment. Here he offers tips and motivation for more productive living.
Lesson In Life: Mohamad Zaki, known as “banji”, shares his lessons on living, with posts on self-motivation, attitude adjustment, studying kills, and related topics.
On Simplicity: Sara shares her findings in her quest for “a happier, easier, more enjoyable life”. Contains a pretty even mix of practical advice and inspiring thought-pieces.
Productive Flourishing: Charlie Gilkey’s blog is notable for his philosophical approach to just living, as well as his free downloadable monthly planner pages.
Sneak Up On Your Dreams: Aileen Journey discusses how to make and achieve your goals in little steps on this new but promising site.
Study Matrix Blog: A unique site dedicated to exploring the potential of a kind of mind map known as a “study matrix”. Gorgeously illustrated, there’s lots of useful information here for people interested in learning how to explore and represent ideas visually.
Success Making Machine: Heshy Shayovitz presents his “life management system” – along the way touching on topics related to productivity and effective management.
Team Taskmaster: This BNET blog cy CC Holland is geared towards office workers, with an emphasis on workplace relations and other issues.
YangTown: A spiritual blog for men, this site is Ryan Randolph’s attempt to forge a new concept of masculinty. Scroll down – all the content was below my browser window when I visited!
Zen College Life: Ibrahim Husain presents the technology news, health and fitness tips, study advice, and life knowledge students need to succeed at college – and life.

Thanks to everyone who recommended sites – even if they were your own. There are a lot of sites here that I plan on subscribing to – and a few I wouldn’t, but that’s the beauty of the Web: there’s plenty for everyone.

My larger list last week drew quite a few comments from people complaining about the length of the list. I’ve grown to expect the refrain of “you’re a productivity site, how can a huge list be good for productivity” on any post with more than a few ideas in it, but I suppose it’s a valid complaint and deserves to be addressed.

First of all, I haven’t exactly hid my feelings about productivity – it’s a lot more than work work work. Some of these sites provide useful, immediately applicable information – and some provide inspiration, spiritual instruction, or just plain fun. Some I read every day, and some I read once a week or less – and some I visit just every so often, when I feel like it. Some are essential reading for the advice they give, and some are occasional reading to snuggle up with on a long afternoon with nothing else pressing.

Second of all, I don’t expect anyone to read all of these sites. I don’t read all of them – and many I only read occasionally, as I said! I fully expect that some of you will absolutely loathe some of my recommendations – the author is too arrogant, too spiritual, too feminine, too masculine, too money-centric, too self-righteous, too whatever. Others might find the same site exactly what they’ve always looked for. This is not an all-or-nothing affair – by all means, pick and choose the ones that work for you.

Finally, on a different note, if you write one of these sites, we’d love to hear from you. Maybe you’d like to join Lifehack as an ongoing guest contributor, or submit an occasional guest post. What has become especially clear to me in the year-plus at Lifehack (last week marked my one-year anniversary as a Lifehack writer) is that there’s a huge community of people out there seeking ways to better themselves and their lives.

But that community is somewhat disjointed, scattered into tiny niches (student life blogs, management and leadership blogs, make money online bogs, and on and on).

Let’s start changing that – let’s open up some lines of communication and see what we can achieve if we start building relationships amongst ourselves!

If you’re interested and have any ideas, contact us or email me directly at dustin (at) lifehack dot org.

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Categories: GTD

“Friendly greetings!” The Power of Personal Catchphrases

Life Hack - Mon, 2008-07-21 04:27

One of the nicest things you can do for other people is make yourself easy to remember. Instead of burning their brains trying to recall who you are and what you stand for, a personal catchphrase is a elegant anchor to the rest of you. It serves as a compact memory assistant that melts mental blocks. You don’t need to be a celebrity, but you do need to have personality.

Ever heard of Rodney Dangerfield? The man said:

“I don’t get no respect!”

thousands of times (are you seeing him in your head as you read this?), and he literally built a prosperous and durable comedy career based on that catchphrase. Let’s make no mistake, he was a versatile performer who chillingly portrayed an abusive father in Natural Born Killers, but to many, his sheer lack of received respect coupled with mannerisms like tie-tugging helped him be recognized and succeed.

Whether you love, hate them — or otherwise — Donald Trump’s “You’re fired” and Paris Hilton’s “That’s hot” are unlikely to leave your head anytime soon. And you can’t get much briefer than 2 words. As a type of meme, catchphrases’ brethren include LOLCATS and other Internet phenomena like the many parodies of 300’s “This… is… Sparta!” which are immediately accessible, and thus, spread easily. As Internet marketing guru Seth Godin (who’s coined catchphrases) sez:

“Ideas that spread, win.”

My catchphrase is “Friendly greetings!”, and I use it to introduce my Second Life video tutorials (with almost 3 million views) and other public activities. If you google for it in quotation marks right now, you’ll find I’m the #2 match with this image:

Without quotes, I’m still in the Top 10. This didn’t happen all at once, but in waves. Here’s my advice on popularizing yourself through a personal catchphrase so you can reap the rewards:

Your catchphrase must be natural

Don’t hunt for the obscure: just about all catchphrases consist of simple words that are easy to remember. And even alien quips like “Klaatu barada nikto” have a singsong quality which is pleasant, especially if you’ve not just read, but heard the original. If you have an opportunity, record yourself saying your catchphrase. It adds a dimension that’s impossible in text alone, and almost all catchphrases originated from being said out loud.

I stress that being creative doesn’t mean being alien — by appropriating words already familiar to other people, you’re well on your way. In fact, I’d hedge on “go for a catchphrase that sounds like it couldn’t be any more obvious”. Most people psychologically make the mistake of thinking “obvious = bad” when it can clearly be the opposite; my “Friendly greetings!” is certainly a fine example. And obviously, you need a catchphrase you’d say without sounding forced and artificial. It should connect with the surrounding conversation. This is why “Friendly greetings!” is such a strong lead to the rest of a discussion.

You can’t overuse your catchphrase

Family and friends may get tired of seeing your catchphrase, but the world has over 6.6 billion people and you’ll never, ever reach everyone who could possibly be interested in you and what you have to offer.

Note that I mentioned “personal catchphrases”, because while there are a lot of similarities to advertising slogans, your catchphrase is dependent on your delivery, not an inanimate object’s. If someone else says it, they’re likely either parodying or paying homage, thus spreading it further.

Also consider if others can be proud of sharing your catchphrase with their friends, bringing them in on you. You, first and foremost, must be willing to commence that fun.

You must often hear your catchphrase being said back to you

I feel sorry for Wayne Knight because of how Seinfeld typecast him with “Newman!”, but it’s better to be known than forgotten.

One of the simplest ways to tell if a catchphrase is working is if you put it out there and hear it echo back. I get awesome people saying “Friendly greetings!” back to me everyday, and one of the reasons it works so well is it’s an icebreaker and it’s comfortable to say.

Target audience matters too: Beavis (Butt-head’s buddy) may have had an affinity for proclaiming “I am Cornholio”, but it’s unlikely buttoned-up academics will be chanting that phrase too (unless they have a wild, secret, subversive streak).

Take 3-4 seconds and think about whether your catchphrase is something the people you target (whether it’s kinds of friends you want to make or a market niche you’re aiming for) will be able to relate to. If it works for you, it’ll attract like-minded people, I guarantee.

And be brave to throw away dead-end catchphrases (yes, you can have more than one — I’m working on boosting “Yayzerama!”); it’s pretty easy to tell in weeks if they’re starting to work or not, so drop the weight.

Your catchphrase must have a purpose

Even if your catchphrase doesn’t state the purpose, it’s pointless to have popularity without followup results. Is your catchphrase a hook to help you move product, get you gigs playing at parties (and hot dates afterwards), or simply to make you smile?

They can sound nonsensical and stupid, but catchphrases absolutely must do something good for you, and desirably, your fellow humans. Otherwise, why bother?

Share your catchphrase just about everywhere

If you can put your catchphrase in a blog post title and make it flow, more power to you — numerous SEO strategies observe that Google and other search engines weigh titles heavily. Flickr picture titles (as the one I showed you) and other opportunities to get your catchphrase seen matter, too. From experience, I’ve found this to be true.

If you’re self-employed or otherwise have creative control, your catchphrase should be on your business cards. This gives you a fab opportunity to create rapport by saying your catchphrase out loud as you give your card to a fresh acquaintance. (Alas, if you work for a company that already has strong branding and isn’t in the business of letting your personality help boost them, your individuality can’t shine as much.)

Remember the above steps and keep it terse yet memorable. All the best being catchy, and let me know your catchphrases in the comments!

Torley amplifies your awesome with the useful and fun.

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Categories: GTD

Fitness is a Journey. Bring a Map.

Life Hack - Mon, 2008-07-21 04:27

From the several hours I spend a day at my gym I get to observe all types of gym goers. One thing most of them have in common is that they all appear to be lost. The gym, much like a dense forest, can be a very scary place and if you don’t have a plan you can end up forgetting where you are or where you are going. Here are a few things you must do if you want to guarantee success at the gym.

1. Have a clear destination

If you’re going to venture into the forest it would seem smart to have a general idea of where you are going and why you are going there. The first question you must ask yourself is “why”? Why are you even working out? It sounds simple but if you cannot come up with a good enough answer than you may be wasting your time. You see, if you are working out based on other people’s values of what a healthy lifestyle is, then you may be setting yourself up for failure. Once you understand why then you must figure out what you would like the end result to be. You should choose something specific and you should write it down. How many pounds would you like to lose? What size clothes do you want to fit in? How many points off your cholesterol would you like to drop? Ask yourself specific questions and have answers for them. Next you must decide when you would like to have reached these goals. Create specific times and dates. Mark them down on your calendar.

2. Have a plan

Once you know where you want to go you must now figure out the path you would like to take to get there. In fitness there are many paths to choose from and it can be quite confusing. While some paths may be quicker or more appropriate to take then others it is most important to just pick one and stay with it. Every time you enter that gym have a clear idea of what is going to happen. Know what pieces of equipment you need to use, know how many sets and reps you must perform and have a good idea how long it should take you to complete the workout.

3. Stay the course

There will be times when it may seem hard to stay on track. Whether you’re traveling, someone is using a piece of equipment you need to use, or work gets in the way. It will be important for you to learn to improvise in these situations. Plan ahead when traveling, have alternate exercises in mind, and learn to adapt when change occurs. But in the end, always trust in the course you have previously mapped out for yourself. Come back to it and adhere to it as accurately as possible.

4. Record everything

Always keep a fitness journal. Otherwise you will find it very hard to keep track of where you have been and where you are going. Write down all exercises performed, how much weight used, how you felt, and if you think you can do better the next time you workout. This is one of the most overlooked and powerful tools when it comes to attaining your goals.

Fitness is all about getting from point A to point B. Unless you have a clear and defined path to get from one to the other you will find yourself going in circles. Using the tips outlined above create yourself your own fitness map and stick to it until you reach your destination.

Jamie Nischan owns and runs a successful fitness coaching business in Stamford CT. Through the use of posture correction and exercise he treats pain often associated with excessive use of computers. More about Jamie can be found at www.thebuffgeek.com.

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Categories: GTD

Back to Basics: Your Task List

Life Hack - Fri, 2008-07-18 20:03

Everyone makes a task list (or “todo list”) at least now and again. Usually, we wait until we’re overwhelmed with stuff to do, and then we’ll sit down and list everything we need to get done in the next day or two. Then, one by one, we go through the items on our list, do them, and cross them off.

We do this because it feels better when we do. One minute, you’re at wit’s end, your attention divided 60 different ways, with no idea what to do next, and the next minute you’re in control, with everything neatly plotted: do this, then do that, then do this other thing. And, eventually, we cross the last item off and throw the list out.

Until the next time we’re overwhelmed.

We make todo lists when we’re under pressure because they work. Imagine how much better they’d work – and how much more rarely we’d reach that “freaking out” stage – if we simply integrated the list-making into our day-to-day routines.

Your brain is for doing

Todo lists are important because every unfinished task you’ve made a commitment to causes stress. What’s more, your brain knows its own limits, so as you add more and more unfinished tasks, your brain starts thinking that some of them aren’t going to get finished – causing even more stress.

That’s why it feels so good to write that task list – your brain lets out a sigh of relief, knowing that now, at least, it doesn’t have to try to keep track of all that stuff. Your brain doesn’t want to be remembering all the things you haven’t done. It wants to be doing them, so it can feel good about itself. The neurology of all this is a bit more complicated, but that’s the basic idea.

Of Paper and Processors

Your todo list doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A pocket notebook, a 3×5 index card, any of about a hundred computerized task lists whether online or off. I use a two-part system.

I have a section of the same notebook I use for capture that I use to list tasks; it’s marked with a Post-it Tab Divider. I use this as a kind of “task inbox” – what I don’t get done right away gets transferred into an online task manager called Toodledo. I use a computerized one because a) my list is usually longer than a page, and I don’t like having to flip back and forth and sort through finished tasks and unfinished ones to find the one I’m supposed to be doing next, and b) I can sort them by due date instead of by when I thought of it, as well as by project. And, I suppose, c) it’s a lot neater than my handwritten lists.

It’s helpful to write not just the task but the reason for the task, to give you a pointer to what’s next after you’ve finished any particular task. I use a formula like this:

[Action verb][task] for [project or goal]

For example:

Call Caroline at 555-xxxx to transfer insurance into my name (for car registration)
Write “Back to Basics” post for Lifehack
Grade papers for WMST 113.210 by Wednesday

Note that I put in all the information I need (or as much as I have available) to complete the task. I don’t want to give myself an excuse not to do it, because I have to go find the phone number or I can’t remember which class folder I need to get. On the first one, I put “for car registration” so I’ll remember when I’m done transferring the insurance that I need to schedule a visit to the DMV.

Keep it with you

Whatever format you decide to keep it in, make sure you have access to your list at all times. I use an online system because a) I’m rarely far from a computer, and b) I carry an Internet-enabled smartphone with me at all times. If that weren’t the case, I’d use a paper-only system.

It’s crucial to have your list available under any circumstance. For one thing, you never know when you might have a few minutes to work on a couple of tasks; if you don’t have your list, you might waste those opportunities. Second, you never know when you might have to add something to the list.

I keep Toodledo open in my browser at all times when I’m working at the computer; as I process my inboxes, I can easily switch windows and add tasks directly. If you use paper, it’s even easier; lay your notebook in front of you on your desk and add to it as needed. Make a habit of this, so you never have to wait until later to add a todo item – that defeats the purpose!

What about context?

If you’re a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, you might be thinking “but what about contexts?” To be honest, I don’t use them, but many people do. The idea is, you keep not just one list but a set of lists, one for each “context” in which you regularly do tasks (or, using a computerized list, you add tags to each list item noting the context it belongs to).

A context is a place or situation. For instance, you have tasks you do “at home” and tasks you do “at the office” and tasks you do “on the phone” and tasks you do “out and about”. So you have a list of tasks you do on the phone; whenever you have a few minutes and your phone is handy, you can take a look at your “@phone” list and see if there’s a call you could make. When you’re at home, you can look only at the items on your “@home” list. This way, you’re not constantly searching through tasks that you can’t do right now; you only ever look at tasks you can do right this minute.

Like I said, I don’t use contexts. I work at home, so all my contexts pretty much overlap. But for people who have clearly defined environments they move through over the course of the day, contexts can be a big help.

Your lists

What about you? How do you manage your lists? What works for you – and what have you tried that hasn’t worked? Let us know in the comments!

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Categories: GTD

Where Are the Blokes?

Life Hack - Fri, 2008-07-18 14:48

Today’s post is not so much a personal development ‘lesson’ as it is a discussion and exploration into how men and women are wired; a look at something which interests me. As always, I don’t have all the answers but I do have plenty of questions and thoughts. Being as I’m not a female (mostly), I may be completely off track… so feel free to enlighten me, ladies.

As a scientist, personal development bloke and fascinated observer of people, I love to see what people do (and don’t do) and then try to figure why they do (or don’t do) whatever it is that they’re doing. Or not doing. As the case may be. Or not be. If you know what I mean. Hey, don’t you complain… I’m confused and I’m writing it!

Anyway, there’s two interesting observations I’ve made lately.

Observation 1
In most of my open-to-the-public workshops (as opposed to my corporate gigs) the vast majority of my audience is typically women. The weekend just past we ran a ‘Renovate Your Life’ workshop and over eighty percent of the attendees were of the more attractive and sweeter smelling gender. A couple of weeks ago I gave an open-to-the-public keynote presentation (health, fitness, lifestyle, psychology stuff) in a large fitness centre and nearly ninety percent(!) of the audience were women. These kinds of percentages are pretty common for my presentations. Now, if I was a young, good-looking, stud-muffin with a six-pack and a severe case of Brad-Pitt-itis that might give us some insight into the skewed numbers, but clearly I’m not, and clearly, people are coming along for the information, the motivation and the education. Even when I do a presentation where many of the people in the audience don’t really know who I am, we still have a much higher percentage of women book in and attend.

Observation 2
The vast majority of commentors on personal development sites are women. While it varies a little from article to article, the ratio of female to male contributors is quite amazing. Recently I took a stroll through some of my past posts and the percentage of female commentors is regularly up around the ninety percent mark.

So the obvious question is, “why does this happen and what does it tell us?”

You’re right; that’s actually two questions.

Well, I’m not really sure but I’ll throw around a few possibilities…

All the men are out hunting.
Only a very small percentage of men can read and write.
What I write or speak about isn’t applicable to the males of the species.
I’m not manly enough to connect with the blokes.
Women need more help than men.
I don’t write enough articles about monster trucks or cage fighting.

Naaah, probably not.

Perhaps…

A higher percentage of blokes (higher than ten percent that is) actually read my stuff but they are not as comfortable commenting as the ladies.
Growing up, blokes are not ‘trained’ to talk about relationships, feelings, emotions, fears, weaknesses, problems.. etc.
Perhaps some guys consider having a need for ‘personal development’ to be a sign of weakness (which would make me… pathetic).
Blokes don’t have the same level of emotional intelligence or awareness as the girls. Or maybe they just don’t show it.

Or possibly…

Women are simply more aware and more in touch with their emotional selves.
Women are more prepared to admit (and deal with) flaws, weaknesses and destructive habits and behaviours.
Women are more proactive (about creating positive change) while blokes are more reactive - they wait for the catastrophe to happen and then slip into their Superman outfit.
One of my (female) staff suggested that women ’search’ more because overall they’re not as happy as men. Don’t yell at me - a woman told me that.

Maybe…

The way I communicate resonates more with women.
Perhaps the site needs less photos of sunsets and more images of blokes and their power tools.
Women just like talking.

A final thought…

Maybe some of us alpha-male-warriors need to climb down from the security of our monster trucks and go and see Sex and the City tonight.

Or perhaps give another bloke a hug.

Help a confused male out; let me know your thoughts on this perplexing issue.

I’m off to hunt.

Er, I mean do Yoga.

Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host, motivational speaker and university lecturer. For the past 25 years he has been a leading presenter, educator, motivator and commentator in the areas of personal and professional development. You can visit Craig's blog at Motivational Speaker.

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