Informed by Me

At the very beginning of the 8 part podcast series of David Allen and Merlin Mann, David mentions a book which he describes as “fantastic”. The book’s name is “The War of Art” and as you can see from this site’s footer, I basically attribute most of what’s done here to the book.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a must have for anyone who wants to really beat procrastination and get something done in life. If you’re sick and tired of getting to the end of the day with a feeling of “I didn’t get anything done” (and worst of all, you didn’t get anything done!) this book is for you.

The War of Art teaches that no matter what plans you make, you will always encounter a force of resistance that will stop you from executing your work. The more important it is to get the job done, the more resistance you will face. And only by becoming aware of this force of resistance can we plan ahead and make sure that we don’t get stuck in procrastination.

It’s really easy to implement the GTD system with such perfection, that your keeping of neat to-do lists and next actions will actually become a source of procrastination. (This has probably been mentioned hundreds of times in productivity blogs, but it’s always good to remember that it’s the #1 source of self-sabotage for the GTD practitioner). You keep adding things to do to your list, but you never do a single one of them. Resistance is beating you to the ground and you don’t even know it.

So go to your nearest bookstore and get the book. Or just get it from Amazon or Powells. Or if a friend of yours has it, steal it. The book is so important that it’s worth loosing your friend. (And I’m only half-kidding).

When will I learn that backups must be made all the time. I wonder why I assume that crashes or problems won’t happen. It’s just stupid of me.

This week I lost a lot of information and it’s no one’s fault but mine. That’s the tough part, not being able to blame anyone.

So guys, make sure you’ve got a copy of SuperDuper! and that you use it daily. (At least once a week).

I often feel like I haven’t been doing much. Like I’ve got tons of stuff to do and I’ve been a lazy sonofabitch. Those sort of days it’s really easy to end up not doing much for real.

If you keep your to-do lists on pieces of paper, kgtd, iGTD or some sort of software that keeps track of the things you have to do, make sure to at least glance at your completed tasks every once in a while. It will be a healthy reminder that even though you still haven’t developed super human powers to do all you’d like in one day, you do get things done.

Review your completed tasks for a morale boost

Be proud of each completed task. They might not be such a big deal individually, but after all, it’s the accumulation of completed next actions that lead you to marking an entire project as complete.

Last night while listening to Keith Robinson (of dkeithrobinson.com) in the Edgework podcast, I heard a really good idea on how to deal with the problem of knowing that what you’re reading online is good stuff. From all that’s written about web design and development, how to reach the really good articles without wasting tons of time?

Keith says that what he does is find a small group of trusted sources on the subject matter of his interest. People that he knows are not wasting their time with stupid stuff or that won’t bookmark a bad article. Then simply subscribe to their bookmarks (most people now post an individual feed for their links in their blogs).

Unconsciously I have been using that technique for the past 3 months. But I hadn’t heard the concept pointed out as a formal idea. Keith says it’s like having your trusted sources doing editorial work for you.

You’re probably already doing it, but if you’re a Google Reader user (as I am), you can specify special “folders” for each topic you decide to filter using this cool content hack.

If you’ve ever been annoyed at the maximum level of output volume that Quicktime gives you while watching movies online or listening to mp3s you’ll be happy to learn this fantastic secret. If you press the Shift key while setting the volume, a secret volume adjuster shows up.

Now turn it up!

Press Shift while adjusting the volume to reveal the secret knob

Via (LifeClever ; ))

Today I got the great news that I can invite 5 people to use Skitch. Please just leave a comment and I’ll send you an invite.

Tired of always using Lorem Ipsum for your design layouts? Typography and graphic designer legend Erik Spiekermann has written a great post about creating better dummy text for your design layouts.

He recommends a variety of tools that generate better fake copy for your work:

Adhesiontext allows you to set the different character sets for your generated text (Spanish, English, Portuguese), as well as lowercase or uppercase settings.

Just Another Test Text Generator seems to be the best out there. You can specify the language you want, the characters you want, lowercase or uppercase, plus the amount of letters in words. It’s a fantastic tool that will make your text look more natural.

If you’re on a mac I recommend the Corporate Lorem-Ipsum generator. It creates great corporate talk for those dummy Memos you’re designing. It also lets you control paragraph length. It’s a good one.

And just in case you want to bookmark it, here’s a link to the ultimate Lorem Ipsum generator.

Nothing like having a fortune cookie remind you of what you already know:

The GTD Fortune Cookie

It put it up in Flickr.

I came across this photo essay today that relates to time, aging, and family life (via Daniel Mall).

It’s a powerful visual journey, and it struck me as odd the way old age hits us in a second. Seems like it takes only one year to stop being a child and becoming a young man. And the same with becoming a grown up and then getting old. It’s in a second. One day you look young, and the next you don’t.

Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created.

Albert Einstein