#Gtd

Simple works.

Sometime around early 2012 I switched over to using Things for OSX from the spartan essentials of Taskpaper. I have to admit, at the time I was angry with Taskpaper. It was still using the SimpleText service (Taskpaper now uses the uber-reliable Dropbox) for synchronizing with my iPhone and it had done what I felt was the inexcusable: It had lost tasks I had to complete in a sync conflict and even after I recovered the file, I didn’t know what they were (partly my stupidity for not having it source controlled in git).

One of my goals this year was to up my foundation dev skills and a (sort of) semi-SMART goal of getting up four progressively more difficult apps I’d be scheming about releasing over the course of the year.

Kobayashi, which powers my re-christened blog Tundramonkey, was one of those apps. Yeah, I know… blog software? Can’t you do that in, like… 15 minutes? I mean, there’s a Rails screencast and everything… Well, actually… no. What I found once I got going was that it ended up being quite the little project and while the basic coding behind getting core functionality up was quite easy, the vast collection of details that goes into migrating over eight years of posts and the functionality you’ve actually used means quite a bit of detail sweating.

Wow, Umair Haque does it again admonishing us to Create a Meaningful Life Through Meaningful Work and telling us to ask some of the really big questions about the stuff we’re doing day to day while reflecting on the tedious BS of the illustriati in Manhattan this week. I like his call to get lethally serious about stuff that matters.

So here’s a tiny hypothesis: maybe the real depression we’ve got to contend with isn’t merely one of how much economic output we’re generating — but what we’re putting out there, and why. Call it a depression of human potential, a tale of human significance being willfully squandered…

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For all those people who keep wondering how I keep seeming to do all those new things, this is very close to my secret (or a very similar approach). Try to turn something new into a habit… Changing my diet? Exercising regularly? Living on 80%? A cultural outing every month? Epic birthdays? Write an app? All started like this. Actually, loving this idea for the novel writing one alone (cause i need to get a script and short done.).

Love this blog post from the always quotable Seth Godin about the fact the first people to invent the electric guitar didn’t make the greatest music and the first person to come up with the snowboard probably never did stunts.

What’re you doing with the old big thing?

Only when an innovation is dead can the real work begin. That’s when people who are seeking leverage get to work, when we can focus on what we’re saying, not how (or where) we’re saying it.

Or Keynote, for that matter.

Great “things to avoid” presentation. And great rule of thumb: A killer one hour presentation takes 30 hours of prep. Phew.

via Lifehacker .

Brilliant post dead link on how calendars are really for interruptions, not your real work.

most people don’t schedule their work. They schedule the interruptions that prevent their work from happening.

and a call to schedule work and work towards when you need interruptions (meetings, input etc.). And love his point as meetings as something that subtract from working time, and the calendar as something we treat as additive.

Great idea, but how to bake this into your culture, especially one as interruption driven as most modern offices (including my own)?

Love this post on swimming against the academic stream . God knows I can relate (though am nowhere near as clever as this guy)…

Unfortunately that’s an incredibly inefficient way to gain knowledge. I basically wander around stepping on every rake in the grass, while the A Students memorize someone else’s route and carefully pick their way across the lawn without incident. My only saving graces are that every now and again I discover a better path, and faced with a completely new lawn I have an instinct for where the rakes are.

OK, not sure who thought of this idea, but I absolutely love it. Personally, I use and abuse the excellent TaskPaper for my own GTD flogging (can haz iPad verzion pleaz?), but Epic Win is sheer brilliance : Your task lists as a role playing game. Brilliant.

Done right, this could unbelievably popular. WTB now. Apparently, the twitter feed for the app says it is awaiting approval in the Apple app store at the moment. Do wonder how it’ll work and sync with my desktop needs though…

I actually tried to negotiate a sabbatical after five years before coming to the new gig (particularly since I’d just given one up leaving Amnesty at the end of three years). No dice. Great little talk on the benefits of taking time out from work.

Of course, what happens is I just take mini-sabbaticals in between jobs though would really like to plan for one in a few years time from this gig (though often think I am kidding myself that I’ll ever take time off properly - when will those books get written?).