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What Andy's Doing
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Recently Written
- My Scandelous Confession and A Royal Rant About GTD
- On New Beginnings (And More About Your Host)
- Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
- How to Use Basecamp and Backback In Perfect Harmony
- How to Chill Out
- Productivity Tweet of the Week(ish): Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
- Eliminating Distractions is Easy.
- Productivity Systems Don’t Suck, But Sometimes I Do
- Are you Ready?
- Ask the Readers: What happens to “Do it Now” Actions?
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Categories
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Archives
The Twitter Drinking Game
Let me be honest with you - last week’s drinking game (in honor of Friday Fun) that dealt with the television show House, M.D. was, frankly, a dud. I did my best, but it kind of sucked. So, I’m here to redeem myself with a little pre-Friday Friday Fun. That said, let’s get going…
Your GTD System Isn’t the Problem
Since starting my current job about 7 months ago, I’ve garnered something of a reputation for being “the organized guy”. A couple of the higher-ranking people there had attempted to embrace GTD (with varying degrees of success) and were ecstatic to have somebody on-board who could attempt to convert the rank and file. I got a chance to talk one-on-one to a handful of them to see where they were in terms of “implementation effectiveness”, etc. It was a rather eye-opening experience.
Much of what I saw sort of mirrored what I regularly read about on other GTD-related blogs and websites. People really like the idea of GTD and could definitely see the benefit, but were really having trouble making it work across the board (at work as well as at home). In my experience, these types of situations stem from one of the following two symptoms:
Free Software: Two Minute Timer for OS X
Better late than never, I suppose 
Many, many moons ago I wrote a tiny little two minute timer application for Windows as a free alternative to the $10 offering from the David Allen Company. I got more than a few emails asking for a Mac version. Well, ask and you shall receive!
This is a little different than the Windows version - it’s actually an Automator workflow converted to an application. Here’s what you’ll need to run it:
The House, M.D. Drinking Game
Like watching surgeons do their thing? You can watch a lot closer with a Surgical Technician degree.
Some of you may remember the moderately popular Law & Order Drinking Game from a few months back. Sitting around with my wife coming up with marginally esoteric (yet regular enough to work) was a complete blast. And since House is just about on equal footing with Law & Order in terms of “must-see” shows, it only made sense to try our hands at a similar game.
For those who have never seen the show, here’s the one sentence synopsis: Greg House is a holy-crap-awesome doctor who is a whiz at diagnosing strange diseases and conditions, but also a total dick who treats everybody like crap. With me? Ok, let’s do it…
So, You’re Not Using Jott?
I spend a good deal of time in the car every day. Not as much as some, but it’s typically somewhere around 90 minutes round trip on a given work day. And being one of those people whose brain is pretty much always going, I tend to have many thoughts and ideas during that time. It’s easy for my mind to wander around during what amounts to 75% of my “alone time” and I obviously can’t be scrawling notes down whilst operating a motor vehicle. Enter Jott…
If you’ve never heard of it, whoa nelly are you in for a treat. Essentially, it uses your cell phone as a gateway to all manner of applications, websites and services. Some of the more notable mentions are your Wordpress blog, Sandy (my secretary), Twitter and Remember the Milk - all accessible from your cell phone. Oh, and let’s not forget that you can import your entire address book and email/text virtually anybody directly from your phone. Intrigued?
365 (or so) Merlin Mannerisms
Everybody’s favorite productivity eccentric has agreed to have a whole slew of quotes published as a “Quote of the Day” calendar for 2008!
Not to sound like a fanboy, but I find Merlin to be an immensely entertaining guy, as I’m sure many of you do as well. Not to be encumbered by traditional thinking (and since I’m an American and instant gratification is the only way I roll), I just read through the whole thing in the last 20 minutes. It really just made me realize how relatively poor my vocabulary is, but it made me chuckle a whole lot.
Celebrating Cranking Widgets’ First Birthday
Sure doesn’t seem like it, but today marks the one year anniversary of the first post on this here blog. Wow.
I must admit, this blog is doing better than I would’ve imagined way back then. We’re doing a respectable 3K+ subscribers and roughly a thousand pageviews per day. And while that’s child’s play for some blogs, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Thanks to all of the regular readers and to those who consistently leave thoughtful, intelligent comments. You guys make this blog what it is and I’m in your debt.
I enjoy writing for and maintaining this blog, it does come at a price. And while I’ll never, ever charge anybody to read what’s posted here, I will occasionally ask for donations (like now).
If you enjoy reading my ramblings and such, might I suggest making a donation (as large or small as you like) to help offset the costs (both monetary and otherwise) of keeping this site up and humming. We’re moving to a new hosting facility soon that will offer faster load times and a generally snappier user experience, but at a greater cost than the current host. If you could spare a few bucks, I would be most appreciative
Anyway, thanks again for reading and here’s to another year of productivity, parenting, my oddball sense of humor - and rabbits with pancakes on their heads.
Cheers,
Brett
How to Talk to a Toddler
I’ll be honest - before I became a parent, I had a hell of a time interacting with small children. Kids who were still in the midst of learning to talk, but had learned a few words and used them frequently (and, not surprisingly, sometimes incorrectly). Tell me if this situation sounds familiar…
You show up at a holiday meal, one where there are truckloads of extended family congregating from miles around. Your second cousin Todd and his lovely wife Claire arrive with their little girl, Eunice, who is 2 years old. She runs over to you and immediately takes a liking to you. She starts yammering on, mostly babble to you - though, you think you can catch the word “puppy” in there someplace. You’re constantly looking to Mom and Dad to translate for their young daughter. For some (myself included), this can be a somewhat uncomfortable situation. You don’t want to come off like an ass by trying to pawn the kid off on somebody else, but you are also genuinely interested in this child despite the “language barrier”.
Why the Amazon Kindle is Going to Completely Rule
The tech community has been all riled up of late with regard to Amazon’s new electronic reading device, the Kindle. Chances are, you’ve heard of it and probably developed an opinion about it.
From everything I’ve read on blogs and news sites and heard on podcasts, people seem to fall into one of two very distinct camps:
“The Kindle is an ugly, steaming pile that will fall flat on it’s face and I look forward to being there when it happens.”
or
“The Kindle is going to revolutionize the way people read and if it were a girl, I’d want to slow-dance with it.”
As you’ve probably gathered from the title of this post, I’m siding with the second band (though, I’m not really in the market for a waltz partner). Here’s why:
How to Drink Like a High Roller in Vegas Without Going Broke
Being born and raised in southern California has its benefits. I can be at some of the most beautiful beaches in the country in less than an hour by car. I can also (during winter) spend a couple of hours on the road and be in just the right spot for some pretty respectable skiing. Hell, I live in a county that had it’s own teeny bopper television show, for Pete’s sake.
But all this pales in comparison (in my humble opinion, anyway) to the fact that I live only a scant 3.5 hours from Las Vegas, Nevada. And while I’m not a “Vegas kind of guy” per se, they do have several things to offer that are somewhat hard to come by around where I live - legal gambling being the most obvious. And coupled almost inextricably with Vegas-style gambling is drinking.
