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What Andy's Doing
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Recently Written
- Passionate People: Get What You Deserve, Become a Career Renegade!
- Featured Blog: Patrick Rhone and His Journal
- Ask The Readers: Can You Disconnect And Still Be Productive?
- Why Working Long, Hard Hours Gets You Behind (?)
- How to Help Great Productivity Blogs Get Discovered
- 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
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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.
Why I Never Turn Off My Cell Phone
One of the major tenets of this whole personal productivity dance is the elimination of distraction. Many productivity-related sites and blogs (including this one) espouse everything from the closing of email clients and instant messenger applications to the wearing of headphones as possible ways to reduce “background noise” while working. Another one that I hear tossed around is the turning off of the cell phone. Personally, I don’t partake in this particular piece of the pie.
Not long ago, my wife was pregnant with our first child. As the due date drew closer, there was the looming possibility of her going into labor at any moment, including the moments when I was at work. At the time, my job (and the culture of the company) dictated that I would have random, lengthy, ad hoc meetings in the halls of the office. Whenever these normally took place and I received a call from her, I’d hit the little “ignore” key and send her to voice mail. She understood that this meant that I was either talking to somebody or otherwise occupied. But, due to the imminent arrival of our son, we had to develop a system so I would know that the call she was making was “the call”. If I got a call, sent it to voice mail and immediately got another call, that meant that something important was happening and I needed to speak to her.
8 Things You Should’ve Memorized a Long Time Ago
Let’s be honest - part of the reason most of us drank this GTD Kool-aid in the first place was that we were tired of forgetting things. Meetings, lunches, dentist appointments - all the crap that we were too busy (and, frankly, ill-equipped) to recall exactly when we needed to do so. So, we got our notebooks, planners and hipster PDAs to solve that problem. But that’s not why I called you here today.
There are certain bits of information that you *should* count on your brain to be able to retrieve quickly. Things that you won’t need very often, but it’ll probably be extremely helpful and efficient if you do.
The vast majority of these things are about you. Things that will be as helpful during conversations with the police or your health insurance company as they would be at your local grocery store.
A Roadmap to Spectacular GTD Failure
It’s rather funny to me that I write all this stuff about productivity, GTD and the like - the truth is, I’m probably one of the poorest practitioners of this stuff that there is. My system is constantly a mess, I’m always trying new little tricks and whatnot to get things working better (which typically blow up in my face). Even though many people think I’m all organized and such (seriously, people tell me this), I’m actually quite a wreck a good portion of the time.
And even though I might know a fair bit more about this stuff than the average person, there’s another area that I’ve gained a hell of a lot of experience with during this last year of “doing” GTD:
How to Make Your Outgoing Voicemail Message Not Suck
I have a handful of friends who, despite numerous pleas and death threats, refuse to carry their cell phone with them. They’re perfectly willing to leave it in the car while out somewhere, or leave it in their bedroom while watching television in the living room. Personally, these are stack-blowing, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you-types of behavior, but that’s another rant for another blog post.
So, as you can imagine, I generally get sent to voicemail when calling said friends on their cell phones. Now, granted, I’m not usually calling to tell them their house is on fire or that I just scored the Def Lepard tickets they had been frothing over. But I would like to talk to them about something. The phone will ring a few times and then I’ll hear something like this:
Friday Fun: Find me on Facebook
While I’m still on the fence with regards to the actual value of facebook, you can add me as a friend here (apparently only after you login). Unless I actively dislike you, I’ll add you as a friend and we’ll do facebook stuff. It’ll be grand.
That is all - have a great weekend!
How I Almost Sent my iPod to Nigeria
Having been a computer guy for many years, I’ve had surprisingly little interaction with eBay. I’ve just never had much use for it, as I don’t generally sell things and prefer to buy things new. A seasoned eBay user is, I would imagine, accustomed to all the regular scams and such that are perpetrated on the unassuming Aunt Fae’s of the Internet - but I’m not. At least, not before yesterday.
So, in an effort to drum up some extra cash, I’m currently attempting to sell my iPod on eBay. After completing all of the listing details and such, my listing went up sometime in the late evening yesterday. Not really having much of a clue as to what I should sell for, I also didn’t know what to expect in terms of bids (a whole slew of them right out of the chute, none at all, etc.). When I received the following email this morning, I felt a mixture of joy and hesitation:
Back Online After the Digg Assault
Just a quick one - the previous post (The Definitive Guide to Covering Your Ass) hit the digg homepage 2 days ago, which promptly brought this little blog to it’s knees. After several go-rounds with my webhost’s support staff, things seem to be back to normal.
Anyway, apologies for those who tried to get here over the last 48 hours or so, we should be good to go for awhile (or, at least, until I get ‘dugg’ again) 
Have a great weekend, everybody!
