Build the Business of Your Dreams

Welcome to the Cranking Widgets Blog. We exist to help you get more done by showing you ways to be more effective and let go of the stuff that doesn't make you awesome. Be sure to subscribe to our feed and follow us on Twitter here.

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.

(more…)

ShareThis! buttons goes here
continue reading
 

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 [...]

ShareThis! buttons goes here
continue reading
 

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 [...]

ShareThis! buttons goes here
continue reading
 

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 [...]

ShareThis! buttons goes here
continue reading
 

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 [...]

ShareThis! buttons goes here
continue reading
 

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 [...]

ShareThis! buttons goes here
continue reading
 

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 [...]

ShareThis! buttons goes here
continue reading