Featured Blog: Patrick Rhone and His Journal

This is the first post of many over the coming months as part of an ongoing attempt to help shed more light on bloggers who aim to help you get more done and reach your goals. If you’d like to suggest a blog, check out my original post “How to Help Great Productivity Blogs Get Discovered” and leave a comment.

Patrick Rhone is by no means new to the blogging world. He has been doing it for a few years now and has been mentioned in some pretty big blogs, such as 37Signals’ Signals v Noise as well as Merlin Mann’s 43folders. I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to his work when I started writing for Cranking Widgets a few months ago. 

About Patrick Rhone

When I asked Patrick why he started blogging, and why he still does it today, here’s what he had to say:

My first job in the tech industry was writing customer service correspondence, technical documents and copy for a computer company. Even as a kid I wanted to grow up to be a writer. I started out in my career as a writer and, though blogging, I continue to do so now. The main reason I enjoy doing so is to share my ideas, clear my head and, hopefully, pass along a useful lesson or two.

Patrick exemplifies the essence of why blogging originally rose to popularity. Blogging started as a place for real people to express themselves and maybe help others in the process. His writing offers a nice balance of soul and useful information. He doesn’t do it for money, there are no ads to be found anywhere on his blog. It is clear that he’s gone to great lengths to make his blog all about communicating the content and nothing else.

A Few Notable Posts

Below are some of my favorites from Patrick’s archives.

  • In Defense of Fiddling: I’ve been known to bash the concept of fiddling. Patrick offers a good argument for why fiddling may not be so bad.
  • Getting Real With Your Lists: A great wake up call that deserves a re-read periodically. Sometimes we get caught up in the moment with our ideas. For example, once upon a time I thought I wanted to learn how to kite surf. I live near the beach so I thought it would be a fun thing to do. It was on my someday list for a while, then I realized I never saw others kite surfing at my local beach, which made me realize I probably wouldn’t do it since I’d have to travel. I got real. It got scratched. 
  • AwayFind: A great review of a new service that deserves mentioning. He goes beyond the product features and talks about the real benefits. Well done.

Conclusion

Patrick is not one to post for the sake of posting – He generally writes when he has something useful to say. A solid focus on value is never a bad thing. This makes Patrick Rhone’s Journal is a perfect candidate for subscribing to his RSS feed, or alternatively you can get notified of new posts by following him on Twitter.

December 5, 2008 | Filed Under Productivity | Comments 

Ask The Readers: Can You Disconnect And Still Be Productive?

I hope everyone out there in the US enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday! Many of us enjoyed a 4 day weekend away from work or our normal responsibilities. As for me, I spent all but about an hour completely disconnected from the Internet world. The greatest part was that there weren’t any of those nervous ticks that I might have expected. There wasn’t even a worry about missing anything. I came back online late Sunday night feeling pretty energized overall and got caught up on my non-email online activities within a 20 minutes or so (checking my Twitter stream, RSS reader, etc.)

Coming back from a (mostly) online-free 4 days made me realize how much time is wasted every day checking and rechecking stuff for no good reason. It made me wonder if it was possible, or productive, to have more days where I greatly reduce my usage of the Internet… Or maybe even cut it out entirely!

What do you think? Is there any additional productivity to be gained from unplugging the modem for a day or two a week and forcing yourself to focus on only the important stuff in your life? Has anyone tried it? If so, what are the results? If not, would you? Please discuss :)

December 2, 2008 | Filed Under Distractions, Productivity | Comments