About two years ago, I first laid my hands on a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen. I tore through it and feebly decided that I wanted to share my discoveries and ideas with the world, so this blog was born.

There have definitely been ups and downs. I went from posting like a madman to hardly posting at all, in completely inconsistent spurts. While I tried my best to keep you kind people entertained and satiated, I definitely missed the mark on more than one occasion.

So, it is with more than a little sadness that I tell you this – I’m no longer going to be writing for The Cranking Widgets Blog. The site will live on in the very capable hands of my esteemed colleague, Andy Parkinson (who has been handling a good chunk of the writing duties around here lately), but the time has come for me to pass the baton and move on to greener pastures.

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With all of this talk of accomplishing tasks, people like you and me can easily lose sight of one of the great pleasures of life. Freaking relaxing.I can tell you that I am usually finding myself consulting lists and checking inboxes when I should be enjoying the movie I’m watching or the book I’m reading. [...]

OK, maybe it’s not “easy”, but there’s certainly no magic to it. Books upon volumes have been penned about this fairly straightforward topic; books full of hacks, wisdom and tricks that will help you maintain your focus and not get sidetracked. But I’ve got some news for you, Jack… It’s entirely up to you. Anything [...]

If you were to ask me for the true marks of a really productive person (which I’m not, incidentally, so take this with a grain of salt), I wouldn’t say anything about their work area, notebook collection, or pocket contents. I wouldn’t even necessarily cite their ability to consistently meet deadlines (because that just means [...]

So you’ve read through GTD for the ump-teenth time and it looks like you used it to beat back a pack of wild boar. You’ve got your all of your inputs handled and your edges are so clean you could eat off of them. I hate to pee in anybody’s punch, but that was the [...]

Well, as you’ve probably noticed, posting around here has slowed practically to a crawl. There are several reasons for this, many of them good ones, many of them attributable directly to the laziness of yours truly. I’m not happy about it, but this little blog has been the victim of what a database administrator would [...]

photo by shareski Of all of the the things you’d typically find in a man’s pocket (or a woman’s purse, I suppose), the wallet is probably the most pervasively adopted piece of hardware in Western civilization. Every Tom, Dick and Harry walking around almost certainly has a wallet in his back pocket. And the wallets [...]

This post was written by business coach Dave Crenshaw, author of the great new book The Myth of Multitasking I’d like to share a valuable principle with you. It’s something I’ve taught to many business owners and executives I’ve worked with. This principle may go against the grain of some of your beliefs about time [...]

One of my favorite things to do with my kids while my wife is at work is to take walks around the neighborhood. We usually have a destination, but if the weather is especially nice and we’re having a good time, I won’t exactly rush home. Recently, we were on just such a walk on [...]

Update: Brett continues to receive a ridiculously positive response to this article. He has since authored the first book on Evernote called Evernote Essentials. You should check it out here. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been really pimping Evernote to friends (both in real life and online, particularly on twitter). I’m usually pretty shocked [...]