Build the Business of Your Dreams
By Andy Parkinson, on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
I was at a dinner party the other day and observed the following fascinating exchange (names have been changed to protect the innocent
):
Cheryl is enjoying her wine and poking away at her Blackberry when she notices her acquantance Jude had just arrived. Cheryl gets up and walks over to Jude. They greet eachother with a hug’s and hello’s. Jude asks, “Hey! How have you been?”
Cheryl proudly replies, “I’m stressed out! I’ve been putting in 10 hour days to finish a very important project at work and I can barely sleep at night. Its all I can think about.”
Jude, appearing to feel inferior, retorts, “That sounds great! But, I wish I had your schedule. I’ve been working 10 hour days and most weekends recently!”
Cheryl gets a bit defensive and quickly shoots back with, “Well, I’d trade my weekends to get rid of these headaches. At least you don’t get migranes twice a week! But it’s worth it. I bought a new boat, its a beautiful 40 footer. I’m just not sure when I’ll be able to find the time to use it!”
At that point I had lost interest and stopped listening. I’m pretty sure the pissing match continued for a while longer…
By Andy Parkinson, on Thursday, November 20th, 2008
It is my observation that writers of niche blogs have a fairly predictable shelf life. Most non-news-telling bloggers that see some early successes last a good 2-3 years before they stop posting. Most of the time the value posts are made within the first 12 months and it goes downhill from there. (Side tip: whenever you discover a new blog [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
I have a confession to make. Actually, I’m pretty sure most lovers of GTD have a similar confession, but first I need to start by expressing some assumptions about most of us who are reading this right now (and feel free to challenge any of these via comments). Most of Us… Most of us have [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Friday, November 14th, 2008
Now that Brett has officialy retired from productivity blogging, I’m sure long-time readers are wondering what will come of The Cranking Widgets Blog. The short answer is easy: CW is, and will continue to be, mainly about productivity. There is, however, a long answer. What a blogger blogs about and the spin they put on topics will always be driven by their [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
I’ve read a lot of posts out there in the blogosphere trying to answer whether Basecamp or Backpack is the best solution for managing projects. The fact is that there is no reason that you should have to, or want to, choose one over the other. I have been using both for about a year [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Not only am I a GTD late bloomer, I’m a Twitter late bloomer too! Before giving the service a fair shake, I kept reading blogger after blogging telling the same story: “I didn’t get it until I tried it for a week, now I love it!” I tried it for a week, I didn’t get it. [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Friday, October 24th, 2008
Few would argue that Merlin Mann is the Godfather of GTD/productivity blogging. About a month ago he posted Four Years and followed it up with Time, Attention, and Creative Work. If you haven’t read these, please do so now… It’s good stuff. What do you think? I look at both of these posts in a [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Thursday, October 16th, 2008
As we process our stuff and determine next actions, as good GTD practitioners we do any action we’ve just defined that will take less than two minutes to complete. After doing the action, how do you handle the piece of stuff and the action that was just processed & done? Some things I’m thinking about [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
The recent financial turmoil has created a situation where unemployment could be a problem for quite some time. The good news for the unemployed is that there are tangible things that you can do to increase your chances of getting noticed for the jobs that are available. Sure, jobs are going away, but jobs are [...]
By Andy Parkinson, on Friday, October 10th, 2008
A guest poster over at Get Rich Slowly recently shared an incredible tip for how to use a recording device to get control of your TV watching habits so you can redirect your attention to far more productive endeavors. Erica Douglass writes: 750 hours a year is 14.42 hours a week, or just over two hours a [...]
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