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- 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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Passionate People: Get What You Deserve, Become a Career Renegade!
We had just finished putting on our full-body suits, our BCDs, weight belts and air tanks. The waves were about 4 feet tall as we waddled out with what felt like a ton of gear on our backs. Given our experience, 4 feet is high but we noticed the waves are coming in groups of 5, then there is a lull. We had timed our entry just right and thought we were safe.
As we get to about thigh deep, all of the sudden the waves started getting bigger and coming at us non-stop. With the weight of our gear and the pounding of the waves, the effort to keep moving out beyond the break-point became exhausting. As soon as we would come up for air, another wave would hit us, which gave us little time to catch our breath. At one point, someone in the group started panicking and froze. I saw her going under water. Immediately, I swim over, grab her inflation hose and air shoots into her BCD. She is now safely floating on her back just beyond the break point, but suffering from shock and exhaustion. I grab the back of her tank and begin the dead mans tow further out to sea, safe from the surf.
A Passionate Struggle
This was my first beach dive. I was getting PADI certified for open water diving. My instructor was named Justin. Justin loves diving. He’s is an amazing instructor and it was obvious to me that his passion for diving consumed every fiber of his being. I knew what to do at that instant because he taught it to me in a way that made me excited to learn about it. I’m a terrible student, but I respected his passion for what he does and it got me through my first trial as a diver my first time out without much thought.
Justin had a thing for a friend that took the class with me so I got to know him a bit more than the others in the group. Among other things, I learned that drives a beat up old truck, lives in a so-so part of town and has to work as a waiter during the night just to pay his bills. At one point he admitted he was barely getting by and doesn’t dive nearly as much as he would like to due to expense. He told me teaching more would allow him to dive more often, but it didn’t pay well enough to cover the bills.
In career theory passionate people are generally fall into a category known as specialists. Specialists want to do nothing more than what they specialize in. Great artists don’t become great artists by getting bored and becoming gardeners, they keep building on their greatness. Generally these passionate people are stuck behind a desk doing something they’re not so passionate about. Sometimes that gives them the funds they need to do what they love whenever they like, but more often they’ll earn barely enough to finance their passion.
It has always bothered me that good, passionate people are so deserving of a comfortable life, yet many are barely getting by. I know talented musicians, artists, wood workers and teachers who all fit into this category. It doesn’t seem right to work so hard to obtain a respectable skill in one area of life only to struggle to find the means to spend time doing that skill.
There is Hope… If You’re Willing to be a Career Renegade
When Jonathan Fields offered me an advance copy of his new book, Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love, I jumped at the chance to receive it. I had learned about Jonathan’s blog a few months ago and became a fan of his writing, and attitude towards life, almost instantly.
Career Renegade starts off by telling us about Jonathan’s history. He is an ex-attorney who worked himself sick — literally. After putting in 72 hours straight to close a large deal for one of his clients, he collapsed and had to be taken to the emergency room for abdominal surgery due to stress caused by his work schedule. This was a wake-up call for him and put him on a new path to find his passions, work with people who shared them and help others whenever possible. This book is a guide for how others can find the same path.
What I like about Career Renegade is that it is far more practical than other career books I’ve read. It doesn’t preach that you should simply find your passion and do it until others around you notice it and reward you for it. It doesn’t say you should live as a pauper because your passion is what really will make you happy. He recognizes that you have to feed your family and deserve to live well doing what you love.
Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love is an easy read from beginning to end. Jonathan’s writing is both practical and inspirational. I particularly like the use of case studies to illustrate points keeps the content fresh and easily digestible. Often chapters will end with a practical call to action or exercises designed to get you going. It also offers a plethora of resources throughout the book, which are extremely relevant, cost-effective and stand to save hours of research.
Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love offers the inspiration and information you need to embark on your own renegade path. I highly recommend Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love to those or you who are searching for, and often deserving, greater meaning and reward from the work you do.
How to Help Great Productivity Blogs Get Discovered
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 on a topic of interest that boasts a solid readership today, find the archives and start from the beginning. You’ll rarely be disappointed.)
There are only so many tips one person can have for how to make widgets, shave your body hair, make money online, collect monkeys, or whatever else may get a bloggers goat for a while. The symptoms are the same: deceleration of posting, the authors posts seem forced and/or repetitive, more guest posters, etc. My gut tells me we’re coming to an end of a cycle of higher-profile bloggers in the productivity world. I think its a shame because many were an invaluable source of inspiration and great ideas.
Here’s to New Blogs With Great Content in Need of Readers
A few weeks ago a fellow named Chuck Westbrook started a movement designed to give up-and-coming bloggers a chance to gain some exposure. Chris Brogan caught wind of the concept and tweeted about it to his ~20k followers on Twitter. Later Darren from Problogger and Guy Kawasaki tossed in some links and really gave the idea some legs.
Chuck is on to something, but my definition of an interesting blogger is slightly different that what has been selected so far. I like reading what helpful and/or inspirational productivity or personal development-oriented bloggers have to say. Since joining The Cranking Widgets Blog I’ve already been introduced to some new authors that I’ve found very valuable and are still loving their blogs. I’m confident there are plenty more out there that I’ve yet to discover.
I want to be introduced to other success-minded bloggers who are still excited about how to help others get more stuff done and reach their goals. I want to share the ones that are particularly valuable with you by giving a more in depth review or interview… Maybe even put something about them in the sidebar for a week or two. (If I get too many submissions, I’ll share my favorites on Twitter — follow me here.)
My Criteria
This one will be a moving target, but generally I’d say:
- I’m not interested in GTD calendars, notebooks or other productivity pr0n. I’ve seen some newer bloggers that appear to be all about trying to make a buck instead of helping others. I can’t blame them, but it adds too much noise.
- Insight and passion are key. That’s the beauty of blogs. “Ordinary” people can write about their passions and it actually shows! I’d like to give exposure to people who are passionate about helping people get more done and reach their goals.
- 5k RSS readers or less. I’m happy to promote the Zen Habits’ and Lifehacker’s of the world since they are definitely high-value, but I’m looking for smaller-scale. I realize 5k RSS readers is pretty significant already. The main objective is finding high-value blogs that aren’t already a “household name.”
How You Can Help
I would be grateful if you could help shine some more light on the quality bloggers that are out there. A couple options:
- Please share your favorite productivity or personal development oriented blog with our fellow readers via comments. Give us a link and tell us why you like it.
- If you have a blog and you feel like it fits the bill, writing up a detailed post that summarizes what you’re all about would be helpful. How do you like to preach productivity/reaching goals? Do you post tips? General concepts? Inspiration? What is your mission (following your passion is a perfectly good mission btw)? Highlighting your favorite articles that you’ve written so far would be value-added (I’m sure your readers wouldn’t mind either.) Include a link to your post as a comment below.
I have already selected the first blogger that I’ll be highlighting. He’s someone that Brett introduced me to a couple months ago and I’m grateful to be able to read what he has to say. I’ll be sharing his blog with you next week.
For now, please submit away! I’m really looking forward to discovering and sharing new blogs!
My Scandelous Confession and A Royal Rant About GTD
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 read Getting Things Done by The David and most of us loved it immediately. Most of us injected the principles into our work flow as quickly as possible. Most of us felt a sense of peace and control as a result.
Most of us found Merlin Mann (how couldn’t we?) Most of us bought 3×5 index cards to capture thoughts and created Hipster-PDAs to hold the cards. Most of us bought Moleskine notebooks to manage our lists because that was the cool thing to do and that’s what Merlin Mann liked best.
Then most of us went digital and bounced between Omnifocus and Remember the Milk and Things and Backpack for a while because this software was supposed to help make managing our lives digitally a lot easier. Most of us realized that bouncing between each of these pieces of software was a huge time investment just to trade one problem for another, yet most of us ignored it and kept switching anyway.
Most of us have tried our best to regularly process our inbox, maintain our project lists, maintain our to-do lists by context. Most of us saw the GTD honeymoon period come to an end and became frustrated by the overhead it took to keep our GTD system happy. Most of us got annoyed that the stuff had to go from our different inbaskets, like paper, Gmail, rss or Evernote, to Google Calendar and Remember The Milk or Things or Omnifocus or Backpack for doing. Most of us got fed up with needing to use 4-5 different systems to in order to follow GTD.
And then at some point most of us found ourselves procrastinating. Most of us stopped being diligent about promptly processing every last piece of stuff in our inbox. Most of us stopped doing the weekly review because it was really just too hard to find the time to sit down for an hour without distraction to evaluate our lists and our lives every week. Most of us know we should be processing and reviewing regularly. Most of us replaced the forgotten feelings of stress and being overwhelmed with guilt.
Most of us sung the praises of GTD to anyone who will listen, then secretly found it to be a pain in the ass in practice. Most of us want an easier GTD and/or a better way to productively manage what life throws at us.
My Confession…
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
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.
Productivity Systems Don’t Suck, But Sometimes I Do
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 positive light. They are sobering reminders of how our personal productivity systems are nothing more than a means to an end. Why we produce boils down to reasons that live deep inside of us. I focus on being productive because my personal goals and commitments require me to get a lot of things done in a short period of time. I am passionate about productivity systems because they allow my over-achieving, over-estimating self to get closer to achieving my goals faster and with minimal affects on my health and overall well-being.
Ask the Readers: What happens to “Do it Now” Actions?
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 while trying to answer this are:
- Would you figure out what project you just did the action for and file the item (and maybe action) as reference? (This would be useful if you reviewed completed actions as part of your review)
- Does the action just get crossed off and never visited again?
- Do you immediately determine a next action for that piece of stuff?
- Do you just junk the piece of stuff?
Please weigh in via comments with your responses. I appreciate your assistance in solving this strange, yet intruiging problem with me. 
Converting Coworkers to GTD
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 easy part.
Your officemate and frequent collaborator, Bob, has an in-basket that looks like an open-faced filing cabinet. He might as well change the name of his Outlook inbox to “freaking everything”. In short, his personal productivity system makes your skin crawl. What recourse do you have? How can you show Bob the One True Way?
Well, the short answer is - you can’t. Think of it as a marriage. For years and years, you’ve been arranging your toiletries a certain way, then along comes your brand new spouse. You’re equally excited about joining your separate existences into a unified organism of love or something. But the jerk can’t seem to understand why the toothpaste cap needs to be replaced once the paste has been dispensed. And it makes you want to go over the table on him (and not in the newlywed sort of way).
You can browbeat your coworkers until you’re blue in the face about how if only they would read this delightful book, then all of their problems will be solved - but it really won’t solve anything. The key to winning the hearts and notebooks of your unenlightened coworkers is to lead by example. You have to be a freaking ninja at this stuff before you can go around proselytising. Because, if your credibility in such matters is even a little shaky, you’ll be dismissed quicker than the class clown in third period french.
If you consistenly out-perform those around you (and still leave the office on time), your superiors will start to notice. And once they do, they’ll start poking around, watching you work. Before you know it, they’ll be asking you to lead seminars and lunchtime meetings for your coworkers and colleagues because the brass want the rest of the rank and file to crank on their work the same way that you do.
So, unless Bob asks, save your GTD speech for the ears of those who really want to hear it. It’ll go eons farther, I promise you.
I am Productivity (And So Can You!)
Hello, My name is Andy and I’m the new guy here at The Cranking Widgets Blog. While I hope to share far more valuable information in the months and years to come, I’d like to kick things off by getting some answers to the obligatory “who the heck is this guy?” out of the way.
I’ve been interested in getting as much done as possible with the least amount of effort for as long as I can remember. I guess thats the definition of productivity… Work smarter, not harder! However I’m embarrassed to say that I’m a GTD late bloomer. In fact, we only need to travel back in time about a year to discover my roots…
8 Ninja Uses for Binder Clips
I would be willing to wager that most people, during their first office supply shopping trip after having read Getting Things Done, pick up some binder clips. This is probably because they happened across the Hipster PDA at some point during their GTD travels and thought, “man, that looks like something I could really get into - and for like $5, tops…”. Hell, you could build Hipster PDAs for a small village for like $20, who wouldn’t be tempted by such a small admission price? I know I wasn’t - I’ve got a whole tub of probably 30-40 binder clips of varying sizes that has been very busy gathering dust for many months now.
If you find yourself in this boat, have no fear, for I have compiled some seriously hacky uses for all those binder clips. They may not all have mass appeal, but they are examples of how to take your productivity gear to places it was never intended
Getting Things Done with 37signals’ Backpack - Why I’m Switching Back
As some of my twitter friends noticed this week, I’ve made the switch back to Backpack as my primary GTD tool. Some found this surprising, given how heavily I’ve pimped Remember the Milk. This post will outline why I left RTM and why Backpack makes so much more sense (for me, anyway).
Let me get one thing out of the way - this post (and my aforementioned switch) is in now way an indictment on RTM as a service. They have an outstanding product and the sheer number of users they have will attest to that. Having said that, here is the main limitation I found with RTM as a digital tool for Getting Things Done:
