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What Andy's Doing
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Recently Written
- 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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Categories
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Archives
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…
As the Saying Goes, “Many Hands Make Light Work”
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 call a “process deadlock” - when having to choose between various responsibilities and obligations that I have, the old CW has been passed over on several occasions. For that, I apologize.
But, this here cloud has a silver lining. I’m happy to announce the addition of a contributing author here on Cranking Widgets. My good buddy Andy is a serious GTD practitioner, not to mention a hell of a smart and savvy guy in general. He brings many areas of expertise to the table (most of which I, frankly, lack the brain cells to handle), so I think he’ll be a refreshing change from my usual dry-witted drivel. I’m excited that he’s going to be helping me out, and I’d appreciate it if you would all treat him as kindly as you’ve treated me these past years.
Having said all that, keep your eyes out for new content and other goodies as Andy and I start getting this blog back to being the productivity powerhouse that it once was - or something like that 
Thanks a ton, everybody, for understanding and for sticking with me as I slack. You all are awesome and I’m privileged and humbled to have you as an audience for my little backyard puppet show.
Here’s to the future!
Happy Monday: Odds, Ends and other Minutiae
I hope everybody had a fantastic weekend! I’ll start by apologizing (again - seems like I’m doing this an awful lot lately) for the slowdown in posting over the last week - some personal events had most of my attention during non-work hours. Thanks for hanging in there, I’ll be posting new and exciting crap this week, cross my heart.
But this post is just to let you know about a couple other exciting things happening in the world of old CW. First, I’m honored to have been included in the Lifehacks section of Guy Kawasaki’s newest venture, Alltop.com. The idea is that it takes the last few headlines from all of the top blogs/personalities on the web and gives you a birds-eye view of what everybody is up to. Check it out at alltop.com, it’s pretty sweet.
I got a chance to chat with Dustin Wax of lifehack.org over Skype last week for their Lifehack Live podcast, which was released into the wild today! Though, I must warn you, I tend to ramble a little bit when I get nervous, thanks for understanding You can listen to the episode here, and I highly recommend adding the podcast to your favorite podcatcher - definitely some great stuff happening over there.
That’s all for today, kids. Have a happy St. Patrick’s Day, and we’ll meet again sometime this week for more fun, forest and fantasy. Cheers!
Bloggers: Want to Tap into the Pool of 58 Million Facebook Users?
I wanted to start by saying that I hope everybody had a fantastic holiday season and new year! I’ve got a bunch of stuff in the hopper for this little blog for the coming year, so be sure to stay tuned to find out what’s ahead
Social networking sites are popping up everywhere. Bookmarks, videos, pictures, you name it - there’s a website out there that will let you share all of this stuff and more with all of your Internet-aware buddies.
But even for those who haven’t drank this particular flavor of kool-aid yet, the name ‘Facebook‘ is quickly becoming the most notable example of social networking (except, perhaps, the oft-loathed MySpace). Everybody and their college-aged buddy has an account, and many people live and die by it as a way of interacting with current friends, as well as making new ones.
So, how is a budding blogger to tap into this gigantic group of potential new readers and subscribers? Well, I’m glad you asked…
365 (or so) Merlin Mannerisms
Everybody’s favorite productivity eccentric has agreed to have a whole slew of quotes published as a “Quote of the Day” calendar for 2008!
Not to sound like a fanboy, but I find Merlin to be an immensely entertaining guy, as I’m sure many of you do as well. Not to be encumbered by traditional thinking (and since I’m an American and instant gratification is the only way I roll), I just read through the whole thing in the last 20 minutes. It really just made me realize how relatively poor my vocabulary is, but it made me chuckle a whole lot.
Celebrating Cranking Widgets’ First Birthday
Sure doesn’t seem like it, but today marks the one year anniversary of the first post on this here blog. Wow.
I must admit, this blog is doing better than I would’ve imagined way back then. We’re doing a respectable 3K+ subscribers and roughly a thousand pageviews per day. And while that’s child’s play for some blogs, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Thanks to all of the regular readers and to those who consistently leave thoughtful, intelligent comments. You guys make this blog what it is and I’m in your debt.
I enjoy writing for and maintaining this blog, it does come at a price. And while I’ll never, ever charge anybody to read what’s posted here, I will occasionally ask for donations (like now).
If you enjoy reading my ramblings and such, might I suggest making a donation (as large or small as you like) to help offset the costs (both monetary and otherwise) of keeping this site up and humming. We’re moving to a new hosting facility soon that will offer faster load times and a generally snappier user experience, but at a greater cost than the current host. If you could spare a few bucks, I would be most appreciative
Anyway, thanks again for reading and here’s to another year of productivity, parenting, my oddball sense of humor - and rabbits with pancakes on their heads.
Cheers,
Brett
State of the Blog
When I started this blog all those months ago, I really had no idea it would do as well as it has. We have a pretty respectable number of feed subscribers and page views and consistently high-quality comments. Among all of the fantastic productivity-themed blogs out there, I like to think we’ve carved out a nice little niche for ourselves here at CW.
So, what’s to come? Well, I’ve got several things in the works…
New Look - (one that I’ll be designing and implementing from scratch). Much of my discretionary time is currently occupied with other obligations, primarily my family, so this will be done reasonably soon (but not tomorrow). But I’m definitely going to clear up some of the clutter that has worked it’s way into the nooks and crannies of the current layout.
It Only Comes Once a Year…
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Review this Blog for a Chance at Cash
Since starting this little blog about 7 months ago, I’ve learned quite a bit about what makes a good blog (and what doesn’t). My reader base has grown a great deal lately, something I’m thrilled to death about.
Now, I’m looking to take this thing to the next level - which is where you come in. Here’s the deal:
You review this blog (on your own blog), and one of you will be chosen randomly (by a program that I’ll be writing) as the big winner. The winner will get $50 US via PayPal (and a big wet “thank you” post on this blog). It’s that simple.
Sound good? Let’s get started.
Here are the rules:
An Ode to Twitter
Twitter. Oh, Twitter.
You enticed me with your bubbly logo and simple interface. You wined and dined me with your promises of increased communication and the constant knowledge of the whereabouts and doings of my friends and cohorts. You took the Internet by storm and made us all believe you were the next plateau in digital interaction. But alas, your sweet words were poisoned with lies…
