-
What I'm Doing
-
My GTD Tool of Choice - Try it!
-
Vote for Topics
-
Recently Written
- 8 Ninja Uses for Binder Clips
- Reasons to Get a Tattoo (and Reasons Not To)
- Getting Things Done with 37signals’ Backpack - Why I’m Switching Back
- 11 Tips for Better Tech Support
- Cranking Widgets Theme Updated!
- Keep Your Notes in Order with the Daily Scratchpad
- The Single Most Useful Contact on Your iPhone
- Happy Monday: Odds, Ends and other Minutiae
- Bloggers: Show the World What You’re Up To
- Describing Twitter in Plain English
-
Categories
-
Archives
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 
Reasons to Get a Tattoo (and Reasons Not To)
I have lots of tattoos. Something like 30 at last count, if memory serves. As tattoos have grown in popularity and social acceptance, it’s very likely that your average 20-something has one or more tattoos. And while I’m certainly not an expert on the art of tattooing, I’ve got a good deal of experience with tattoos (mostly because I get lots of people who want to show theirs to me) and can enumerate fairly confidently what are good reasons for getting a tattoo. I can also tell you what are not good reasons
People’s tastes in tattoo design has always fascinated me. Everything from beautifully ornate recreations of their mother’s High School yearbook photo to a cup of coffee and a donut (seriously, I’ve seen it). Far be it from me to tell somebody I think their tattoo is dumb (to their face, at least), but I think there are some pretty hard-and-fast rules about choosing a design for your next tattoo.
11 Tips for Better Tech Support
We’ve all been there. Something’s dreadfully wrong with your trusty computer - you can’t print, you can’t get on the web, you can’t play Bejeweled. For whatever reason, the problem is major enough to warrant one of the most desperate acts you can imagine - a phone call to tech support.
Now, before we dig in, let me tell you that I’ve done my time answering the tech support phone calls. I spent a good 3 years at it, so I have a pretty good idea what I’m talking about. And while I didn’t enjoy it for the most part, it was an enlightening experience. The support calls that were the most pleasant (or least unbearable, it could also be said) were with people who took the time to perform one or more of the steps I’m going to outline here. Trust me folks, this is the real freaking McCoy.
The key to making things work with your tech support representative is to make things easy for them. I know that there are a great many jackasses out there who feel some sense of entitlement and indignation when speaking to people in service roles, but believe me - you want them to be happy.
Keep Your Notes in Order with the Daily Scratchpad
Image courtesy of
London Permaculture
The following is a guest post by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project
We’re all looking for ways to work both faster and calmer, and I recently hit on a trick that keeps my desk tidier and my thoughts clearer.
One of my most annoying habits is my tendency to scribble down important phone numbers, “Don’t forget!!!” notes, and helpful URLs on any piece of paper that happens to be cluttering up my desk.
An hour later, I throw away what appears to be trash, or I flip over a piece of paper —and the key info vanishes. Or even if the information was still there, I have no idea what it means. Sure, that phone number has a star by it, so it must be important—but I can’t remember whose number it is.
The Single Most Useful Contact on Your iPhone
Like most adults living in America today, I get many phone calls. Some from my wife, my mom, my brother, my friends. But sometimes, I get phone calls from the local health club, the local car dealership or somebody trying to get me to buy 5 pounds of veal.
Unsolicited phone calls. We all hate them with a raw purple passion, but - if you have a phone - they’re almost as certain as death and taxes. It sucks, but that’s the freakin’ reality of the situation.
This little gem occurred to me just a few days ago. This past weekend, I’d taken our car into the local Toyota dealership for it’s oil change/tire rotation/etc. maintenance visit. It went very well, no hiccups or accidental scratches, none of that. Then, the following Monday morning, I got an email from them asking to take a short survey about my service experience. Took less than 2 minutes and I was happy to do it.
Describing Twitter in Plain English
I’m a big fan of Twitter (even though we’ve had our differences in the past - mostly due to my not “getting it”). While my updates may not be as fast, furious or incessant as some of the people whom I follow, I do try to pop on there as often as is feasible without completely kneecapping my productivity at work and home.
Whenever I mention Twitter to my non-techie friends and family, I’m often asked what it is and I can never quite articulate it without making it sound like some über-nerd service that only computer people use. It’s frustrating, because it’s such a fun service (and potential time sink - you’ve been warned, uninitiated readers) and I really wish more people used it.
Fortunately, I found this great video (via Twitter, oddly enough) that does a fantastic job of explaining just what Twitter actually is and why it’s so freakin’ cool.
How to Not Screw Up Your New Job
It’s one of the best feelings in the world, heading in for your first day at a new job. Everything feels fresh and new, you feel like you’re starting with a clean slate and that you’re really going to ace this one. You’re just so positive about everything, especially if it’s the kind of job you’ve been hoping for and working toward for a long time. You know, the kind you see on commercials for online employment sites where the dude in the tie is doing the arms-raised-high and both-feet-hitting-his-lower-back-type jump, fueled by that new job joy.
But, starting a new job can be especially difficult for some. Perhaps you just can’t seem to fit in, no matter where your career takes you (this happens a lot more often than people think, I assure you). Here are some things to avoid doing (many of which I’ve personally witnessed) that will go a long way in getting your ass on the outside curb quicker than you thought possible.
Trick Out Your iPhone with These Smart Playlists
As I mentioned previously, i received an iPhone for this past Christmas. While I really love it, having to go from a 60gb iPod which held all of my music to having only 8gb of space took some getting used to. I started out by hand-picking various albums and tracks and changing the contents each night in preparation for the next day. It got to be pretty arduous, needless to say, and I was only listening to about 15% of my music, and it was almost entirely tracks that I really liked. In other words, roughly 85% of my music was sitting quietly in iTunes with very little hope of making it onto my iPhone. I sought a way to change all that…
Being a big fan of the Macbreak Weekly podcast, I’d heard Andy Ihnatko discuss his fantastic book, iPhone Fully Loaded. Wanting to really get everything I could out of my new toy, I ordered myself a copy (great book, highly recommended). One of the best chapters in the entire book is “How to Make 8 Gigabytes Seem Like 80″, which directly addressed the problem I was having with the music rotation. So, a good bit of what I’ll share below has been built upon the tips given by Andy in his book (which you should go buy).
Sandy v. Remember the Milk: The Web-Based Reminder Cage Match
Within this little GTD cult of ours, there are an alarming number of battles fought over the best tool, notebook, web application, etc. In my mind, it’s a little silly - just use what works, right?
Well, sometimes there will be two “competing” services/devices/things that both offer a compelling solution to a common problem. Today, that problem is reminders and the two services I’ll be covering are Remember the Milk (hereafter referred to as ‘RTM’) and Sandy.
Now, before everybody starts frothing at the mouth about how the service they use is better than both of those, let me reiterate - I don’t really care what you use. If a stack of cocktail napkins, a set of soap crayons and a shoebox get the job done for you, then that’s great. My point here is not to decide on the all-time greatest way to remind yourself to take the pizza out of the oven or pick up your kilt from the dry cleaners. I’m simply going to compare the capabilities of these two services and tell you which one I like best. Mmkay? Mmkay.
6 Websites That Will Certainly Make You Smarter
Ah, the Internet. It’s one of those things that regularly inspires awe in me, even though I spend several hours a day interacting with it (both professionally and recreationally).
But with such an immense amount of information, it’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. While there are many fantastic websites chock full of accurate data and intelligent ideas, there are probably 100 times more that are pretty much useless. A sad fact, but a fact nonetheless. Which is why it’s so important, if you spend any amount of time poking around the web, that you have a few oases - diamonds in the rough, if you will.
In my many, many hours of perusing the Internet, I’ve come across my fair share of websites. I’ve selected a few that I consider to be the least likely to rot your brain (but be warned, all of these can very easily rob you of an entire afternoon if you’re not careful).
