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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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Productivity Tweet of the Week(ish): Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
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. I asked Brett to help explain it to me. He did… I still didn’t get it. Then all of a sudden it clicked. I’m not sure why it took so long, but all of a sudden I’m sold just the same as the rest (you can follow me here 
)!
For those who haven’t joined up yet, the coolness factor is probably the hardest thing in the Internet world to explain. I know people I follow are broadcasting their 140 characters to hundreds or thousands of people, but somehow reading about whats going on in their lives makes it seem more intimate than it really is. I can turn a tweet from someone else into a conversation at any point, as long as I have something valuable to give back to the conversation starter. We exchange a couple replies and we both go on our merry way. Quick, easy, interesting and non-committal.
I’m going to start a regular(ish) post highlighting my favorite productivity tweet of the week(ish) — I add the “ish” because I’m not sure I’ll be able to find one worth mentioning, but I’ll do my best. Luckily this week we have a great one to kick things off. It comes from James of Organize IT and here’s what he had to say:
Why iPhone Owners Don’t Need Wallets
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 that men carry are just as various as the men who carry them. There are big wallets, little wallets, wallets with chains, wallets as thick as a $5 paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice with zippers on them to make sure nothing falls out - the list goes on.
If you’re a guy reading this, I’d like for you to pull out your wallet and look inside. Better yet, dump it out onto the table or desk where you sit. Look over each item in the pile and ask yourself “Do I really need this with me *all* of the time?”. Chances are, no, you don’t. This is one of the reasons I no longer carry a wallet.
What then, you may ask, do I use to carry my driver license (and other plastic)? What about pictures of your children? Business cards for associates you might need to get in touch with? Lottery tickets from 6 months ago? That coupon for a free 16 oz. beverage at the local burger palace?
How I Use Evernote
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 to hear how many people have tried it and simply don’t know what to do with it or how to make it a useful part of their workflow. So, I thought I’d give you all a little peek into how I use it in my day-to-day life in the hope that some of you might come to love it and use is as heavily as I do. But first, indulge me in a little bit of speculation as to why people find it so difficult to put Evernote to good use.
I Have a Ton of Beta Invitations - Want One?
As I’ve said time and time again, I spend a ridiculous amount of time in front of a computer. I’m also a huge “tinkerer” when it comes to new applications and services, so I’m always curious to see what the next big thing will be, particularly in the social media and productivity arenas.
This type of curiosity means I get me some beta invitations. Lots of them. And, most of the time, when you sign up for a private beta of an app or site, you’ll eventually be given a handful of invitations to share with your friends. Well, today I will disperse my beta invitation inventory to you, my loyal readers and friends.
The Secret to Mastering the iPhone Keyboard
I won’t bore with another diatribe about how amazing the iPhone is - the product speaks for itself. I will, however, address one of the more common complaints about the device: the keyboard. For the most part, naysayers seem to prefer the tactile response of a hardware, Blackberry-style keyboard. I can absolutely sympathize with this, as I owned a T-Mobile Sidekick before my iPhone, which also had the hardware keyboard. The iPhone keyboard definitely took some getting used to, but I think I’ve got a handle on the single best advice to offer somebody having trouble acclimating to the touchscreen keyboard. Ready?
Brand New Site by Cranking Widgets
There are times in life when you decide “enough is enough“. This past week was one of those times.
I get a fair amount of email. Not as much as some, but it’s a pretty steady stream. Sometimes, those messages are from well-wishing friends who thought I might enjoy an inspirational message from an unknown source. Messages like these are almost always sent to a whole pantload of people. And all of our email addresses are nicely collected in the ‘To’ field, where every recipient now has access to my email address.
This is, frankly, infuriating. So much so that I decided to take some (arguably passive) action. I created a website where I can send people who do this.
Humbly, I give you bccplease.com. The idea is pretty self-explanatory, when you send an email to a million people, put their email addresses in the ‘BCC’ field instead of the ‘To’ field.
I hope you can all find some use for it, feel free to direct any email abusers you encounter on over for some tough love.
Enjoy!
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.
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.
Bloggers: Show the World What You’re Up To
The following is a sponsored post. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t mean every word of it, because I really do.
Like it or not, the age of social networking is upon us. There is no escaping this reality, and if you’re looking to make your blog a success, there’s a myriad of sites where you can participate: Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Last.fm spring to mind - and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
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.
