acidlabs » gtd

Freedom

Stephen Collins — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:29:05 +0000

June and July were insanely busy months working with my biggest client. I pulled some very long hours and got very behind on some email and feed reading tasks.

In an effort to relieve the self-imposed pressure of catching up, I now have a near-zero Inbox and have set most of my feeds to read. I’m sure I’ve missed some important news in the feeds, but the world hasn’t stopped spinning, so it can’t be that bad.

Hopefully, I get a chance now to keep up.

A Scout’s approach to meetings

Stephen Collins — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 11:30:37 +0000

Be prepared. Simple.

While I’m one to agree with the 37signals view on meetings, they are often an inevitable and necessary evil in the day of us web workers. Over at About.com, there are some great tips on organising meetings to avoid the flow-destroying passion-suck that almost always happens.

I work in a town where the federal government is the business, so a lot of my clients live and die by committees, panels and meetings. For me, they are absolutely necessary. Personally, I think they suck the life out of a project – I’d much rather be doing something than talking about doing something.

I find the following strategies useful:

deep preparation – know what I’m going to talk about, when and for how long
strict time limits – no more than an hour
a highly defined purpose – with an agenda broken down to 5-minute intervals
poll the audience – if a committee needs to make a decision, spend some time one-on-one getting their views before the meeting takes place

If you’re cursed by having to attend meetings where decision-making takes a back seat, what strategies do you use for getting something real happening in them?

Image © Mot. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license.

43 Folders GTD recap

Stephen Collins — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 01:47:06 +0000

If you are at all interested in the Getting Things Done program (not the right word, but the best I can do), you should check out Merlin’s recap of his best (against several, mostly objective measures) GTD posts from 2006.

I am about 50-50 on GTD; not fully bought in, but significantly better organised than I was before using the methods outlined in the book to get going.

If you’re not familiar with GTD, you should read the book.

Web geek time management

Stephen Collins — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 05:45:13 +0000

Totally seriously, WWD has another excellent post up. This time on time management for us web workers.

The two-minute email rule

Stephen Collins — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:25:48 +0000

I very much like this.

Regular readers of acidlabs will know we’re fans of Getting Things Done. Eric Mack extends David’s Two Minute Rule to email – if the email will take more than two minutes to reply to, just delete it.

Now, this is obviously an idea that needs a little tweaking. Sometimes you get emails that are critical that require a response which needs to take more than two minutes to generate. That said, take a look at your Inbox. How many unread/unanswered emails are there? What percentage of them could you deal with in less than two minutes? How many of the ones that would take more than two minutes should have been broken down into smaller chunks of achievable, next action-based information? I’d venture than the answers, in order, are: A number between 10 and 100, more than 80 per cent, all of them.

Go ahead. Kill the email that will take more than two minutes to answer. If it’s really important, the sender will call or email again. When they do, advise them of your policy and get them to chunk their email down.

“Looking into” Merlin’s brain

Stephen Collins — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 04:20:45 +0000

Merlin Mann of 43folders fame has posted an excellent summary of what it takes as a knowledge worker to really prioritise those “look into” projects. He examines a number of verbs GTDers can use as contexts for their knowledgework.

I’ve updated kGTD to reflect these.

Private: VirtueDesktops – sexier than your average desktop manager

Stephen Collins — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 04:01:22 +0000

While further exploring the idea of virtual desktops on OS X, as I wrote about the other day, I have come across VirtueDesktops. Based on the original DesktopManager codebase, VirtueDesktops brings teh sexxay to desktop management on OS X.

It seems to be very stable, and, as stated by the developer “under active development”, whereas Desktop Manager is seemingly a little stale. So active, in fact, that Tony is helping out the folks from Parallels with some of their desktop/VM switching code as well as improving his own app.

Download it and check it out!

Desktop Manager – an OS X cool tool

Stephen Collins — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 05:33:36 +0000

If, like me, you are a PowerBook owner who has either:

used a desktop with multiple monitors
used a *nix distro

you’ll be familiar with the concept of using multiple desktops, either physical or virtual In order to improve your productivity. In Linux/Unix of pretty much every flavor, this has been standard fare for just about forever. it’s also something I missed when I moved to OS X.

If you’d like that ability to use multiple desktops back, let me introduce Desktop Manager for OS X. It’s (oddly enough) a virtual desktop manager for OS X. It’s pretty powerful, with a swag of useful features. It has also become one of my critical apps, launched at startup.

Given recent publicity all over again about the productivity improvements of working with multiple screens, Desktop Manager provides an experience not too far removed from that.

You can also read an interesting and lengthy interview with Desktop Manager’s developer, Rich Wareham, at DrunkenBlog.

The quest for the ultimate PowerBook bag

Stephen Collins — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 07:56:56 +0000

A notebook bag by any other name still holds your notebook (with sincere apologies to The Bard). True, but it may not be what you really want.

Introduction

If you’re a road warrior type of any description, or you own a notebook PC which travels with you even a little, having the right bag to organise everything you want is crucuial. Particularly if you’re a user of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, or reader of Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders, you’ll know that the dilemma that’s posed by having to choose the best notebook bag for your needs is a terrible one. There are a gazillion questions to ask yourself in terms of choosing that bag:

What do I need to store in the bag beyond my notebook PC? If you’re like me, the list isn’t small…
What “style” do I want? Messenger bag, traditional notebook bag, mini roller suitcase, backpack, side- or vertical-loader? This is often decided for you by how much travelling you do, as well as the extras you carry – many of the messenger bag styles have limited additional space, so if you carry lots around, probably no messenger bag for you
What “finish” do I want? Traditional black leather, urban canvas/no-tear cloth, something different? This can have a significant impact on how long your bag is likely to last, as well as how much you pay
Ah, yes. The money question. Notebook bags, at least the really good ones, aren’t cheap. Spending over AU$100 is easy, spending over US$200 is also not too difficult if you’ve got something special in mind
Do I have a favorite brand/manufacturer? We all know about Targus and Belkin, they’re standard fare. But there are a huge range of bag makers out there who make some sweet notebook bags

Motivation and criteria

I came up against this dilemma last week – the freebie (but perfectly good) notebook backpack I got at a conference last year is no longer suitable. My new job requires that all the consultants project a very corporate look, and notebook backpacks don’t fit that look. I also didn’t want anything ordinary, I wanted something really nice. So, I established my criteria, based off my earlier internal conversation:

I have a fair amount of stuff I want to carry about – my 15″ PowerBook and its powerpack, Mighty Mouse, Creative Zen Xtra mp3 player, some pens, my compendium, a Moleskine Weekly Diary and Moleskine Large Ruled Notebook, a few extra cables (Cat-5, USB, etc.), my phone and occasionally an extra file or two and maybe a book I’m reading. If I’m travelling, possibly an extra shirt, tie, jocks and socks, some deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste and aftershave. So the bag needs to be large enough to cope with all this stuff
I can’t have a backpack, and I don’t want a rolling suitcase, so it’s a traditional notebook bag, or messenger bag style
I want leather or dark finish of some sort
I don’t want a bag everyone else has, so ideally, it’s not going to be from a common manufacturer
Price. Personally, I don’t care what I pay, so long as I get the bag I want. On the other hand, I’m not the only consideration – I have a family, bills and house – so blowing US$250 on a bag is probably not smart. I decided to limit myself to US$120 give or take a small margin
It had to look “corporate enough”. That is, it shouldn’t look out of place over the shoulder of someone in a suit and tie, and carrying it shouldn’t make your suit jacket look like it had come from the Salvation Army Thrift Shop

With these criteria in mind, I started looking online. This is my story.

The bags

First, I found this review at MacNN of the Booq Folee XM System. How did it fit my criteria? 15″ PowerBook, tick. Room for pens, notebooks and folders, tick. Super sexy, while still nice and corporate. Plenty of space. But yikes! US$230!

Battling onwards, I came across stuff I’d never even heard of – the Crumpler Part and Parcel at AU$230. Another bag which has it all, and comes highly recommended from some folks I know. Plus Crumpler are Aussies. But again yikes on the price, albeit significantly less than the Booq Folee XM. A really nice bag, but well out of budget. Oh yes, if you’re epileptic, beware of their site. Scary stuff, seemingly designed by someone with ADHD and a penchant for weird music and sound effects.

Next, I came across a blog comment somewhere which mentioned the Tom Bihn Empire Builder plus Brain Cell and Absolute Shoulder Strap at US$215. How can you fault a bag which took three years to design? It’s also arguably the nicest looking of all the bags I saw, except for the Folee. Plus, it appears to have it all – roomy, solid, stylish. Sadly, the price is yet again the breaker.

Finally, a bag that’s near-budget. Not terribly near, but near enough that I’d probably win approval if I check. The Brenthaven Pro at US$179 It looks to have everything – space, ruggedness and style to burn. A very nice corporate-looking bag. This one’s on the “probables” rather than the “possibles” list.

The RoadWired Skooba Satchel at US$100 is the closest thing so far to fulfilling all my specified requirements. Not to mention, it was recommended on boingboing recently. It also seems to have plenty of space.

The Patagonia One Bag at US$128 is also in budget, or very close. It’s not as pretty as many of the others, but very serviceable. I kind of crossed this one off on style, despite the excellent price and serviceability, and the fact that Patagonia reckon you can use it for “[h]itch-hiking through Central America”.

Lastly, I found the Spire Endo. At US$90, the Endo is well within budget, and nicely contemporary, while still corporate enough. It looks to have enough storage space, too. Also on the “probables” list.

At this point, I felt thoroughly overwhelmed. I also knew that despite the attractions of the Booq Folee XM and the Brenthaven Pro, my budget just wasn’t going to stretch that far. Well, I’d be happy to spend that much, but others to whom I have responsibilities would kick my ass. It looked like the Spire Endo or RoadWired Skooba were the most likely. I was leaning towards the Skooba, particularly given the boingboing article.

Heartbreak

Then, came the breaker. I am now a mere shell of a man, having discovered (I don’t recall where or how) that my beloved Adobe (Macromedia, Allaire, etc.) has released its own, custom built bag which would be utterly perfect for my needs.

Meet the Adobe Messenger from MEDIUM, “the ultimate design bag for the creative professional”. Read the story of the design process. View the awesome multimedia display with all the details you’ll ever want. Read again the story of MEDIUM and their ties to Adobe and how they use Adobe tools every day. Download the spec sheet and drool over the gorgeousness of the Adobe Messenger. This bag is absolutely the duck’s nuts. Just look at the thing. Nothing has been left off, or forgotten. It has routing clips for earphones, for Chrissakes! And a built-in weather shield. And… and…

Understand too, that when I emailed friends on Adobe’s staff about this bag, they didn’t even know it existed!

Oh, how I lust after one of these. But at US$250, it just ain’t happening… Not unless I have a fairy godsomething who’s tight with the right people at Adobe. But having seen this, I’m spoiled now. No other bag will do.

Compromise and purchase

So, after all that pain, and the unfulfilled gear-lust I had for the really nice (but expensive) bags I found, I knew I just wasn’t going to get what I wanted. I was doomed to experience a case of unrequited kit-love. Recognising this, I bit the bullet and visited the nearest computer superstore – the one where I originally bought my PowerBook. I ended up with a Targus CityGear New York, for which I paid AU$90.

Now, the CityGear New York isn’t what I really want, but it does fulfil most of my criteria – corporate enough, plenty of space, rugged. Just not stylish or unique. And definitely no sexiness about it – “utility” is a word that comes to mind. Still, it’ll do until that fairy at Adobe emails me…

GTD Prayer

Stephen Collins — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 05:47:01 +0000

If like me, you’re a GTDer, you’ll find Giles Turnbull’s The GTD Prayer enormously funny.

acidlabs » gtd

Freedom

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A Scout’s approach to meetings

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43 Folders GTD recap

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Web geek time management

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The two-minute email rule

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“Looking into” Merlin’s brain

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Private: VirtueDesktops – sexier than your average desktop manager

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Desktop Manager – an OS X cool tool

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The quest for the ultimate PowerBook bag

Introduction

Motivation and criteria

The bags

Heartbreak

Compromise and purchase

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GTD Prayer

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