Archive for February, 2009

What Are You Reading?

No Comments » Written on February 27th, 2009 by Brick
Categories: Articles, Personal Development
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I have no central theme or message here besides me being a big fan of reading. One of my favorite types of posts by others is when they share a book review, or what they are currently reading. Paul Kedrosky does this almost daily. At one point I virtually outsourced my book purchasing decisions to Garr Reynolds who shares some really great reading ideas at Presentation Zen and his personal blog (you will see one of his recommendations below). Here is my current list:

Story by Robert McKee: Storytelling is perhaps the premier instructional technique. In this book, McKee discusses the "substance, structure, style, and principles of screenwriting". Imagine the Gettysburg Address as a powerpoint instead of the story delivered by Lincoln and you start to understand the importance of being able to tell a good story.

Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell et al.: The subtitle says it all - "100 ways to enhance usability, influence perception, increase appeal, make better design decisions and teach through design". Packed full of tips, each presented in a about two pages!

Toothpicks & Logos by John Heskett: "Design in everyday life". Toothpicks as developed and used by Europeans and the Japanese are different. Read this book and you'll know why.

Buddhism by Smith and Novak: A fantastic introduction.

CSS Cookbook by Christopher Schmitt: For the techno in me. Cascading style sheets are perhaps the most blatant place where the technology of the web and design meet. Anyone creating web sites and applications should learn CSS.

As Will Smith says, whatever problem you may have, whatever you need to know, someone has written about it (he also advocates running!):

So what are you reading these days?

Here's a reading tip: put the Life Sutra on your reading list. Subscribe today!

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Remembering The Milk

5 comments Written on February 6th, 2009 by Brick
Categories: Articles, Productivity
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All productivity geeks, including the Getting Things Done ("GTD") priestly class, seem to have a "system". A system is a set of tools and procedures for collecting, processing and dealing with all the tasks and other material that crosses one's (perhaps metaphorical) desk.  My "system" had relied on Sandy. As fans of that application are painfully aware, Sandy died a horrible death sometime in December. While dealing with grief issues, the logical part of my brain needed to focus on finding a tool to deal with this gap in my beloved "system". I had considered using Remember The Milk ("RTM"). Well, here is my update.

The basis of RTM is the concept of tasks. Like Sandy, tasks can be tagged, have a due date, include a url and a location. While Sandy used special tags like "@todo", RTM allows you to organize tasks into lists. So being the Getting Things Done wannabe I am, I created the following lists:

  • Action Items
  • Someday
  • Waiting On

These are fairly self explanatory. Since RTM integrates with Google Calendars, I also have the following list where I add tasks with due dates that are part of the hard landscape of my schedule:

  • Calendar

Lastly, I created lists for all my major projects. The one area where RTM really shines is their Smart Lists. Basically, any search you perform on all of your items can be saved as a smart list. It is like the concept of a "view" in a database - as tasks are added, modified and deleted, the smart lists are automatically updated to include the latest list of tasks that meet the criteria defined for them. This is great for readily identifying tasks in a given context. For example, I may have any number of items tagged as "errand". These items may exist in my Action Item, Someday, Calendar, or one of my project lists. A smart list based on all items tagged "errand" immediately provides me with a list of items relevant to that specific context! If I am about to get in the car to do some shopping, I can click on my "errand" smart list and see if I can knock off any tasks while I am in that context (you can also access RTM from your Blackberry and iPhone). So for me, context, which might include things like:

  • Errands
  • Phone Calls
  • Home Maintenance
  • At The Computer

are all handled via tagging and smart lists.

Improvements

The most glaring weakness with RTM, and this as a consequence of my having been using Sandy, is the ability to send RTM a list of tasks in a single email. When I am working through my email inbox (already well integrated), I like to fire off tasks to RTM. RTM allows you to add one task per email if you update RTM that way. That's a severe limitation I would like addressed. I suppose I should spring for the pro account and submit this request. Money talks!

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Posted in Articles, Productivity