I'm sifting through the internet, on the hunt for a new portfolio. What's a portfolio? Well... it's a container for a writing pad, loose papers, pens and business cards. Whenever I go to a meeting I carry my portfolio, and at the end of the day I plunk all the notes from my portfolio into the scanner to get it into my computer. Continue Reading...
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An idea for an AppleScript: Template launcher
I fooled around with the application Document Palette yesterday, and quite liked the service it offered. Being able to make a new file from a template with a couple of keystrokes. But I hated having a dedicated app to do this.
I would like nothing more than be able to launch a new meeting minutes document, or a new prepolated HTML document from my favourite launcher launchbar with a couple of keystrokes.
I think the solution could be a homebrew applescript to do this, so this is my new sideproject.
This would bring the number of applescripts deeply embedded into my workflow up to 4. I have these already:
- Take current mail, copy content to evernote with tags, then archive mail in archive folder.
- Take current mail, copy content to TheHitList (todo manager), then archive in archive folder.
- Tweet this via launchbar. Tweets to twitter with tinyurling and other niceties.
It's a geeky delight to be able to cut corners with these little scripts. Every time I invoke them, from a snow leopard service or from launchbar, smily wrinkles form around my blue eyes.
I fooled around with the application Document Palette yesterday, and quite liked the service it offered. Being able to make a new file from a template with a couple of keystrokes. But I hated having a dedicated app cluttering up my dock to do this.
I would like nothing more than be able to launch a new meeting minutes document, or a new prepopulated HTML document from my favourite launcher launchbar with a couple of keystrokes.
I think the solution could be a homebrew applescript to do this, so this is my new sideproject.
This would bring the number of applescripts deeply embedded into my workflow up to 4. I have these already:
- Take current mail, copy content to evernote with tags, then archive mail in archive folder.
- Take current mail, copy content to TheHitList (todo manager), then archive in archive folder.
- Tweet this via launchbar. Tweets to twitter with tinyurling and other niceties.
It's a geeky delight to be able to cut corners with these little scripts. Every time I invoke them, from a snow leopard service or from launchbar, smily wrinkles form around my blue eyes.
A couple of days ago, I was sitting with a fistful of my favourite markers, scetching away, in a room decorated with flipovers and post-its. My head was humming with ideas and I was perfectly relaxed. And I thought to myself, "somebody is actually paying me to do this!"
It was a really nice feeling. My worklife seems have become an extension of my natural likings.
- Highlevel daydreaming
- Strategy making
- Drawing and scetching
I found this drawing from my childhood. It's a representation of a game I played with my friend Steen at the age of 11. It is a detailed plan of my future house. You can se the annotated version on flickr by clicking at the picture.
Steen and I could spend hours hunched over our drawing pads planning all kinds of elaborate schemes. We were always building - making prototypes - of imagined worlds. So I seem to be right back where I started. :)
It's a nice feeling to be running on your preferred fuel. Mileage is a lot better. But best of all... your head is clear.
Only problem right now is to refrain from working all the time.
What did you like doing when you We're a kid?
- Jens Poder
Energy Ball by Jam343
One of the things that leaves me dumbfounded all the time, is the way I often let myself be slowed down by not knowing the process of the workplace in which I work.
In the beginning of a new job I am really inqusitive, and explore every aspect of the companys way to do stuff. But after a while I refrain from doing this.
This is bad. And I'm trying to fight this tendency.
1. Explore further
You ought to explore even further, because this will increase your leverage in the organization, increase your ability to get stuff done. Once in a while challenge yourself. Find out what ressource in the company you would like to be able to have access to, and then go about finding out how to influence this ressource to do work for you. Often the answer is really simple. It’s right there in front of you, but you just didn’t see it. Perhaps you we’re afraid to ask.
2. Don't get bogged down reorganizing other peoples processes
I, on the other hand, have a tendency to reengineer the way in which people around me work. While in some cases this is a good thing, it also drains a lot of energy, and takes a long time to deliver results.
It is of the outmost essence to know WHEN to reengineer, and it's a lot less often than you might think. Changing the way things work in your workspace is HARD work. Don't reach for this solution just because you don't understand what's happening.
Because... sometimes, this is exactly what's happening. You chose to reengineer a work process, not because it's wrong, but because you feel more in command when you're changing, than when you're admitting ignorance.
3. Nurse a happy, helpful and interested attitude
Most people loves to talk about what they do. If you're genuinely interested, they will be willing to share a cup of coffee and tell you about what they do. This is what we all do, when we start a new job. The key is to do this on a regular basis, even when you're firmly established in your job.
You could say this is a form of personal Kaizen. Continously furthering your ability to coorporate with people around you. Keep exploring your workspace for possibilities and gradually you will be able to perform better and better.
- Jens Poder
Autofocus gives you a simple list and easy fun rules to guide your proces
I recently read about this system by Mark Forster. Autofocus is a todolist system based on simple rules, and an in-built trust in your own innate ability to sense the right thing to do right now.
The autofocus system will appeal to people with a fondness for paperbased systems, and particularly the Moleskine Crowd.
Here's how Mark Forster describes it himself:
1. Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them. 2. Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you. 3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so 4. Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it 5. Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out 6. Move onto the next page and repeat the process 7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items. 8. Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.
I like several things about the autofocus system:
1. it's compact
I love to be able to walk around with my system all the time. Capturing ideas depends on this. I must admit that my Iphone with Omnifocus is used a lot less, than I had imagined. My test-run of autofocus had me capture more stuff, and remembering more as well.
2. it's simple
It's not complicated. I tend to lose my perspective when everything is sorted in projects and contexts. Especially the context part of GTD makes less sense to me than ever. I don't really need anything besides @work and @home. Autofocus urges to have two lists. One for work and one for private stuff.
3. it gets rid of old todo-list garbage
The idea of dismissing old items when you look at a page without anything standing appeals to me a lot. The thing I get rid of this way, is the non-doable things, that seems to creep into every todo-list I make. In autofocus you highlight it, and then someday later you can review these dismissed items and totally forget them, put them on a someday/maybe list og or re-enter them in another form.
4. it's fast!
You can do this really fast. With 22 lines per page, you can quickly skim a page. Adding new items is lightning fast. And since you never grow your list to more than 10-15 pages, findign something is actually quite simple.
5. it's in a moleskine
Well... you gotta love a moleskine. I love touching them. I love carrying them. I love looking at them. Well... maybe it's just me :)
Anyways... that's it. A simple analouge system that you can check out at the blog of Mark Forster. The decribtion of the system is a mere 6 pages in the printer. So go ahead read about it. I have been using it for my home stuff for a week now, and I'm pretty happy. I am considering moving my someday/maybe lists into Taskpaper, but that's another story.
Oh... by the way... drawing on the top was made with wonderful children focused drawing app: Doozla.
- Jens Poder
I have been trying to shift my focus away from lifehacking and productivity in the last couple of months. The reason for this was the obvious lifehacker trap: I simply wasn't relaxing enough. After a prolonged period of GTD'ing I found myself thinking about everything in a "get more done mode"
This, in my opinion, is a bad mode to be in. Because when everything serves the goal of efficiency a couple of other important parts of life is at risk. I often found myself anxious about thing I should be leisurely enjoying.
So, since new years eve I have been on a kind of productivity diet. No more fiddling with OmniFocus, at least for a while. Instead I have been trying to introduce a couple of new focal points in my life. These aren't projects that I am trying to achieve. There's no deadline to them. It's three ways of being that instills relaxation and enjoyment.
1. Thinking deeply
I love staring through the window. In my home in Copenhagen, I have an absolutely amazing view over the entire city. While looking at horizon I often float into a state af calm, pondering. It's one of the things in life I really treasure, being alone in deep thought. When doing this I often find that amazing things happen. Good ideas seems to hit in the back of my head out of nowhere.
I also find myself in this state when I'm writing in my journal, but ideas tend to be more related to the subjects I'm writing about.
BTW: I love this talk on deep thinking from google sessions on youtube.
2. Being Happy
This one became a goal of own after reading Tal Ben-Shahars book Happier. I hadn't been very good at just doing stuff that made happy. Benjamin inpsired me to mindmap all the things in life I knew would make happy doing more of.
I now carry this mindmap around with me in my notebook. And from time i'll look at it and get ideas for something that'll make me happy.
Reading novels instead of productivity literature or blogs has been one of the things I have introduced. I used to read several novels a month, but came out of the habit, reading business related stuff instead. Now I'm frequently relaxing with a novel and great coffee instead, enjoying the sound of a turned of telly.
3. Being Healthy
This one has been a troublemaker in my life since childhood. I don't like sports. Or... let me rephrase that... I like the idea, but I can't seem to get my butt from the couch after a long day at work. I just think sports are so amzingly time-consuming.
So I'm trying to do slowly take very very small measures towards a healthier way of living, and I'm doing it in a rather different mode than I used. No more putting ambitous goals into the calendar.
For me, it's all about removing hurdles and adding little incremental habit-changes, to become healthier. I have been bicycling to work for a month now, and I have been eating a lot healthier. I have found all kinds of gymnastics I can do without leaving the house.
Instead of focusing on my disability to turn myself into a marathon man, I focus on the small things I can do instantly, now and here.
So there you have it... This is the reason why I haven't been posting as frequently. All this computer time simply feels to much like work. Now I'm going to get myself a cuppa and a good long stare at the horizon before my loved ones return from work.
Please share you experiences below, if you have any, regarding lifehacking and relaxation.
- Jens Poder
I love this talk by IDEO CEO Tim Brown. It's from TED talks.
It explores the connection beTween being playfull and the ability to be creative.
Key points in the talk:
Go for quantity: You need to be able to suspend judgement when you generate ideas. This is difficult for adults. We tend to edit a lot of ideas away, because we worry about the opinions of our peers.
Think with your Hands: Building prototypes is the best way to get a good discussion about ideas. How will this work? Make a crude prototype, and pretty soon you'll be able to get a sense of it.
Roleplay: Act how users will use your product. This works great. Good design is based around user needs, immersing yourself in these needs will make you able to build a better product.
Jens Poder
Related Posts: - Play your life may depend on it! - Begone Curse of Greyface
OmniFocus is a really flexible app. I let's you do a lot of modifications to suit YOUR specific workflow. The problem, however, is how to build YOUR specific workflow. Because OmniFocus doesn't come with an easy inbuilt one. And over the long run this will slow you down and hinder your productivity.
What you have to do, is figure out how you want your workflow with OmniFocus, and then implement it!
Perhaps you have already experienced one of the following problems
- The next action list grows to enormous size
- Urgent tasks hides behind non-urgent stuff
- You use a lot of clicks, when moving around the application, slowing you down and hindering your ability to get a clear perspective on the state of affairs.
Well, luckily there's a remedy for these nuisances. And it's all about tweaking the software to suit you. And though I can't tell what your optimal workflow, what I CAN do, is show you how I have tweaked Omnifocus.
BUILDING MY OWN WORKFLOW
Customizing OmniFocus to fit your workflow will save you a ton of time.
The goal we're aiming for is to have a set of custom perspectives and corresponding short cuts in the toolbar.
Perspectives are predefined views/sortings of your tasks, and they are really handy. I have a set of custommade perspective for each cornerstone in my GTD workflow.
- Inbox
- Today
- Next Actions
- Projects
- Waiting For
- Review
In the recently published version of OmniFocus some of these got build in. But I still prefer to make my own. It let’s me make precisely as I want them, and I get to have keyboard short cuts.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN PERSPECTIVES
To make a perspective is quite easy. You just fool around with the possible sortings and filtrations, until satisfied, and then you go to the perspectives pulldown menu and press save as perspective.
You can watch the whole process in this video:
OmniFocus Workflow from Jens Poder on Vimeo.
Short cuts to perspectives in the toolbar got into OmniFocus from version 1.1. Right clicking and customizing the toolbar, will let you put your custom perspectives buttons into your toolbar.
This is what pulls it all together. Discard the unused stuff and put in your own perspectives.
Now you have all the main ingredients of your GTD-workflow at the click of a mouse or keyboard shortcut.
Tomorrow we'll look at how to tweak OmniFocus to only serve your tasks relevant right now.
- Jens Poder
RELATED ARTICLES:
Dan Messing wrote this brilliant piece of software. It's a Two Minute Timer! You know... for processing your inboxes!
Now you can easily adhere to the David Allen rule: If you can handle it in less than two minutes... Do it now!
I makes me immensely greatfull, that people like Dan exists out there. Someone who codes perfect little solutions to all my problems. Free software is my favourite kind.
- Jens Poder
Just finished reading weird "Principia Discordia" lent to me by a discordian colleague from work - a slightly excentric fellow - he just got teargassed by police today!
Principia Discordia is the holy scripture of the Discordians. I can't quite figure out whether it's a religion or a happening. Perhaps it's both.
Most of the Principia is jibberish, but then there's a couple of interesting ideas in there to. Take for instance the Curse of Greyface.
The Curse of Greyface refers to, what discordians believe to be, a mythic transformation of society in which order/disorder replaced creative/destructive as the primary positive/negative polarity. This curse has created a society in which man tolerates destructive order, and frowns at creative disorder.
To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder. - The Curse of Greyface and the introduction of Negativism
It resonates perfectly with my blog motto "work & play creatively". The Principia Discordia is creative disorder taken to the extreme. And as such quite an amazing read.
Most of it was useless, but in the Curse of Greyface I found a wonderful concept. A beautiful mythic way to describe a grave threat to creativity and well-being that I encounter everywhere, especially in the workspace.
Now, anytime I feel the urge to be less noticeable, be more like the conformity crowd, I will recognize the influence of the curse, and counter it. Begone Curse of Greyface! :-)
- Jens Poder
Related Stuff:
- Play, your life may depend on it
