LifeHacker describes a simplified method of following David Allen’s GTD methodology. Wow! If you’re like me and find the full GTD system a bit much to fully implement into your lifestyle, Gina Trapani offers a streamlined approach that may just be the answer you’re looking for. Implementing GTD should not become a project in and of itself, it should be an invisible tool that stays behind the scenes until the precise moment that it’s needed.
Practicing Simplified GTD [Feature]: “
I’ve read David Allen’s productivity bible a few times, and The David is onto something with his methodology. But as far as I’m concerned, full-on GTD is too complicated and slippery for simple-minded civilians like myself. That’s why I’ve whittled GTD down to its barest bones: picked away the jargon, acronyms, and extras and installed one single habit into my work life that’s made all the difference. In short, I can describe my GTD system in eight words.
Make three lists. Revise them daily and weekly.
Those eight words are what I got out of three years of reading and writing about Getting Things Done. In addition to my usual email inbox and calendar, which I used pre-GTD, I added three lists to my work life, that I look at, edit and re-edit every day and every week.
There’s no perfect productivity system. This is a fact one must accept before taking on any new habits. Even when I stick to it like glue, this method only works about 95% of the time. There are still holes, and I’ll make small adjustments to patch them when I can. You should do the same.
David Allen’s complete GTD methodology, as he writes it, is still an elusive ideal for me. I regard it kind of like I do Buddhism: a big, mysterious, and wondrous way of living and thinking that you really want to get, because the people that have seem so bright and fulfilled. But you keep falling on your ass no matter how many inboxes you set up or mind dumps you do. The perfect is the enemy of the good, as the saying goes, so instead of giving up on GTD completely, take the parts that work for you and work them.
Tags: book:isbn=0142000280, GTD, productivity
It may not be as critical in some areas of the U.S. or the world, but the Southeastern U.S. is in a major drought. Residents and businesses in the Atlanta area have been under water use restrictions for months, and the potable water supply is dangerously low.In light of the situation, my family has taken some voluntary measures to reduce waste and conserve where we can. My friends and co-workers can relax, we still shower and brush our teeth, but we have just made a few relatively easy changes that are having an impact on our monthly water use.
Don’t let it run down the drain. We are all familiar with the practice of turning on the shower or sink to allow the water to heat up to a comfortable temperature. We still follow this practice, but instead of letting the water just run down the drain, we now use a bucket to catch the water. We’ve found that if we start the water on hot, it takes a little over a minute to warm up and we catch a little over a gallon in the bucket.
Turn it off to lather up. Several gallons of water can be saved by turning off the water while washing hair and, well … everything else. Once you’re wet enough to get soapy, just turn the water off. Turn it back on to rinse off.
Test for leaks. Even a small leak can add up to hundreds of gallons per year of wasted water down the drain. We had no faucet leaks in our house, but we found leaks in all three toilets. There are several places and mechanisms that can leak in a toilet, but the two that can go unnoticed are the flapper and the fill valve. A couple of our toilets had small leaks in both, and the third was leaking at the flapper only. We just replaced all three flappers and fill valves. To test for a leaky flapper, let the tank fill and turn the water supply off. Note the water level in the tank and check it again in a couple of hours. If the water level dropped, you have a leaky flapper (or the tank is leaking, but you would notice a wet floor). A leaky fill valve will result in the water level reaching the height of the plastic tube and water continuously overflowing the tube.
Reuse. What do you do with the buckets of water caught in the shower as it heats up? Well, the place we use the most water is actually filling the toilet tank in the master bathroom. We just turn off the water supply and manually fill the tank after a flush with the water in the bucket. We also use it for household cleaning and watering plants.
If you have a suggestion or tip for conservation or reuse, post a comment to this entry.
Tags: conservation, Environment, sustainability
Just testing out the Twitter Tools WordPress plugin and trying to decide how I want to configure the settings. This looks like a really great plugin. I just want to make sure I don’t blast my followers with irrelevant crap. Oh wait … it’s Twitter so I guess maybe they should expect irrelevant crap from me.
The plugin offers some pretty nice settings like creating a blog post for each tweet, creating a daily digest of all tweets in a single blog post, and updating twitter with a link each time you create a blog post. I think I’ll probably refrain from having Twitter Tool create a blog entry for each Twitter update. I just don’t think I need blog entries declaring that I’m stuck in traffic, eating sushi, or having a latte. I probably will enable the daily digest though.
Tags: Blogging, plugins, Twitter Updates