It’s been quite a while since my last post here. I must say that the day job and household responsibilities and chores have sapped quite a bit of my energy, and I haven’t really felt much like blogging very often lately. As in the game of American Football when the quarterback throws a pass, when you start a blog, 3 things can happen and 2 of them are bad. One, the blog can quickly become stagnant with no updated content for weeks or months (bad). Two, the blog is updated too often in an attempt to keep the content fresh. Without purpose and focus, creativity and originality can begin to suffer and the blog can become boring and readers may quickly lose interest (arguably better, but still bad). Three, you achieve that ideal balance of providing intriguing content on a regular basis.
So far I’ve fallen into the first category, but this week I have something important to say and hope that you’ll follow my updates as I write about a week of volunteer work happening in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It’s been nearly 3 years since hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the area, and there is still much to do for the residents and environment in the Gulf Region. I leave this afternoon for a week long effort with several co-workers and volunteers from several other companies. I’ll be providing written updates for my company’s intranet site and will also post updates here.
Until the first update, you can find more information here.
Tags: Volunteer
Okay, after further consideration I think it’s best to avoid pushing a daily digest of my Twitter updates as content for the blog. Instead, I’ll just use the sidebar functionality to post the latest updates. I tend to agree with David Peralty who posted a rant about the practice of “Twitter blogging” on his website.
What you end up with as a reader are half a dozen or so one hundred and forty character messages, most of which have no meaning or relevance to you as a reader since they are responses or aimed at specific people.
It is really a shame to see so many blogs heading down this road, and that Twitter has captured their attention so much that they don’t continue to work on their real blogging efforts, a type of communication that can’t occur on a platform like Twitter.
My situation is somewhat the opposite, but just as detrimental to what I believe is the proper use of both Twitter and my blog. Since I was pushing a daily digest from Twitter into the content of my blog, I have tended to be less spontaneous and prolific in posting to Twitter by trying to make my Tweets somewhat more relevant to the blog. I’ve seen the error of my ways and hope that more follow. Thanks for setting me straight David.
Tags: Blogging, Twitter Updates
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
