Monthly Archives: August 2008

GTD and Productivity Links – 31st August 2008

Old But True – Set Targets to Achieve Goals

On the 14th of September I am running the Cancer Research UK 10K Run at Harewood House in Leeds. I am raising money for Cancer Research and also getting fit in the process.

You can sponsor me online by following this link and all the money goes to Cancer Research, so please feel free to give generously.

Motivating ones self to go out running is one of the hardest things to do. How many people do you know, maybe yourself included, who have started a personal fitness regime with great vigor, only to give up after only a few sessions? Go to any gymnasium and ask about the number of members, and then look at how many members are in the gym at any one time.

However, sign yourself up for an event and you find this is a great call to action. I used to train in Kickboxing around 10 years ago. I always remember my teacher telling me that when you have an upcoming fight, it really motivates you to pound the street and the heavy bag, to avoid your head getting pounded in. Well, a similar thing has happened with me and the 10k run. I am not a good runner and the 10k will be the furthest I have ever run. With this end goal in mind, I have been very focussed to allocate what is in fact very little time to go out running against a training schedule, hitting the trails three times a week.

So, do you want to reach some personal goal? If so, make a commitment and book something that means you cannot back out of it. Get support from friends and family and get them to sponsor you. The pressure really now is on and this will lead to you taking action to reach the goal, simple!

I will leave you with a great quote from Zig Ziglar, “You cannot hit a target that you do not have”.

Sponsor Me for the Cancer Research 10k by Clicking Here

Email Productivity Experiment

5 Replies

Email Productivity
Email is one of my main communication methods and in a quest to try and improve my productivity, I am going to start a little experiment into getting the most out of email. Hopefully, this is going to lead to an ebook that I have been planning for a while. This ebook will outline my methodology for dealing with Email in the most productive way based upon my experience and knowledge gained from the books and methods I have studied.

So, to start this experiment, I am recording the number of times I check email per day, over a few days. I am out on a client site today so probably will not check it as much as if I was in the office.

I get the feeling that this will be the start of a great series of blog posts regarding email productivity.

GTD and Productivity Links – 24th August 2008

5 Replies

In a bid to ramp up the content and readership of this site, I plan to start a new section of this blog with a collection of weekly links.

I am very active in the GTD, Productivity and Motivation arenas and I think it is great how many blogs are appearing right now.

I find some great things to read so it only makes sense to have a weekly summation of the weeks best links that I have found whilst surfing the web for relevant information.

So, for this week, my links are as follows.

My fist link is a great review of my current GTD app of choice, OmniFocus. The review is brought to you from Productivity501, a blog that I subscribe to.

My second link is another good review of OmniFocus. This time the review is from a neat site called MacApper. MacApper reviews all the latest Mac Apps and it has become a great site that I visit to find out about the little apps that are not mainstream and you don’t always here about.

My third link is a comparison of Things and OmniFocus from MirthLab. Now, I use OmniFocus at present but I am going to review Things. I like the visual look of Things, but the functionality of OmniFocus is what wins it for me. Again, a better look at Things is what I need to see if I am missing anything.

The fourth link is a collection of GTD tips for Microsoft Outlook. I used to implement quite a few of these tips before embarking on a journey with GTD and before I made the switch to the Mac. Worth a read.

The last link for this week is The 4 Ideas That Will Revolutionize Your Productivity from Organize IT. I love these tips and I will be dedicating considerable time to writing about all of them in the coming months.

That is it for this weeks links, hope you are having a great day.

Woopra – Track Your Web Site Visitors in Real Time Better than Google Analytics

8 Replies

Woopra Web Analytics
At the Bloggers Meet-up I attended on Friday I had the chance to get a beta invite code for Woopra.

Woopra is a Web Site Analytics program similar in operation to Google Analytics. These type of Analytics differ from the log based Analytics Apps such as AWStats that is provided with most hosting accounts. The reason these differ is that these rely upon Javascript code on each page in order for the Analytics program to work.

In order to start using Woopra, you have to register for an account at the Woopra website. You can then add your websites to your account. If you have a beta invite code, your sites are enabled immediately. If not, you have to wait until they release some more codes and approve your site. I am unaware how long this takes at present.

Once your site is approved, you need to start using the tracking Javascript. There is a WordPress plugin that you enable and then enter the Website ID into the Plugin Configuration Screen, that is found on your WordPress Dashboard. If your site is not WordPress, you need to manually enter the Javascript shown on your Woopra Account just before the tag. I use a PHP Include for the footer for one of my non WordPress sites so this was very easy for me.

To view the Woopra Analytics, you either use the Woopra website, which shows limited information but the best way to view the stats is with the downloadable client. This client is available now for Windows and Mac. The Mac version has just been updated and works now without needing the latest 64bit only Java Runtime.

You enter your Woopra details into the client and it stars receiving stats for your account in real time.

Now, the killer use of Woopra is the real time alerting. You can see visitors as they come to your site in real time, along with information such as the referrer and also what page they are currently on. I have to date not used any tool that comes even close to what is offered by Woopra. You can also interact with the users by opening up a MSN Messenger type window in their browser. This seems like a really powerful tool for sales based companies to track web site usage and attempt to interact with the potential customer in real time as you can see how the visitor came to the site.

I have enabled Woopra on three sites. One is WordPress, one is hand cranked PHP and the other used RapidWeaver. I have got it working fine on all three with no fuss whatsoever.

Below is a screenshot showing a map of the world that shows which nation your visitors are coming from.

Woopra Web Analytics

The screenshot below shows one of the many representations of data. This case for referrers.

Woopra Web Analytics

I know a lot of fellow bloggers and webmasters read this blog. If you have not yet tried Woopra, what are you waiting for. I think this is the best analytics tool I have used and cannot wait to see how it develops in the future.

Northern UK Bloggers Meet-Up

7 Replies

Northern UK Bloggers
On Friday night I attended the first UK bloggers meet-up that was held in the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds City Centre.

The event was organised by Jamie Harrop and Chris Garrett. The aim of the event was to bring together local bloggers who were interested in organising some regular meet-ups and all day events similar to the WordCamp and BarCamp events.

For this first meeting, Jamie Harrop did a presentation about the new Analytics Tool, Woopra. Jamie gave out some Woopra Beta Invite codes in the meeting and I downloaded and installed Woopra for this blog and I must admit that I am very impressed with it so thanks to Jamie for a great presentation.

We then had an around the table where attendees got the chance to tell the others about their blogs. Here is a list of some of the blogs that the attendees to the meet-up had created:

3DogsBark – Personal blog of Andy Mitchel, the creator of GTD Inbox
Chrisg.com – Chris Garretts blog about Blogging and New Media
Gaj-it.com – UK Gadget News and Reviews
JamieHarrop.com – Personal blog about many aspects of life
RubyInside.com – Blog about Ruby and the Rails environment
SuperCarDrives.com – Blog about driving Super Cars
TimNash.co.uk – Personal SEO blog from Tim Nash
Travel-Rants.com – Travel blog covering all aspects of Travel
TheHodge.co.uk – Dominic Hodgson’s personal blog
Zath.co.uk – Tech and Games Blog

I heard about the meeting from the power of social networking. It was via a Twitter post that I heard about the mailing list and then the organising of the event was done through Facebook and mailing lists.

It was a great evening and I look forward to the next meeting which is hopefully going to be an all day affair.

Not Getting Things Done – NGTD

1 Reply

Just a quick bit of humor for how not to get things done courtesy of the Look Shiny Blog.

I guess if you want to get things done, follow the exact reverse of everything said in this video.

Well, it made me laugh anyway 🙂

Thank You – 2015 RSS Readers and Counting