Monthly Archives: March 2009

Getting Things Done – What are your Bad Habits?

This is another great video out of the GTD Summit.

This video has snippets from some GTD Summit attendees about their bad habits with relation to GTD. David Allen himself is even interviewed in the video!

I wish I could have been at the GTD Summit, may have to make next year for sure.



What are your bad habits?
I must admit mine is that I can sometimes miss my weekly review, I bet this is a common one..

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 29th March 2009

I am sat writing this on the train from Leeds to London. Free Wifi on the train is powering my Internet so no need for the 3G card.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

  • My first link for this week is a link to an interview with David Allen from the Washington Post. The interview is about how to Get Things Done and Organize Your Life.
  • My second link is a link to the Shoeboxed Blog that announces integration with Evernote. Shoeboxed is a service that allows you to mail in your receipts as and when you need to and now with the Evernote integration they will scan them into your Evernote account. If only they had this in the UK I would be a customer for sure!
  • My third link is a link to a review of Making it All Work, the latest book from GTD creator David Allen. I am quite shocked to admit that I have not yet read this book, but it is the next on my reading list after I have finished with Twyla Tharp and the Creative Habit.
  • My fourth link is a link to a great article comparing Getting Things Done and Autofocus. Both are great productivity methodologies and it is good to see the writers viewpoint of the differences between these two systems.
  • My fifth and last link is a link to some information about the latest version of reQall. reQall is an iPhone application that I reviewed back in November 2008 when it first came to my attention. One of the main new features of reQall is the ability to do location based reminders. All in all reQall should be looked at if you have an iPhone and want to improve your productivity.

Well, the WiFi is still holding up so I will publish this whilst I still can. I am down in London for a couple of days on a training course, should be fun.

Wishing you all a great week!

MacHeist Bundle 3 – 12 Mac Apps for $39

MacHeist 3

The MacHeist Bundle 3 is now live and ready to buy!

This is an awesome collection of Mac Apps for $39 with 25% of this going to a charity of your choice!

There are 8 Apps in the initial bundle with a further four getting released as the bundles are sold making a total of 12 Apps for $39.

One of these further four apps is The Hit List, a new GTD App that is similar to Things. The Hit List is currently selling for $69.99 so this in itself makes the bundle a bargain.

Check out all the Apps and the offer over at MacHeist.

http://www.macheist.com/bundle/u/59175/

Evernote Podcast – Tips on how to use Evernote

Evernote
I am just listening to the first Evernote Podcast and though I would share it with you all.

The topics covered in this first podcast are:

  • Hi there
  • What’s Evernote?
  • We’re one year olds
  • Business model, shmizzness model
  • How do you use Evernote?
  • Feeling secure
  • Where’s the mobile love?
  • Gimme my Griffin Clarifi

The Podcast can be played straight from the Evernote Blog or you can subscribe to the Podcast via iTunes.

I have written quite a few posts about Evernote so be sure to check out my Evernote Tag.

GTD Summit Interview with Phil Libin of Evernote

As I previously mentioned, the GTD Summit that just happened in San Francisco has resulted in some great online videos.

This video is from Lifehacker.nl and is an interview at the GTD Summit with Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote.

The video covers the intersection of Evernote and GTD, the use of Evernote around the world and some ideas on how to improve Evernote.

Hope you enjoy it!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 22nd March 2009

Well, another week is over.

I am really busy at the minute and having to focus a lot on my daily work in order to get it all done. We are getting a lot of orders which is always good and we probably should employ staff more but the current economic climate is really preventing me from taking on additional headcount in case the work slows down.

I guess it is a nice problem to have but my productivity and organizational skills are being tested right to the limit at the moment as I juggle quite a few different roles.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

  • My first link for this week is a topical (as it is Mothers Days here in the UK) titled Time Saving Tips for Mothers. Just a collection of a few little tips that my wife pretty much already does in order to be more organized when it comes to children.
  • My second link is a link to a post about Getting Things Done with Gmail Tasks. I do not use Gmail myself apart from the odd time when I need web access to my mail (as I use Google Apps to host all my email) although I know a lot of people swear by Gmail. Just some handy hints on how to make Gmail work for you in a GTD style.
  • My third link is a link to Getting Things Done with Projects 2.0. This is a fresh look at Project Management and how Project Management 2.0 can help change the views of the people involved for the better.
  • My fourth link is a link to a nice little post about the Trick to Evernote. I love Evernote and I use it more and more every day. I love finding new ways out to use the app.
  • My fifth and last link is a link to the cool Cult of Done Manifesto. Read it and I would love to start a comment discussion with your thoughts!

Well, that is it for this week. going to have a well earned rest now and hopefully I will get some more time this week to do some more posts.

Thanks and wishing you all a great week!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 15th March 2009

I have just returned from a great four day break in the English Lake District with my wife. We were lucky to get babysitter for our children and we escaped for three great nights in the Lakes.

On Friday we did an 8 mile walk of Loughrigg Fell. Taking in Loughrigg Tarn, Grasmere, and Rydal Water. On Saturday we walked three of the Langdale Pikes, Pavey Ark, Harrison Stickle and Pike Of Stickle.

Had a great relaxing weekend away from the usual stresses and strains. I manged to eventually start reading “The Creative Habit” by Twyla Tharp. I bought this book around Christmas and I am enjoying reading it. Full review to follow.

Quite a big GTD week this week with the GTD Summit taking place in San Francisco. No doubt there will be loads of news to follow.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

  • My first link for this week is a post about Email Zero! – We have all heard of Inbox Zero, well how about Email Zero!. This is a post that outlines what an MIT Professor has done to only read his email once every three months.
  • My second link is a link to a 7 Step Program of Stress Management. We all have stress and we all handle it in different ways. I do not tend to show stress but that can be the worse way to handle it as it is there building up inside of you. This is a neat little post with 7 steps on how to handle your stress.
  • My third link is a link originally from Twitter about the way one user uses OmniFocus. I love OmniFocus and I love reading about how other people use it in their lives.
  • My fourth link is a link to a new GTD application called Getting Things Gnome. Getting Things Gnome, or GTG is the first true GTD application for the Linux GUI, Gnome. This is a great step forward for any Linux GTD’ers and I will be trying this app out in the coming weeks on one of my Linux laptops.
  • My fifth and last link is another application. This is Pocket Informant, and the fact that it is coming soon to the Apple iPhone. I used to use Pocket Informant way before GTD when I had my old Windows Mobile iPaq. Great little app and I will love to see how it shapes up on the iPhone.

Wishing you all a productive week, as always!

Andrew..

Evernote Mac 1.3 brings Safari Web Clipping

The fantastic note taking application Evernote has released a major update to the Mac client version.

Evernote

Evernote is available as a Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac desktop application as well as having a Web Based Application and apps for various phones including the Apple iPhone.

One main improvement with version 1.3 is the new clipper for Safari 3 and 4. This button installs on the toolbar and allows you to clip the current page directly into Evernote. You can select text and click and this copies the text to evernote, just click and the whole page is copied to evernote or shift click and the page is sent to Evernote as a PDF with all the formatting preserved.

Here are the details about the version 1.3 release for the Mac.

Version 1.3.0 (03/09/2009) build 44809

  • Evernote for Mac can now install a native Safari plugin, which makes it easy to clip directly into Evernote while browsing the web using Safari. Includes:
    • Clipping a selected portion of a web page
    • Clipping the entire web page
    • Clipping a PDF snapshot of a full webpage, rendered exactly as it appears in the browser. Shortcut: Shift+click on the Safari Clipper
  • A ‘Merge Notes’ command is now availble in the edit menu and the note list context-menu. This command will merge the contents of selected notes into a new note.
  • Promotions display at the bottom of the left-hand nav.
  • Support for Growl notifications.
  • Fixed a bug where removing *all* tags from a note would not get synced up to the server.
  • Improved performance and stability when syncing several thousand tags from the server.
  • “Show/Hide Info” is now called “More/Less Info”, and new note editor windows are opened with the state set by the user.
  • Fixed an issue where file attachment information would not display correctly inside a note when running on a case-sensitive file system.
  • Fixed Safari 4 Beta compatibility issues. This includes the note search field sporadically selecting all of its text.
  • Fixed a bug in the Evernote AppleScript dictionary, which made scripts that accessed a note’s ‘source url’ property fail to compile.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some images to fail to make it into the note when clipping HTML from a file.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some hyperlinks to get stripped from the note when clipping HTML from a file.
  • Fixed a bug in the thumbnail viewer which would cause the app to crash or stop responding to mouse clicks.

These are all great new additions to what is already an awesome application! Below is a nice video showing the web clipper with Quicknote.

GTD Summit – An Intro From David Allen

Well, it is the 2009 GTD Summit this week in San Francisco.

Just thought I would share the intro from David Allen about the conference.

I really wish I could go, San Francisco is too far from the UK and I am busy with work 🙁 I hope some great resources come out of the 2009 GTD Summit.

Are you going? If so, would love to hear from you before and also after the event so please leave a comment.