Monthly Archives: November 2009

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

Started to feel a lot better towards the end of last week so I am back in action.

This is a scheduled post as I will be on my way home from a weekend away on a survival training course. Sleeping wild for a couple of nights in the North of England. Sounded fun when I booked it, the amount of rain we are having and the cold weather may change my mind!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a great post from fellow blogger Dragos Roua titled
How To Be Productive without Becoming a Productivity Freak. Great post from Dragos that is well worth a read.
My second link is a link to a post from the Local Business Doctor titled 7 Steps to Getting More Done in Less Time In Your Business. We can all do to get more done in less time so this is a good post to read.
My third link is to a list of the Top iPhone Apps for Getting Things Done. Been an iPhone user and GTD Advocate I always like these type of lists.
My fourth link is a link to another Social Networking post titled Time to Get Organized With Your Social Media Marketing. I have seen a few SEO and Social Networking types writing about GTD.
My fifth and last link is a link to a blog post from GTD Times regarding Procrastination. You can never read too much about Procrastination!

Hope you all have a great week. Let’s hope I pick somethings of benefit from my survival training course!

Success Tip from Shakira

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Shakira at GTD I was watching the X Factor a couple of weeks ago when Shakira, the Latin American singer was on. For those of you from the US, the X Factor is the UK show that spawned the American Idol shows in the US. Another one of Simon Cowell’s shows.

Now, after her performance, Shakira Shakira was asked by the host, Dermot, what tips she had for the contestants. Her answer was one that caught my ear.

Shakira replied by stating that the contestants had to apply Intelligent Effort.

This got me thinking….

So many people place such an emphasis on statements like Practice Makes Perfect. Well does it?

What about if you are practicing the wrong things? Or at the wrong intensity?

I am sure that your golf is not going to improve much unless your basics are correct and you are following the guidance of tried and trusted instruction. You will progress to a level and then plateau.

To improve in anything, as Shakira has rightly spotted, you have to practice the right things. You have to be intelligent with your effort so that you are working on tasks and projects that are related to your goals.

So maybe instead of the term Practice Makes Perfect, we can think rather of Perfect Practice Makes Perfect.

However, you cannot hit a target you do not have and I can feel that some goals related posts are long overdue….

Just thought I would share this little nugget with you all and I would love to hear any comments you may have.

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

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Well, quite a bad week for me in that I was ill most of the week with a seasonal flu like bug and my productivity was rock bottom.

It is amazing how an illness knocks you for six and comes from left field to totally disrupt your plans. Mind you, after an illness I feel really energized and eager to get back to it all!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a great slide based presentation titled Getting Things Done with Social Media. This provides a GTD approach on how people can bolster their online presence.
My second link is a link to a Omnifocus GTD power tip – reviewing Stalled projects quickly. This is a handy little tip from the StayConnected blog on how to utilize the stalled filter within OmniFocus to your advantage.
My third link is to a nice little post with some Getting Things Done with Google Tips. Most of my Google tips focus on Gmail but this little post also looks at the other apps from Google such as Google Reader and Google Calendar. Worth a read.
My fourth link is a link to four tools that help Fabian Pattberg’s Sustainable Days more Productive. Great to see that Evernote, one of my favorite applications is on this list.
My fifth and last link is a link to a blog post I picked up from Twitter titled How to Use Evernote to Create the Ultimate Post Conference Reference Guide. This is a great post that shows off some of the features of Evernote and its ability to help with cool tasks such as recording facts from a conference. Good post.

Hope you all have a great week. Hopefully I will be back to my normal self pretty quick.

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

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I had a fantastic week last week in the English Lake District. We stayed in an idyllic cottage nested at the foot of the Langdale Pikes. Good clean air and fun with loads of mother nature to keep the kids entertained!

I managed to read a few good books whilst I was away that I will review at least one of this week.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a cool new podcast from David Allen, the creator of the GTD System titled Getting Started with GTD. Some great tips from the man himself about how to get your GTD System off the ground!
My second link is a link to a post from Hawk WIngs that shows you how to Script to archive emails into Evernote. This is only for Mail.app as your email client so sorry if you are a Windows or Linux user. Cool little tip but unsure how it would work for the masses of email I get!
My third link is to a user who is fed up with OmniFocus and goes into detail why. Personally, I still love and use OmniFocus every day both on my Mac’s and also my iPhone. I would be lost without it!
My fourth link is a link to a short comparison of Evernote and Shovebox. Happy to say that Evernote comes out well on top! Shovebox was in a recent MacHeist so many people will own a copy as part fo the deal.
My fifth and last link is a link to part six of a GTD Series from The Productive Organizer. The sixth post in this series looks at project reviews through the use of Mind Mapping software. Great series of posts that I recommend you to check out.

Hope you all have a great week, I am sure I will!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 8th November 2009

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It is Friday for me and this post is scheduled as I am rushing to finish off a work project and then I am leaving for a week in the English Lake district after a manic week at work.

I am loaded up with some good books so hopefully will get them reviewed whilst I am away.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a link to the latest MacHeist bundle. $154 of free Mac Software including the writing productivity tool, WriteRoom for free, or a small donation.
My second link is a link to a great post titled 100 Uses of Evernote. Love Evernote and there are some wild and wacky suggestions on how to use it in this post.
My third link is a cool app called Curio. I saw this originally due to the Evernote integration. I am going to start using this myself and a full review will be coming pretty soon.
My fourth link is a link to a user review of RescueTIme. I mentioned RescueTIme last week and I have signed up and the data is being collected. I have not had a minute to look at it though but I will in the coming weeks. This is quite an interesting post of the technology in action.
My fifth and last link is a link to part five of a GTD Series from The Productive Organizer. The fifth post in this series looks at Contexts, Tags and Executing Tasks.. Great series of posts that I recommend you to check out.

Hope you all have a great week, I am sure I will!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 1st November 2009

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My week was as busy, but well planned as I predicted and it was only the calm before the storm as I have to do a considerable amount of high pressure work this week in only four days.

I am away from Friday on holiday in the English Lake District with my family, my second home.

I imagine I will be working some late nights so I am leaving you here to make a start already!

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a post from thr Willpower blog that looks at the Mac Writing Application that I use, Scrivener and how tool such as these make wok into play. This is an interesting post that looks at the ability to improve your mental state by setting things up in an inviting manner. The tool they look at and review pretty positively is Scrivener, a tool that I use almost daily.
My second link is a link to a great post titled And The Winner is… OmniFocus. This is a post from the RightFootForward blog where the blog author is choosing a GTD app to use. Read the post as it is quite interesting.
My third link is a blog post called Extreme GTD Makeover from the Good Will Blogging blog. This is a good in-depth post about one users system for Getting Things Done.
My fourth link is a link to another GTD related post titled Hacking GTD Equipment where the author looks at the different choices you have for implementing GTD. You can implement GTD with a pen and paper although a lot of people prefer an electronic implementation.
My fifth and last link is a link to part four of a GTD Series from The Productive Organizer. The fourth post in this series looks at how to plan for large projects and smaller sub-projects. Great series of posts that I recommend you to check out.

Hope you all have a great week!