Category Archives: General Items

Just a category to put things which are not specific to a topic.

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

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!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 25th October 2009

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 11th October 2009

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After a hectic week I am tonight preparing to visit the 2009 A4UExpo that is held over the next few days at the Excel conference centre in London.

Looking forward to meeting a lot of old friends and also hoping for a bit of inspiration to start some new projects this side of Christmas.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is an old but very good post titled What is Wrong with GTD. This post was doing the rounds on Twitter so I thought I would mention it again although I linked to it in the past. Well worth a read and I would love to know your thoughts on the subject.
My second link is a link to a nice post on how to set up Evernote as a GTD system in 15 minutes. It is no secret that Evernote is a tool I use and love although I do not use it as a GTD system. Interesting yo see how the author does it. Would this work for you?
My third link is a post from Nik Agarwal titled I’m Joining the GTD Bandwagon. This is a good intro to GTD and explains why the author of the post decided to give it a shot. I always like reading this type of posts to see how other people discover GTD and their initial thoughts on the methodology.
My fourth link is a link to a nice comparison of the two leading Mac GTD Apps, OmniFocus and Things. I am a long time OmniFocus user, ever since the very early beta although I must admit that the look of Things has taken my eye quite a few times.
My fifth and last link is a link to part one of a GTD Series from The Productive Organizer. This initial post int eh series provides an overview of the Getting Things Done methodology. Great series of posts that I recommend you to check out.

Hope you all have a great week!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 4th October 2009

PDF Productivity with iPhone and Dropbox

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iphone dropbox pdf productivity This is the first guest post that I have had on DidIGetThingsDone.com and it is written by Chris Garrett, co-author of the ProBlogger Book, speaker at many blogging and new media conferences and a genuine good guy.

In this post, Chris is going to provide an overview of PDF Productivity with the Apple iPhone and Dropbox.

Since I bought my iPod touch, and more recently upgraded to an iPhone 3GS, I have been making better use of my time by reading PDF documents while out and about. You can see more about my iPhone software productivity obsession here.

It is amazing how much spare time you actually have in a day. Think of all the times you are just waiting.

Daily commute
Waiting in line
Sat at a restaurant table
Outside changing rooms while friend or family member tries on their 20th item
Before meetings
After calling a taxi
Airport lounges
Security lines

Rather than sit and stare into space or doodle on a napkin, I have been reading ebooks, memorizing from mindmaps, and generally trying to fill the time while filling my head.

Up to now I have been getting these documents onto my iPhone using various methods such as emailing them to myself, or using an app called Files that allows you to configure your iPhone as a mini file server. Now I have a better choice, which makes moving files to your iPhone AND enabling offline storage much easier.

Dropbox now has an iPhone application!

If you do not know Dropbox, you are in for a treat. It is a free online storage space (up to 2gb, then you start paying) that allows you to sync files between computers and your online storage. It’s like a hard disk that follows you around. Now with the iPhone app you can sync to your iPhone too. And when you make the file a favorite you have instant access to the file even without an internet connection.

Go to https://www.getdropbox.com and check it out and create an account, then install the appropriate desktop application for your computer type (windows, mac and linux). When you have done that, grab the iPhone app and get logged in. Now any files you drag on to your Dropbox will appear on your iPhone – easy!

Of course my wife is not happy that I have my head down tinkering with my iPhone all the time … as yet I haven’t found an app that can help with that particular speed bump …

Do you see the iPhone as a productivity boon or a productivity pain? Please let me know in the comments …

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 27th September 2009

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Had a real busy week trying to get a new website launched for RandomStorm. It is amazing how many small issues there are to fix when you are cutting the website yourself.

Glad to say it is just about ready to launch this week.

Here are my collection of links for this week.

My first link for this week is a great post about how to be productive by doing just three things a day. The credit for this post goes to Leo from ZenHabits who originally came up with the do three things rule. Worth a read as this theory always causes quite a few taking points amongst productivity practitioners.
My second link is a link to a post from Lifehacker showing the workspaces of nine famous people. Wow, quite shocked to see the chaos and disorganization of some of these. Also, very surprised to see the small office of Steve Ballmer!
My third link is a link to a post from TechBlogger about the The Best Sounds for Getting Work Done. I did my own post a while back covering some Motivational Songs and I released these as a Spotify Playlist.
My fourth link is a link to a nice little Twitter Video from Tom and Zig Ziglar. Nice bit of fun combining the teachings of Zig to Twitter. Watch it!
My fifth and last link is a link to a little Gmail GTD tweak that allows you to hide read labels within Gmail. Cool little tip for all you Gmail GTD users.

Hope you all have a great week!

Productivity, Motivation, and Personal Development Links – 20th September 2009

MindJet MindManager iPhone Application

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At long last, my prayers are answered and MindJet have today launched their Mind Mapping application for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.

I am a devout MindManager user and have been for years. Over the past few months I have been using MindMeister more and more, mainly because of the rather cool ability to syn between their awesome web app and the iPhone Application.

MindJet MindManager iPhone

I have just purchased and downloaded the MindJet Mind Manager application.

My initial thoughts are mixed. The layout and look of the application is great. I must admit that I am not so sure on the way you enter topics. You jump from the main window to a separate entry window where the details are entered for each topic. Do I prefer the much simpler on screen method as used by MindMeister and iBlueSky?

There are a lot more bells and whistles in this app over the competition. But, I normally use the iPhone as a capturing device where my Mind Maps are very basic, just capturing the key concepts. I normally refine the Mind Map at a later date on my Mac.

The transfer/sync ability is definitely not up to the same standard as MindMeister. It would be great to see the ability to sync my Mind Maps with the desktop version of Mind Manager but I am sure this will be out in a later release.

Here is a little video published by MindJet.

Mindjet for iPhone from Mindjet on Vimeo.

I know this is the first release of the software and I hope it will improve because I really do want to be able to use this and get the most out of this application.

I will be putting this through its paces over the next few days and I will return back with a more in depth review.

Looking forward to hearing any comments that you may have.