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Getting Things Done


October 28, 2006

Excel Grocery ListSeveral years ago, I designed a spreadsheet for grocery shopping in Microsoft Excel. The idea was that we would no longer forget certain things when we go shopping. With (now) six children, the human brain can only hold so much information. We’ve tried shopping in larger amounts and cooking in advance (known as freezer cooking), but for day-to-day life, when things get kind of hectic and we lose our ability to plan, we had to have a more consistent approach to fall back on.

Posted in: Getting Things Done & Family
September 29, 2006

I was reviewing TechCrunch’s post from March 2006 about the state of Online Feed Readers because I’ve been wanting to find a way to read and track my feeds online. I’m a pretty heavy news junkie - for at least the things I like to read about (sorry, Associated Press), but I’m sort of bound to my computer to track and manage my feeds. Sometimes, I have a little extra free time where I’m waiting for someone or something and there is internet access nearby, so I’d like to be able to check out the latest feeds and catch up on them.

There are plenty of ways to do this online, but I don’t just want a reader. I want to be able to manage those feeds efficiently, too.

Posted in: Getting Things Done & Computing
August 28, 2006

I’ve been playing with Joe’s Goals for a few months. Joe seems like a pretty good guy who just got married on August 26. I don’t know if that was one of his goals or not, but he has definitely worked hard to make such a simple free goal tracking application. He is nearing 10,000 users. If you are needing a simple way to track some goals that you need to get done each day, I’d highly recommend considering Joe’s Goals. Unlike a lot of goal tracking software, Joe’s Goals is very simple, very Web 2.0, and very hip. A child could use it. Try it and see if it will help you to remember to get those daily chores done a bit more often.

Posted in: Getting Things Done
August 07, 2006

I was at a friend’s house recently and was watching him navigate his own system. It occurred to me how much more efficient he could have set up his computer. I’ve often thought this when I’ve seen other people’s computers, so I thought I’d finally share some ways in which I try to be as efficient as possible. Hopefully, this will help save you some time each week.

The Windows taskbar is a great tool and can really save you a lot of time if you use it to its maximum potential. Otherwise, it is just a waste of precious screen space. In fact, this friend had his taskbar in the “auto-hide” mode which made sense partially because his taskbar wasn’t working that well for him.

Posted in: Getting Things Done & Computing
June 19, 2006

Steve Pavlina has posted a very useful article on how to have a productive normal day. I’ve often thought what he expresses - that our culture is geared toward special events (i.e. graduations, holidays, birthday parties, weekends, etc). We seem to give little thought and planning to the present normal daily life.

We tend to let normal days just slip by, always looking forward to the next event. For me, it has been very difficult lately to have any sort of normal day since my son Obadiah died, so I found Steve’s article helpful.

Posted in: Getting Things Done
March 23, 2006

It is pretty easy to get an email address these days. Almost too easy. Yahoo, Google’s gmail service, and MSN all offer free email addresses. Almost everyone has one even if they use another one as their primary address. Recently, I’ve dealt with about a half-dozen people, both in my personal and professional lives, who seem to think email is just for receiving. They either let email pile up and respond at a later day, or more often, never respond at all.

Posted in: Getting Things Done & Management
March 09, 2006

Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free ProductivityI am a huge fan of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”. I’ve been an efficiency expert most of my life and highly adept at getting more done faster. Yet, until David came out with his book, most of the “organizing” books I’ve read (probably over 100) were all variations on a theme. David finally codified what I and others had been thinking for sometime but often unable to put into words.

Posted in: Getting Things Done