Best Tool For the Job

This is the fifth in a series of 10 articles that give suggestions meant to improve the over-all quality of your life.

5. Debate something. If you think you know about something, nothing will prove it like arguing it with someone who’s smarter or more informed than you. Find a friend you can debate with who has ideas that are different from your and who won’t be offended by debating them–this is easier said than done, but it can provide you with some of the best mental stimulation possible.

It’s healthy to raise your voice every once in awhile in a heated discussion. Debating is a way to introduce controlled tension into your life which is good for you. Arguing will spur you on to learning, it will challenge your beliefs and forcing you educate yourself.

Everyone is part of groups that dictate at least to some degree how we think. This could be your political affiliations, religion, university, career etc. To a degree it is okay to accept what these trusted sources tell you without feeling the need to prove every fact, but finding it out for yourself through research and debate will either serve to strengthen your affiliation with the group through gaining your own knowledge or help you gain the courage to distance yourself from groups you would rather not be associated with.

Be passionate. Seek truth. Be willing to accept being wrong to arrive at the greater goal of knowing the truth.

If you don’t have anyone to debate with, challenge yourself mentally. Always think a step deeper. Know something? Are you sure? What caused it? What comes after that? How would someone who “knows” something different dispute what you know?

Technorati Tags: knowledge, learning, lifehacks, lists, productivity

This is the fourth in a series of 10 articles that give suggestions meant to improve the over-all quality of your life.

4. Learn something new. Pick a topic, preferably something you know nothing about and learn something about it. A good source of inspiration for this can be the newspaper or Wikipedia. It helps to retain it if you have time to make a note of what you learned or explain it to someone else, but even if you don’t get the chance to do that, your brain will thank you for the new patterns you introduce as you learn something new every day.

Learning something new daily will can:

• Help you become a better conversationalist
• Keep your brain active for learning
• Enhance your creativity

Once you’ve got new ideas rolling around in your head you will be surprised at the patterns that start forming. Connections will be made from seeming unrelated topics–that’s the stuff from which innovation comes. If you’re not doing it already, learn something new every day.

If you need somewhere to start, check out the following books that I’ve found to be good inspiration for learning:

“On Intelligence” (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee)
“Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means” (Albert-Laszlo Barabasi)
“Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye” (Michael R. LeGault)
“The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few” (James Surowiecki)

As you’re searching for books, don’t forget to turn to the classics as well. Have you read Don Quixote? War and Peace? These are books that will change the way you think forever.

Technorati Tags: gtd, knowledge, learning, lifehacks, productivity, reading

This is the third in a series of 10 articles that give suggestions meant to improve the over-all quality of your life.

3. Make it a point to do something bold every day. Step out of your comfort zone, leave the routine even if for only a second. This might mean talking to someone that you generally wouldn’t talk to or starting a project that you feel intimidated by. There is no need to plan it in advance–though that might help at times, usually though you’ll find a point during the day when ‘two paths diverge in the woods’ and you have the change to take the one less travelled by. Take it. When there is something that we aren’t accustomed to doing we naturally set up mental barriers against it to protect ourselves from the thought of doing it. It takes a bold move to act and break those barriers.

Doing something bold every day doesn’t mean changing the world, it just means making a conscious effort to do something that will get your adrenalin pumping for a second or to by changing your routine. Taking calculated risks is healthy.

If you want to track your progress (which is always good) write down the bold thing you did in your journal. It will be fun to look back after time and see what you considered bold a week, month or year ago.

Technorati Tags: gtd, knowledge, learning, lifehacks, productivity

This is the second in a series of 10 articles that give suggestions meant to improve the over-all quality of your life.

2. Get in the zone. This is also called “achieving flow.” There is a lot out there on what it means to ‘get in the zone’ or how to achieve it–it’s something you have to discover for yourself. Look for the formula that lets you ‘get in the zone’ by experimenting and once you’ve found it, apply it to your work or play every day. Not only will these be your most productive moments in life (the 20% of the time where you accomplish 80% of the results) but it will be a boost to your confidence that will alter the decisions you make elsewhere in life.

The concept of Flow was introduced by a scientist named Csikszentmihalyi. Here is a simplified list (adapted from the Wikipedia article) of the conditions that help achieve a state of flow and how you’ll know you’re in the zone. Your results may vary.

To get into the zone:
1. Have clear goals for what you want to accomplish
2. Create an environment where you can concentrate completely
3. Make sure you can get immediate feedback. You should be able to tell what is working or what isn’t so you can adjust your behavior quickly to keep in the flow.
4. The activity shouldn’t be either too easy or too hard.
5. The activity should be intrinsically rewarding.

You’ll know you’re there when:
1. You experience a distorted sense of time–”has it really already been 2 hours!”
2. You have a sense of complete personal control over the activity
3. You have a loss of the feeling of self-conciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

Technorati Tags: flow, knowledge, learning, lifehacks, lists, productivity, the zone

This is the first of a series of ten articles that are written as a follow-up to a previous article on this site. In that article written a year and a half ago I gave 10 suggestions for ‘jump-starting success.’ This is a continuation and improvement on that list.

Once a day a post will be published containing a new step offering a suggestion of something that can be done every day (or as often as possible) that will improve your over-all quality of life. This means that if you put these suggestions in practice you’ll be happier, smarter and more fulfilled than you were ten days ago. If you continue after that, I believe these simple suggestions will be life changing.

I’m not an expert on the subject–in fact, my only qualifications are that it’s something that I’ve thought a lot about, read about and tried. If you’re only here for the software and tech articles, bear with me as I wander off into the realms of self-improvement, this will only last 10 days… that having been said, here’s the first:

1. Think daily. Meditate. Call it what you will but spend time each day alone with your thoughts. This surely isn’t the first time you’ve heard that advice, there’s a reason for that! There’s also a reason that this is the first step in the list. Doing the other things in the remaining nine suggestions without taking some time to reflect almost negates any benefit gained elsewhere.

When you schedule your thinking time, bring a pen, this is when your best thoughts and ideas will unfold. Things previously confusing will be clarified in your mind.

I’ve tried various ways of doing this–meditating with an ‘empty mind,’ meditating with a mantra, praying, just sitting and thinking or even lying in bed thinking. They all work to varying degrees, and it’s interesting to try different styles of thinking to see what results from each.

With the amount of entertainment with-in easy grasp (cell-phones, tv, audiobooks, radio etc.) it is so easy to constantly stay in a state of either stimulation (when learning and doing new things) or vegetation (watching tv). It’s easy to go through several days, weeks or years at a time without truly pondering life, exploring your mind and seeking for meaning. Making it a point to think daily will prevent you from losing chunks of your life to the routine and mundane.

Technorati Tags: knowledge, learning, lifehacks, lists, productivity

Tonight I wanted to collaborate with a few friends on a diagram–basically just an org chart. This being the age of online collaboration, we tried all the web-based tools we could find which were:

• Thinkature
• ConceptShare
• Imagination Cubed
• Vyew

We quickly discovered that they are all lame. This is why.

Thinkature – Once we got several shapes on there I was no longer able to move things around without things jumping all over the place. It was also very limited in that you can’t cut and paste or duplicate sheets. Really this was probably the best of the bunch for what we were trying to do, but not because it was good.

ConceptShare – This one looks really nice, but it’s not made for flowcharting so maybe I shouldn’t even include it in this list. I will say that they did a great job on the interface and I imagine that it serves its purpose (sharing designs) well. One thing I noticed, and the reason I’m including it is because I wanted to comment on this, was that the lowest priced for-pay plan is $19 a month… that’s $228 a year and you can’t even custom brand it at that price. At the $1188 a year plan you get that feature. I think I’ll stick to posting an image online and making a conference call to discuss it.

Imagination Cubed – This is a fun toy. There is no built in chat, no undo and just not enough features to make it feasible for our purposes despite the smooth interface.

Vyew – By far the most featured, you can share desktops, add maps, draw lines and shapes etc. but you can’t have a box with text in it… at least not without using one of the plugins which is frankly almost better than nothing at all in its current state. Vyew might have potential, but right now the tools are very awkward and it’s nowhere near as easy to use as OmniGraffle or Visio. TechCrunch called it ‘fantastic,’ I’d call it passable.

In the end what did we end up doing? Nothing really… we spent the time pondering the lameness of web based collaboration and we’ll probably just make it in some desktop application and email the file back and forth. I’d be happy to know if anyone else has found a better option.

[EDIT]
Ahh. I knew I’d given up too soon. Not to disappoint readers on a blog called “Best Tool for the Job,” I felt obligated to continue the search (thank me later ). I just re-found Gliffy.com and it works like a charm. The collaboration part isn’t real-time–it looks like you have to click a revision in the list on the right to get updates and there is no built in chat, but otherwise it works really nice.

It has (almost) every feature we need and even some fun ones we don’t. Nice.

If you’re still using QuickTime, which does not support full screen video playback unless you buy QuickTime Pro, check out the follo

wing free video players. They are listed in the order that I prefer them:
1. NicePlayer – simple, fast, full screen (or borderless at any size) video playback. It can play DVD’s, playlists and most any video file you throw at it. This is my default video player. Mac only.

2. VLC – If you’ve got something that won’t play in Niceplayer, try VLC (Vido Lan Client). VLC can play almost anything you throw at it, including many streaming videos. Recently the interface has improved quite a bit as well. Cross-platform, open source.

3. MPlayer and/or djoPlayer – They’re based on the same open source video engine, but with different takes on the interface. I usually only drop to MPlayer as a last resort, but for a last resort, it works really well. MPlayer is cross-platform, djoPlayer is Mac only. If you’re on an Intel Mac stick with djoPlayer.

Technorati Tags: software

For your listening enjoyment, the six albums that I enjoyed most from 2006. I’m not even going to try to put commentary on them since that’s just not my forté.

1. Love and Other Planets – Adem
2. La Revancha del Tango – Gotan Project. This is actually from 2003 but I didn’t discover it until last year. It’s definitely not in the same genre as the rest of the music on the list, but it’s good stuff.
3. World Waits – Jeremy Enigk
4. Veneer – José Gonzalez
5. Under the Iron Sea – Keane
6. Decended Like Vultures – Rogue Wave

[NEW]
You can listen to a Pandora station with a some of these artists (as well as a couple others) here. Finally, a 7th album for 2006 is The Format – Dog Problems.

Technorati Tags: 2006, adem, gotan project, josé gonzalez, keane, music, pandora, rogue wave

I think before this year I’d probably purchased 4 or 5 shareware programs, this year it’s been a different story! I’m not sure if it’s that the quality of the available shareware has gotten that much better or if I’ve just started buying more of it, but in any case, here’s the list of Shareware apps I’ve been using:

• Ecto (ok, I’ve probably had this for more than a year, but I’m listing it here since I’m typing this blog entry in it and it’s great.)
• TextMate – There’s nothing I can say about TextMate that hasn’t already been said. I love it.
• MacGourmet – This one was for J, she loves it.
• PulpMotion – Wow. Aquafadas just raised the bar on photo/video slideshows. Great price too.
• CSSEdit – I can’t imagine editing CSS without this application anymore. Beautiful.
• Cha-ching and iBank (reviews forthcoming)
• Parallels – Wow. Parallels has completely eliminated the old Dell laptop I had hanging around.
• Disco – I hardly ever burn CD’s, but I’m a sucker for a good (and/or fun) UI.
• Delicious Library - This came with MacHeist. I was pretty skeptical about it since for my book cataloging needs, it’s almost useless (I use LibraryThing), but I’ve found it pretty fun to use nonetheless.
• DevonThink – Another MacHeist, I’d been using the trial for…well too long, great program.
• Enigmo2 – Macheist. The first Mac game I’ve ever bought and I admit, I love it.
• In addition, I got a few other apps from MacHeist that I doubt I’ll use much, but are kind of cool – ShapeShifter (I actually already own a license to this and really enjoyed it, but haven’t used it for a couple years), RapidWeaver looks nice, but I’m a Rails head… who knows, maybe I’ll use it, Newsfire is also nice, but I can’t give up Google Reader for a desktop client, FotoMagico and iClip – I haven’t used them yet, but who’s to say I won’t.
• Inbox – Review forthcoming

In addition, there are a few shareware app’s I’ve got my eyes on:

• Audio Hijack Pro
• Tangerine – I almost want to pay 25 bucks just for the Icon.
• AppZapper
• OmniFocus (is it ready yet?
• Voice Candy (what can I say, it looks fun

Hopefully you’ve found some good ones in this list, if you like the program, why not support the developers buy purchasing it? What Mac Shareware did you buy this year?

Technorati Tags: lifehacks, macheist, OS X, shareware, software

I’ve looked at several options for making sure I “use my time wisely” while I’m on the computer including:

• Onlife (Mac only)
• The Printable CEO
• Timers that capture screenshots such as TimeSnapper or block programs such as Temptation Blocker (Windows only)
• Project timers such as On The Job and Billings2 and Billable (all Mac Only)
• Various non-free online timers… maybe I’m cheap but 5 to 9 dollars a month is 60 to 108 dollars a year and that’s a lot of cash to fork out for a timer (at least for personal use). These include Harvest, 14dayz, Time59 and Tick.
• Firefox Extensions that track time such as TimeTracker.

None of them fit my criteria of being easy to use, easy to see where my time went (some type of reporting) and inexpensive. Then I went back to SlimTimer. The concept is simple. You open up a little window that sits on your desk all day (I open mine in Safari so tabs don’t accidentally pop up there from my default browser, Firefox) and click the name of the activity you’re doing at the time. That’s it. Here’s my window right now.

When you’re done you close the window, click another task or toggle the task you’re on. Then the cool part is the reports that are available on the main SlimTimer website. You can see where your time went specifically for the day, week month, per task, tag etc. Here’s a screen capture of a report:

SlimTimer is simple, powerful, quick and free. Can’t beat that.

Technorati Tags: gtd, lifehacks, timetracking, software, technology, web2.0, webservices