Posts made in July, 2008
Random Scenes From the South Bank
I thought it was about time to add some colour to this blog, since I’ve written a lot of long posts lately.
While in London on a work trip, we had some free time. I wandered along the South Bank, and after taking a few traditional shots of the Tate, St Paul’s, etc which looked very much like every other tourist photo, I decided to do something a bit different and capture some random views and images you wouldn’t normally stop and photograph. Click the photo montage to see the photoset on Flickr.
Read MoreMission Control – another alternative to GTD
I’ve just listened to episode 39 of The Productivity Show, where the host, Tony (sorry I don’t know his last name) interviewed Doug Fisher of Mission Control, which is another productivity methodology to add to your productivity toolbox alongside Getting Things Done, Do It Tomorrow, and the others.
I haven’t fully digested the technique yet but I did pick out some really interesting ideas that I think might help me be more productive, so I thought I’d share them here.
Getting everything done is impossible!
The first was the idea that in many of these systems we are subconsciously saying that we should get everything done, and that we are failing if we don’t. We need to be realistic and realise that we will never get everything done, so once we can accept and believe that, that will be a great stress relief. In other words – making a conscious choice about what you are aren’t doing gives you more control and puts you more at ease.
I can certainly identify with this myself.. As someone who has been dabbling with productivity methods and tweaks for two and a bit years now, I have just started to come to this realisation myself. This is a world full of stimulating, interesting and appealing ideas, activities and so on, not to mention all the things we need to do or feel we should do – no wonder that productivity is becoming such a hot topic, we are basically trying to find coping strategies for dealing with information overload and the feeling that “There’s never enough time”.
Read MoreGoogle Sync update: Not all that evil?
http://lifehacker.com/software/google/google-sync-update-not-all-that-evil-179318.php
Interesting.. Google Firefox plugin to sync across different instances of Firefox
Read MoreThinkVantage Access Connections – now with extra bugs!
Having recently had my IBM Thinkpad T42p reinstalled (the now-standard annual Windows de-bloating surgery), I now find myself with a later version of IBM Lenovo ThinkVantage Access Connections. And it seems this new version is, ahem, shit. I find I really need Access Connections as I switch between multiple wireless networks and wired networks with different security, static/DHCP/DNS settings, etc.
It seems this new version can’t add a new profile without crashing with the not so helpful message “ThinkVantage Access Connections Main GUI Application has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience”. You’d think that this might have been a good feature to bug test a bit more thoroughly.
I even went to the trouble of installing System Update and through that, got the latest version of Access Connections – still the same version.
It seems I am not alone in encountering this problem, and fortunately, I found a workaround via this link (number 1 link on Google for “access connections crashes” – impressive!) which I thought I would share.
The workaround is to copy another profile then modify it. Far from ideal, but it’ll keep me going for now. Anyone encountered a better solution?
Read MoreA GTD-ers perspective on Mission Controls &Productivity and Accomplishment&&workshop – The Experiment-Driven Life Blog – Matthew Cornell. Think, Try, Learn. The Experiment-Driven Life
http://matthewcornell.org/blog/2006/07/gtd-ers-perspective-on-mission.html
Interesting comparison of Getting Things Done and Mission Control as two approaches to productivity
Read More