Reason Magazine - Secrets of Weight Loss Revealed!

This review of two recent diet books underscores what most of us already know all too well: while it's easy enough to drop a few pounds for a short while, it's nearly impossible to lose a lot of weight for a long time.

What caught my attention for anyone wishing to apply some fancy book-learning directly to the affected area was this chunk of insight on eating mindfully -- alongside a smart bit of life-hacky weight loss advice:

I give a lot of talks, and I've been trying to improve my presentation style, but I'm not sure how to do it in the context of my field. I am in a fairly quantitative science. I have to give presentations where I present results; I am 'selling' the result to the audience, but not in the same way, I think, that one would sell a product, or an idea, or a concept. I'm attempting to convince them that it's right, and that I was diligent in pursuing the result.

A few posts back, I professed my love for paper. That affection runs deep already, but I stumbled onto a trick this week that makes me lust after the power of a sheet of 8.5" x 11" even more.

As I'm wont to do, I returned to the Lucky Charms, marshmallowy goodness of iCal recently to organize my stuff. I know it isn't perfect, but it's my comfort zone, and after flogging myself publicly over my tendency to switch systems, I decided to stick with the ol' July 17 icon for better or for worse.

In my paper post, I mentioned that I like to jot down a few tasks at the beginning of each day, to focus my energy. It's not GTD orthodoxy, but with a job like mine, I have to make a plan of attack or else it will be lost in a pile of board books and Legos. Normally this does the trick, but on days when I have lots of reminders, or appointments with accompanying notes, it can be tedious copying this all down. So one day this week, when I was in a hurry out the door, I decided to print out an agenda from iCal.

Ideas for keeping your creative life alive while you pay the bills.

As of Leopard, I'm a transplant from Entourage to the Mail/Address Book/iCal/.mac combo. Over in Entourage for the past 7 years, I created a slick Zero Inbox system by using delayed reminders, using a cool combo of Applescripts that removed emails out of the Inbox until a time when I needed to deal with them. I haven't figured out a system yet in the Mail world.

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but if you also hadn't spend much time with it yet, I suggest you check out Patrick Rhone's whitepaper on his version of a GTD system.

ideas are just a multiplier of execution - O'Reilly ONLamp Blog

Derek Sivers' short blog post from 2005 has been making the rounds lately -- it came to me via Chairman Gruber -- and I have to say, I can't stop thinking about it. I think this is really profound thinking around the fundamental misunderstanding many people have about the value of ideas.

In a nutshell, Derek says ideas are valuable only inasmuch as they can be multiplied by execution. So, if you remember your 3rd grade arithmetic, you can figure out the product of even the most fantastic idea when it's multiplied by zero execution.

I, too, frequently encounter this attitude of "Sign the NDA! Sign the NDA!" any time someone wants to tell me about their squirrelly idea for making a bajillion dollars on the internet, and I almost always end up saying the same six things to The Idea Men:

Productive Talk #07: Implementing GTD

43 Folders and The David Allen Company present the seventh in a series of conversations that David and Merlin recently had about Getting Things Done.

Summary

In this episode, David and Merlin look at best practices for implementing Getting Things Done. David shares some great advice on firewalling review time and warns us how to avoid the perils of "cruise control." (9:37)

More at: http://www.davidco.com/ and http://www.43folders.com/

Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen here (after the cut).

Merlin's comments

My favorite bit in this one (jump to 1:38) is where we learn that some of David's best stuff seems to have had a genesis in an unlikely place -- from his tenure as the manager of a gas station, back in the day.

• alwaysBETA » The Tale of the Mechanical Virus - Fascinating -- Never heard of this happening before. At least now you can accurately announce there's a Mac-only virus spreading at the Google.
• Gary Voth Photography: The Forgotten Lens - "The 50mm lens is called a 'normal' or 'standard' lens because the way it renders perspective closely matches that of the human eye." Just bought one of these, and I totally love it. Lots to learn, but I'm working on it.
• Most Useful Mac Software | Tech Magazine - Good collection of Mac apps that non-power-users may not be familiar with. Recommended reading for taking your game to the next level.
• deadmoviestar: Lucky Luciano - My pal, Steve, recalls a memorable encounter in Miami with the late Mr. Pavarotti.
• Footnote - The place for original documents online - Share your own knowledge and research about historical documents. Stuff like Footnote makes the internet what it should be -- an affordance for collaborating on stuff you would never in a million years be able to do by yourself. Crowdsourcing at its finest.
• Jonathan Coulton: Fake Female Me is Busted - JoCo reports on a makebelieve internet sensation who had actually been signed by a label all along. Blechy. "The saddest thing of all is that she could have done this all by herself without the label and avoided all this negative reaction."
• Back in the saddle - I've missed Mr. Kottke, and it's swell to have him back up on The Wire. Although, I confess, I am also a huge fan of his and Meg's little interruption.
• Rands In Repose: The Laptop Herring - You and everyone you know needs to read this article twice. Now. "If you have no role in a meeting and stop going, or if you remove someone from a meeting, you’re going to create a conflict with whoever believes that you (or the other someone) should be in that meeting. This is great. This is the discussion you want to have: 'Frank, I’ve been to this meeting 12 times and I’ve no clue what I’m doing here. Please advise.'" - [via Daring Fireball]