For you plain text nerds, Nick Fagerlund has developed a nifty little Ruby script for managing your lists of tasks or what have you.

The basic idea is to capture anything you need into one text file, with one item per line. He (and I) recommend using a Quicksilver trigger to append to that file of your choice as you work. When adding an item, you use a "category" tag (as in "^category") which you type at the beginning of each line you.

Had no idea NPR provided RSS feeds for upcoming features on their marquee programs.

This is a huge collection of models for thinking about and generating fresh ideas. Seems focused on product development, but there’s good stuff here for most any interest or creative purpose.

Let Your Blog Posts Marinate (4 Steps to Forming Great Ideas) at LifeDev

Good advice on developing a tunnel for how you draft stuff that will eventually go on your blog. I think #3 ("Let it develop") -- while it could benefit from a bit more explanation -- is the really interesting part. Try not posting immediately, and return to the draft later on:

It’s hard to say how long this step lasts. Sometimes it’s all over in 15-20 minutes. Sometimes it takes weeks. The important thing is not to rush the process.

5ives: The text file behind the curtain

I do something similar with 5ives, where this kind of process is really conducive. I have a running, two-year-old collection of ideas, partial lists, orphan titles and lots of "one fun line I could build a good list around." Goofy as many of them are, some actually sat around since the site began until they evolved to the exact choices, wording, and order that I liked.

Tip: Use text folding

Since this kind of collection method can get messy (over 100 partial piles of junk in one text file), I like to use text folding inside TextMate. This makes it easy to "roll up" lists in such a way that just the title shows, then you can individually click a little "reveal" arrow to see the hoisted contents. Something like this (note the arrows in the gutter):

The beauty part is that I can still append text to the bottom (or prepend to the top) using Quicksilver since it's all just plain old text. Neato.

[ via Gina on Lifehacker ]

Hi There,

I just wanted to share some icons I created to help me get things done in Leopard. They are based on the folders (Archive, Inbox, Outbox and Pending) used in the lovely Kinkless Desktop series.

Let me know if you have any comments and suggestions, I'm sure they aren't perfect (I still haven't mastered the shading of the symbols on the folders for a start! ^_^).

I can't upload the icons zip attachment, you can see and download the icons on my deviantArt profile though: http://fruitycube.deviantart.com/art/Leopard-GTD-Icons-v1-69024959

Regards,
Rob Hawkes

Solid gold and closer to home than any of us probably like. Steven G has the full lyrics.

[ via: Waxy links ]

Excerpt:

Tracking delegated emails + invoking Lazy Web for an Entourage Applescript

[Misuse of office technology adds more than two hours to the average British working day]

Couldn't track down the source material from the UK productivity study referenced in this press release, but, if they're accurate, some of the data are interesting to say the least.

The misuse of telephones and email at work is hindering workers from doing their jobs, increasing bad habits at work and lengthening the working day...

Two hours, 10 minutes was the amount that people wasted each day at work on average, of which one hour 38 minutes was due to communication technologies not being used to good effect.

Seems conservative to me, but -- you know -- I'm a terrific karmasuck about these things.

Also intriguing are these bullets on "average times wasted each day:"

• The Omni Group - OmniFocus - OmniFocus 1.0 officially hit the streets this week. So proud of all my hard-working OmniPals, who've made the app I always wanted. Kudos.
• Mother Tongue Annoyances › How to Attain Serenity Before Giving a Speech - "I find that when I am [speaking] from this 'serene-state,' for lack of a better word, my mind is as sharp as a tack, and my energy is channeled on the audience and the subject matter..."
• 10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look - (TUAW) - Most of these are new to me. Which probably explains why I hadn't been using Quick Look too much. Good tips.
• RulesofThumb.org - I loved Parker's RoT books, and the site looks like a fun, user-driven collection of these bite-sized bits of wisdom. - [via BB]
• Things - task management on the Mac - Haven't spent much time with Things yet, but this looks like a beautiful and promising-looking app for doing GTD on your Mac. Very pretty.
• ThinkGeek :: SnūzNLūz - Wifi Donation Alarm Clock - "...everytime you hit the snooze button, the SnūzNLūz will donate a specified amount of your real money to a non-profit you hate." You have to respect a Rube Goldberg device that's attached to your personal sense of outrage. [thanks, overhang]
• Products [Merlin Mannerism Widget] - "The Merlin Mannerism Widget provides a different Merlin Mann quote each day from 1 Jan 2008 through 4 Jan 2009." Oh, lucky you. [thanks, hongkongphooey] That said, if you enjoy this sort of thing, you can also get up-to-date (and very economically worded) Mannerisms from my Twitter posts. On the other hand, if you don't enjoy this sort of thing, I'm sure you're not alone.