Back at work killing time? Sure you are. After all, it’s nationwide “Thumb up your butt” week, right? You bet it is.

So, from the archives of 43 Folders (and the on-hiatus Merlin Show), here’s four of my favorite videos of stuff I’ve done. Hope you like ‘em.  read more »

The Tech Guy Labs - Leo Laporte, “The Tech Guy” [2007-03-31]

On last Saturday’s Tech Guy radio show, Leo Laporte and I talked about some of the basics of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. For most regular visitors to 43 Folders, this is going to be very introductory stuff, but I think it may be useful to folks who are getting started or are just curious about what “GTD” even means.

My segment appears from about 00:59:30 to about 1:08:45. Here’s a link to an MP3 of the show, plus a few of the items that were mentioned in the segment:

• Tech Guy Labs: 64k MP3 of the 3/31 show
• 43 Folders: Getting Started with ‘Getting Things Done’
• 43 Folders: Description of ‘43 Folders’ (tickler file)
• 43 Folders: Introducing ‘The Hipster PDA’
• 43 Folders: 8-Part audio interview with GTD’s David Allen
• 43 Folders: Best of GTD posts
• Amazon.com: Getting Things Done, which is David Allen’s book that started it all

Hack Attack: A beginner’s guide to Quicksilver - Lifehacker

Adam Pash has written a terrific introduction to Quicksilver that I recommend for folks who are still scratching their heads about what all the fuss is about.

Part of the challenge is the “layers of the onion” problem. There’s no explanation of what Quicksilver does that’s at once brief, accurate, exhaustive, and easy for new users to immediately grok; it really does reveal its delights over time, through repeated usage, and in proportion to your willingness to learn and experiment. Adam does a good job of acquainting new folks with the basic idea and the setup, then he walks through a few of the many bits of fu that have made this app the phenomenon that it is.

Quicksilver can be used to launch files and applications, manipulate data, and seamlessly plug into almost any application on your Mac so that you can perform actions as soon as you think of them in a few short keystrokes.

Also from our own archives, here are a few popular Quicksilver items from the extended 43 Folders family (including 4 video tutorials). And seriously: if you really still don’t see why QS is different, do watch the videos; writing about Quicksilver is like singing about a magic trick.  read more »

43 Folders Podcast

I’m a far from prolific contributor to the personal podcasting scene, but 2006 brought several episodes of the podcast that people seemed to enjoy and that I’m pleased to have made.

If you’re new to 43f’s podcast (subscribe for free) or just want to amble down memory lane with me, here’s my five favorite episodes from this past year. Unexpurgated, unedited and, as ever, featuring candid depictions and the occasional swear; because sometimes productivity talk is just NSFW.  read more »

Productive Talk Comp.: Episodes 01-08 on Odeo

As promised, here’s the single-file compilation of the Productive Talk podcast interviews I did with David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. The final version’s eight episodes clock in at a considerable one hour and twenty-six minutes, so this should give you plenty to listen to while you’re in line at the DMV.  read more »

Wow. It’s been over nine months since I quit Entourage in favor of the kGTD/iCal productivity tag-team. In that time, I could have had an infant, finished a school year, or been responsible for a couple failed sitcoms. (I mean: if I had a uterus, was still in college, and were, say, McLean Stevenson)

Yes, friends, I do still spend a lot of my day shaking my hammy fist in impotent rage at iCal’s numerous shortcomings, but I’ve reached a kind of détente with Apple’s stock calendaring app, and along the way I’ve discovered some modest ways to squeeze more drops of Cupertino-y goodness from its moist Jolly Rancher-like pages. Here’s a few of my favorites.

• Getting more out of iCal - “The truth is, iCal works great with kGTD (mostly of course), and once you make your peace with the perplexing stasis of its feature set, there are some not-bad hooks and affordances hiding in its pastel, roundy corners. Here’s a few I like.”
• HOWTO: Flag “penciled-in” events in iCal - “When I create the event, I just put a Spanish-language question mark “¿” (hit: OPTION-SHIFT-?) in front of the event’s title. Like so…”
• Schedule (and choose) a dash in iCal “If you start the name of the task with the number of minutes in the dash, you have a very easy to way to see items that can be knocked down quickly (hint: sort “To Dos by Title”).”
• Dr. Contextlove or: “How I stopped worrying and learned to love iCal” - “But why bother with organizing these into meta-groups? Ah, because it makes it so easy to reveal or hide all the tasks that I can work on at a given time, just by ticking the group’s little click box.”
• Kinkless GTD .83: Enhances Quicksilver and iCal integration, much more “I really like to plan in kGTD and then do out of iCal since it reduces the amount of fiddling and meta work temptation. That doesn’t mean, however, that I wouldn’t benefit from a little extra backward integration.”

43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

So, that’s a wrap for Inbox Zero. I hope you’ve found stuff to make your journey to zero a bit easier and less stressful, and that you’ve discovered the resolve to parlay your newfound inbox emptitude into an ongoing quest for email fu.

Doubtless I’ve missed things or neglected to mention one of your favorite tricks. Got a good tool, trick, or attitude change that has helped you keep your inbox empty? Share it in comments.

And in case you got to the party late, here are summaries and links to all the Inbox Zero articles from the entire series:  read more »

It’s been a while since we’ve done a 43F “best of,” so here’s a few of the posts and podcasts from the past few months that have generated the most traffic, comments, emails, and linky love. Also, if you’re new to the Mothership, don’t miss our January series, “Fresh Starts & Modest Changes.”  read more »

Make Volume 05: Science

Another quarter, another sexy-ass issue of O’Reilly’s Make Magazine. And that means another Life Hacks column from Danny and me. (Amazon.com link)

This time around, I laced-up for a knockdown, drag-out, one round intro to “Building a Smarter To-do List.” The two posts from which it was inspired are still two of the most popular items on 43F.

While you can argue for the flavor and approach to task management that best suits your style, it’s hard to disparage the benefits that come from getting task commitments out of your brain and captured in a consistent location. The Life Hacks research showed that most all of the alpha geeks had a “todo.txt” sitting in their home directory — often comprising thousands of items covering every aspect of the geek’s life, both past and future. In this case, we’re focusing more on the to-do list as tactical game plan; until you get really good at this stuff, try thinking of your to-do list as the evolving strategy for focusing your effort and attention in the immediate future.

If you’re saving your pennies, or liked the column and would like to learn more, you might want to cruise back through the original posts from last September. I still really like how they turned out —- and I actually do re-read them myself when I’m having trouble getting my stuff together. Yes, I’m actually that unproductive; I have to look to myself for advice. Pathetic, really.

Anyway, reintroduced here, “The Smarter To-do List”:  read more »