The Stand-up Philosopher

Coping With the Loss of a Loved Gadget

My Pocket PC died Monday night. I checked email while I was at church over the wireless connection and when I got home, it was gone. Dead. Won't operate, won't charge; nothing. I never saw it coming. It was working fine, the battery had plenty of charge, but in less than a two hour period it went from useful and dependable tool to total brick.

I can't believe how much I've come to rely on that device. I haven't written about Getting Things Done (GTD) lately, but I found myself going out of my mind yesterday whenever I came up with an idea or task that I needed to capture and file. While driving to church last night I finally figured out what to say on the Critical Thinking paper I have to write for my final class that starts this week, and I had to take out my cell phone and record a voice note rather than take out my Pocket PC and actually start the paper. This all sounds very silly but I have come to rely on a lot of the features and convenience that device gave me and I now have to find work-arounds.

I've also been working on finding an interim solution. My wife tells me that getting a new Pocket PC is out of the question at this time. Here are a few of the solutions I have come up with along with my assessments:

• Use old Palm Zire (original 2MB model from 2002): stopgap measure. Palm may have invented the modern electronic PDA, but they have not kept their electronic PDA modern. I would have to somehow compress all of my Outlook data into 15 categories or less. The Zire has limited memory (2MB) and no backlight. It would work as a very basic calendar and task manager, so if I can condense Outlook categories I may go this route.
• One variation on this, which would be a lot more work, is to install Palm Desktop, then manually transfer important data back and forth between Palm Desktop and Outlook. This option isn't very appealing however. I'd almost rather enter data on my cell phone's keypad (see next possible solution).
• Sync to cell phone: I have a SonyEricsson z525a. I did download SonyEricsson PC Suite and had synchronization working to my phone before. Since I upgraded to Windows Vista, however, PC Suite won't connect. I am currently updating to the latest version of the software to see if this version will sync my phone under Vista. This solution is also highly limited, but at least I can keep my appointments and a very basic task list with me. I can record voice notes on the phone and play them back on my laptop.
• Ask for iPaq 3765 back: My first Pocket PC was an iPaq 3765. When I bought my friend's Dell Axim x30 I gave his wife my old iPaq. She has never used it. This model has Windows Mobile 2002. My friend gave me an iPaq expansion sleeve for my birthday which included an auxiliary battery and a CF card slot. This option is still limited but not as limited as the other options. This PPC should run Pocket Informant and some of the other software that I've come to rely on heavily. I would just have to live without wireless and Bluetooth (which I rarely use anyway) and the modern versions of Word and Excel Mobile. The hardest part included in this option is getting my friend to mail it. Getting him to mail anything is about as hard as, oh, getting me to mail anything. But perhaps I might ask.
• Beg my dad to buy me a new Pocket PC: the email has already been sent.
• My final option is to carry my laptop around with me EVERYWHERE. This might just drive my wife crazy enough to find money in the budget for another Pocket PC. Of course, the drawbacks to this are the worries about my laptop being stolen or damaged. If I'm having a hard time coping with the loss of a Pocket PC, I'd never survive losing my laptop.

I am partly being facetious in some of my comments in the hopes of providing a bright spot of amusement in the day of anybody doing me the favor of reading my blog. I do rely heavily on my Pocket PC though, and the adjustment to not having one will not be easy.

Technorati tags: Pocket PC, GTD, Productivity, Coping with hardware loss

Labels: Time Management, Windows Mobile

Eliminating Clutter Tip: Get A Clean Slate

I'll keep this post short. I want to post more often, but we've been incredibly busy lately. I'm in my final three classes and we just put our house on the market (more on that in a later entry).

I hate clutter, and yet for some reason I seem to be the worst offender. This morning my wife came up to my computer room and asked me about a bunch of magazines that I had laying around. I've built these things up over more than five years, some I've had for six or seven. Some were free from organizations, some I had a subscription for a year or so, yet most I haven't gotten around to reading yet. As I went through this pile, I realized that if I've had this magazine for five years and I haven't read it yet, what are the odds that I will? With my wife's help, I threw just about all of them away.

Some things we keep around for no apparent reason. I actually feel better with these magazines gone, like I just deleted a ton of items off my to-do list. If you have magazines laying around or tasks that you just aren't going to get to, just start with a clean slate.

Technorati tags: Productivity, Clutter

Labels: Time Management

How To Form New Habits

Today's TQ talks about habits. What are habits? Off the top of my head, I would say that a habit is a conditioned action. The action is conditioned because it is repeated over time until it becomes automatic, or at least requires little conscious thought. There are bad habits and there are good habits, and I'm sure that some habits are neither. A bad habit could be smoking. A good habit could be going for a run every morning.

Habits, whether good or bad, have one thing in common: they are formed over time. I smoked for eight years. I didn't just pick up a cigarette, take a drag, and decide that was how I wanted to spend the next eight years. Likewise, I didn't just put my smokes down and walk away. Developing the habit took time, and breaking the habit took a lot more time and effort; more than I ever could have imagined. Sometimes I wonder how I did develop the habit of smoking. When I was in my "A" school, or first technical school in the Navy, I would watch the smokers run outside during every break. It didn't matter if the weather was nice, raining, snowing, too hot, whatever, they went out to smoke. One day I told one of the smokers that I wanted to try a cigarette because I had to know what was so great about those things that made them want to stand outside in a blizzard to get one. To be honest, it was horrible. I told them I could have licked tar off the road and had a better taste. However, somehow or other, within the next 2 years I developed the habit and became a regular smoker. How I finally broke the habit could be a series of blog entries. That was one of the most difficult challenges in my life, and one I do not fault others for not wanting to face.

Hyrum Smith, in his book The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management, makes the statement that "Successful people are willing to do that which unsuccessful people are not willing to do". On the surface, that sounds much like the bumper-sticker philosophy that seems to permeate our culture, but the statement is really profound. In order to break my smoking habit, I had to take steps that I was not willing to do for many years; steps that those are are not willing to quit smoking are not willing to take. I'm working on a post for this blog about success by hope of winning the lottery, which keeps getting longer and may eventually become an entire series.

In order to make or break a habit, you must be willing. If you're not willing, then the good habit will not be formed and the bad habit will not be broken. I have been trying for years to form a habit of daily planning, yet so far I have not been willing to stick with this long enough to become a habit. I have not yet settled into a habit of weekly planning recommended by David Allen and other GTD practitioners. I'm sure that my success is suffering accordingly. I have not gotten into a habit of regular daily exercise, and my physique is suffering badly.

To form any new habit, you must dedicate a period of time from twenty one to thirty days. One day is never enough. I could plan today, get nowhere, give up, and truly get nowhere. If I were to dedicate the entire 21 day Franklin Planner challenge laid out by Hyrum Smith, I would probably begin to meet with success.

Most habits don't really need that much time. I am getting into the habit of reading fifteen minutes  a day from a book or magazine. I have plenty of both piling up on me. Fifteen minutes is not much, but allows me to make steady progress through my books and magazines. This time allows me to sharpen my mind.

Give a try to a thirty day habit. You may have to break an old habit to make time for a new one. If, after thirty days, you aren't happy with your new habit, you can always go back.

Technorati tags: success, ThinkTQ, habits, smoking, planning, GTD, Franklin Covey

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Labels: Goals, Misc comments, Time Management

How To Manage Yourself and Communicate With Your Boss

I spent six years in the Navy and three years in the Naval Reserve. My rating was Fire Controlman (the Army or USMC might call it an MOS), and the system I worked on was the Mark 15 Phalanx Close In Weapon System. I was young, naive, spoiled, and I had a lot of lessons to learn. As with any other life experience, I sometimes wish I could repeat those years with the lessons that I've learned since. The Navy taught me electronics, it taught me a work ethic, and it taught me the meaning of the words of my all time favorite movie quote, said by Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge: "Improvise, adapt, overcome".

Although my rate and training involved electronics and weapons, most of the lessons the Navy taught me really can't be learned in school. I met some very interesting people, and I learned how to live and work alongside them in all kinds of conditions, both good and bad. We had our fights, we had our bad times, and we also had our drunken nights of bonding in strange places.

A post written by Michael Hyatt this morning brought back a lot of memories for me. Michael talked about bosses who won't stay off of your back, and steps you can take to make sure they won't be any more of a hassle than necessary. I learned several lessons during my final year on active duty about productivity and working with your boss. In 1997, my ship came out of the yards. During our six month yard period, we probably had a 50% crew changeover. The crew that came off the deployment the previous year, that was sharpened by months at sea, had changed. With that crew change went the other members of the six man work center I had belonged to. I was left with one man who had less than 90 days in the Navy. Because we came out of the yards, we were in a heavy workup cycle to make sure that the ship would be ready for action with the engineering, structural, and manpower changes made in the yards. This was a very intense time for us. I was in charge of a work center consisting of myself and one other person. I was mad after this experience when we finally got more people who were all senior to me and I was the "boot camp", or junior member, again.

One of the hardest lessons I learned during this period was that I am much more productive if I take a lunch. For a time, I tried to work straight through the day because I had a lot to do and only myself to do it. I found that I was more productive if I shut down for lunch. I would go for a run, take a shower, eat, spend some time "BS'ing", and then get back to work. I actually got more done this way than if I tried to work straight through lunch.

Another lesson I learned, which is the focus of this blog entry, had to do with planning and with involving my boss. At first, I would work all day, then if I wasn't on duty that night I would report to my chief (E-7) to ask if I could go home. He would bring up several other tasks that needed to be done, which I hadn't been told yet, and I would either need to do them or negotiate for time to do them another day. This got very frustrating, and I dreaded talking to my chief at the end of the day.

I had a Franklin Planner at the time. I was involved with one of those "network" or "multi-level" marketing organizations. Oh, yes, I was going to be rich and retire at 24. I decided to use my Franklin Planner for it's intended purpose: to plan a day. At this point, I really only carried it to functions and contacting with that organization I have long since discontinued affiliation with. I got in the habit of taking my planner to what we called Quarters. Quarters was the first meeting for each division at the beginning of the day. This is when the "word" was put out regarding anything we had a need to know about. Sometimes we would be told the ship's schedule. Sometimes we talked about inspections. Sometimes we were praised. Sometimes chief was just in a bad mood and chewed us out for a half hour. I would take my planner to Quarters and make sure to write down anything pertinent. After Quarters, I would go to my chief and tell him what I was planning to work on that day. I would then ask if he had any tasking or projects that he needed me to focus on. I would write that down in his presence. Then I would go to my shop and spend about 15 minutes reviewing the previous day and planning that day according to Franklin's methodology. As the day went on, I would check off the completed tasks, reschedule tasks that couldn't be done, and make notes on everything as I went along.

At the conclusion of the workday, I would find my chief, open my planner, and give him a rundown of my day. "I got this done. I couldn't get this done because... This repair part isn't available. I can't check out HAZMAT because the coordinator is on leave." I finally managed to reach the point that chief would see me coming with my planner and tell me "see you later". That was a good feeling.

I can't say I've always managed to keep that kind of level of self-management. I'm certainly not there now, considering the amount of devices and programs I have available to me. I did learn a lesson in those days, however; a good boss isn't at war with you. He or she is interested in your work that he or she is responsible for being completed. Keep your boss in the loop and you will be respected for it.

Labels: Time Management

Goals Are Powerful

On one hand, setting goals can be incredibly simple. On the other hand, setting goals is an intricately complicated and difficult process. Once goals are set, however, they can lead to some highly powerful results.

I’ve subscribed to ThinkTQ for more than a year and a half, and last September I broke down and bought their system. I’ve mentioned before that I really like ThinkTQ because the system is position agnostic, as in, it’s not written for salespeople or executives like some of the other popular time management books. I have a hard time translating a lot of what The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People says about executives to my own life, although a lot of the book does make sense. I’m just not creative enough at this point. Getting Things Done is written to people a lot higher up in corporations than me and to salespeople, and again, I don’t have an easy time applying the book to myself. This is probably common, judging by Merlin Mann’s post How Does A Geek Hack GTD? ThinkTQ is rather a summary of all of the popular time management books broken down into 100 affirmations that are the most common to success in any system.

I’m still learning to apply many of the concepts to my life and follow them regularly. I’ve been working for weeks on a mindmap of my roles and visions and my highest level goals. I’ve found this process to be slow going. In some ways, I’ve been at this for years, since in 1996 I came across The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management and I began to craft my first ever personal constitution.

Though I haven’t been an expert at goal setting, I have had times in my life when, even though I didn’t realize it was goal setting, I decided that I was going to accomplish something and I refused to stop until it was done. Buying my first property is an example. I realized that, although single, for what I was paying in rent I might as well just own a home and get a tax break and equity. I ended up buying a condo. After getting married, my wife and I set our sites on selling that condo and buying a house.

I’ve had a few pivotal moments when defining a goal seriously changed the course of my life. The first major moment was in 2004 after my son Joshua was born. I was working a job supporting program testing at a development site. Although a lot of the systems I was around were interesting, it was a hectic, thankless and frustrating job. We worked for one company that was a subsidiary of the other company and it seemed that a major part of our contract was accepting blame when the other company screwed up. Our administrative management didn’t really care much about us so they left us to the whims of our operational management which happened to be the other company and by extension our customer. We were whipping boys. We went through a transitory state and the organization kept getting worse. When my wife went back to work after Joshua was born, I was on the swing shift. This arrangement worked out fine for child care, because I would get up with Joshua in the morning when my wife went to work, her sister would come by after school so I could go to work, and my wife would come home from work and take care of him the rest of the evening. I liked the swing shift because I got paid a differential and there was less frustration because management wasn’t around. This didn’t do much for my marriage though, because in addition to the stress of a new child we never really had time together.

I was convinced that without a degree, I couldn’t do any better than that job. I’d floated resumes a few times, and always ended up with calls from head hunters trying to get me to take some job in north Jersey or Syracuse. The pay at my job wasn’t too bad, and at least I had a job so what’s the big deal, right? One of the guys on the swing shift was actively seeking a new job. I got to talking with my coworkers and they mentioned something called a “5 year plan”. I asked what that was. I’d never written one before. They basically told me to write out where I would like to be and what I would like to accomplish in the next 5 years. I’ve always had a hard time with that, possibly because I’m not always very imaginative, or I’m too anal to “predict the future”, but this time I took them seriously. I sat at my desk one night and prayed about it, then opened Outlook Notes, and started typing ideas of how I wanted my life to be in the next five years. One of the goals my wife and I had set was for her to be able to come home and take care of Joshua and any more children we happen to have (this is not without it’s challenges and conflicts, but that’s for another entry). I knew we could not do that at the salary I had, even with the night shift differential. I also knew that for the sake of my marriage, I would have to go back on day shift, but I also couldn’t do it on that job because I would lose the night shift differential pay. I didn’t want to stay there anyway.

I began applying for other company jobs internally, but got nowhere. I also decided that I had nothing to lose by floating resumes. If I got any calls from head hunters, I decided that I would just hang up on them, as they have never really done me any favors. The last head hunter I dealt with was as bad as the car salesman I wrote about here. I had just gotten married and I was trying to find a job in the south where my wife wanted to go. I told the head hunter that I wanted to go to the south, but he kept calling me up with offers for Massachusetts, north Jersey, and upstate New York. I’m sure those are fine places, but what part about IN THE SOUTH did he have trouble understanding? Obviously all of it, because I still live in south Jersey.

After floating my resume on a local site, I actually got a call from a company that was interested in my experience in my current industry. They had a job for me. I got the call on Thursday, had a phone interview on Monday, and got an offer back within 10 minutes. I put in my two week’s notice that afternoon. That was amazing! I had to work on a contract for three months before being hired directly, but it’s a much better job and the pay was enough for my wife to stay home. Setting the goal led me to the action, floating my resume, which led me to the job. There was a lot of “right place, right time” involved, but had I not been encouraged to work out that five year plan, I would probably still be in that old job.

Another time when a goal steered me to some life altering action involved a non-accredited Bible college. When I first became I Christian in 2002, I made a decision that I admit was more emotional than rational to pursue ministry work. I applied to the first distance learning Bible college I could find and enrolled in their Biblical Counseling program. I’m not knocking the school or the program, but the school turned out to be non-accredited. I admit at the time to not knowing what that meant at the time I enrolled. I didn’t take the program seriously, fell behind, and had to pay for an extension. I had two years to complete five classes, and I was not keeping up with that. I learned a lot, but as time went on I found some great sources on the internet for learning about the Bible and I also realized that the ministry might not be the best fit for me. Once I found out what accreditation was I realized that this program wouldn’t do me much good. I’d never get certified as a counselor and I couldn’t really get a job at a church with it either. I went through a phase where I was actually consciously planning each day, so I would look at my list of values and goals as I planned my day. I wish I could say I did that more. When I saw that goal every day to complete the Biblical Counseling program, I realized that the goal may not be inline with my vision. After some prayer and a few more events transpired, I ended up dropping out and enrolling at the University of Phoenix in their Information Technology program, which I find to be a much better fit with my vision, interests, and gifts. Me, a counselor? I think the world is a much better place when I’m troubleshooting computers rather than people.

ThinkTQ often says “A dream without a plan is a wish without a hope”. If you want to go far in life, you have to figure out what your vision is, what your roles are, and then set realistic goals in line with your vision and roles. Sometimes goals will lead you to greatness, and other times they might lead you to a major course change. You’ll never know until you do it.

Labels: Goals, Time Management

Limiting Scope of Thought

I just started a new class in my information technology degree program at the University of Phoenix. The new class is Web Programming I. I’ll have another Web Programming class after this one, and I’m happy to have the same instructor from the two Java classes I took last year. The class I just finished was called Windows Networking, and what I learned from that class is much more valuable than the curriculum could indicate.

When I saw that I would be taking a class called “Windows Networking”, I expected to be able to blow the class off. I’ve spent years networking in Windows, and it’s fairly easy, or so I thought. By the end of the first week, I learned a valuable lesson. The class was on Windows Server 2003, a product I have not had much if any experience on. I’ve gotten quite a big head on my shoulders over my capabilities with home networking, but that is the realization I came to: I’m thinking too small. Sure, I’m good with Windows XP and home networks, but that’s where my problem lies. I can’t say I’ve ever really thought about information technology from an enterprise perspective. There’s no way I’m going to be able to make any real money in the home market. Sure, maybe I can pick up a few dollars by undercutting Geek Squad, but how far would that take me really? No, if I want to make the “big bucks”, I have to start thinking much bigger.

Michael Hyatt wrote a blog post last month titled Why Vision Is More Important Than Strategy. He wrote about why it is more important to create or define a vision first, then let the strategy fit the vision rather than the other way around. Setting the strategy first will cause your vision to be much smaller. With that advice, I am going to craft a new vision for myself that will not be limited to personal computers but will encompass success in the information technology field.

Labels: Time Management, U of Phoenix

Delegation- Children Helping Out

I know that this blog is supposed to be about Life Integration, but to be honest I haven't yet found a great deal of ability within myself to write about family topics in addition to my more "geeky" posts. My wife and I have two boys, Joshua and Caleb. Joshua is currently 2 (30 1/2 months) and Caleb is 1 (18 months). Joshua seems to have a natural desire to help out. When we're cleaning up the table after dinner, he wants to take things to the trash. It takes a lot longer with him helping, but on the other hand we're also teaching him how to clean up and if he wants to help out, why not? Mostly we give him one or two things at a time and tell him to put something in the trash, then take something else to the sink.

Well, as a dad, I'm very proud to announce that Joshua has mastered his very first chore, and he is happy to do it each night. As we go about our nightly routine, two of the chores that must be done are putting the dog in his kennel and feeding the outside cat. One of our cats developed a problem with the boys during the spring and decided to use their toys and bed and things as his litterbox. We gave him several weeks to turn around but he wouldn't, so eventually he was relocated to the back yard. He's gotten in once or twice, but he is an outside cat now. I make sure to feed him every night.

Anyway, Joshua has for at least the last 6 months been helping me put the dog in his kennel. It took a lot of work to crate train him, but once he was trained he just seemed happier to sleep in there, so we of course were happy to let him. Joshua, just last week, mastered the kennel latch and now all I have to do is give him the treat and tell the dog to go to the kennel, and he can give the dog the treat and close the latch while I feed the cat. He's proud of himself too.

It's great to have children helping out. If your small children want to help you out with chores, but all means, let them. It may take longer at first but it's a great time to teach them and in our busy lives it's also a good time to spend together and bond.

Labels: Family, Time Management

How To Learn A New Subject

Recently in my degree curriculum at the University of Phoenix, I had two classes in a row about Networks and Telecommunications. I was thrilled on the one hand to learn that I knew more than I thought, yet disappointed on the other hand to not have learned as many new concepts as I had expected to. The week we spent on network security, for instance, turned out to cover concepts that I was already familiar with.

The classes were very interesting and our instructor had a lot of experience and passion for the subject matter, so we had a good time and learned a lot. The instructor drove us pretty hard and hit us for grammar and spelling errors on our papers. We had a lot of "hands-off" instructors, but this guy really got involved and drove us. In the end, we appreciated it.

During the final class, one of my classmates asked the instructor how to learn more about "networking". That inspired me to write this blog entry, although there has been a time gap from concept to product. I see questions like this all of the time. I participate in several discussion forums and newsgroups, and often see new people show up asking what they see as a very simple question which actually covers a very broad subject. On PocketPC Thoughts.com, for instance, people routinely show up with the question "Which Pocket PC should I get?" On some of the time management sites and newsgroups, newbies often show up asking similar questions about how to get started. Most of these questions aren't really answerable to any real degree of accuracy because they are too broad and only bely how little the questioner knows about the subject.

And so, back to my classmate's question about networking, what is a good answer?

The first thing I would recommend is to spend some time clarifying exactly what you want to learn about networking or another subject. Sometimes it helps to decide what you want to learn about the subject. Rather than think of networking as a broad and ill-defined concept, give some thought to what exactly you would like to get out of study. Are you interested in how computers talk to each other? Do you have a Windows PC and a Macintosh and you want to share files between them? Would you like to set up a wireless router? Once you define what exactly you want to know, you can narrow down the information that you want to study.

The second thing I would recommend is to find some professional or even hobbyist sources of information for your subject matter. Pick up a magazine or find a blog to read. Maybe you can find a discussion forum. Find a book. You'd be amazed how many people with a lot of experience maintain blogs or hang out in discussion forums just to help out newbies. If you're interested in programming, Joel on Software is a great resource to get started with.  Any words or concepts you come across in your reading can be run as searches on Google (or your choice of search engine) to find more information. It's possible to spend an entire afternoon following rabbit trails generated by a blog entry.

Next, learn by doing. Take what you've learned and if possible, put it into practice.

Forth, and I only mention this because it may actually be available to somebody, find a user group or a mentor. I know, this one is often not possible offline. I would love to find an experienced Linux user who had time to stop by my house and help me out, but that's always tough to do. But, maybe you can find somebody. You can sometimes find strange ways to meet other users, however. I taught the senior high Sunday School class last summer at my church, and found a couple of fellow geeks heading out into the world. Since then, when we have time we'll share tips and war stories with each other.

It's not very hard to learn a new subject. You just have to decide what you want to learn, find a source of information, and start studying. You may even find that you have no real interest in the subject and move along to something else. The internet makes it easy to learn a new subject.

Labels: Time Management

Hear A New Idea? Put It Into Action!

I'm continuing to write about ThinkTQ as I go through the materials and implement what I learn into my life. While I was researching the products, I didn't find very much online so I'm hoping that my writings can help somebody else with a decision on whether or not to purchase their products. I'm happy with them, although I haven't been able to dedicate the time I would like to them.

Change is always hard and painful. One of the ideas I got from the ThinkTQ materials is to put into action new ideas immediately. Most of us don't like to do this. How often do you hear of a great idea that you would like to implement immediately, but you put it off? It's as if we're afraid that somehow putting a new idea into action will cause us pain by not being able to get rid of it if the idea doesn't work out. This is nonsense. I believe this comes from watching government programs, or corporate programs that are put into action, don't work, yet are kept running on life support indefinitely no matter how large of a failure they may be. This does not have to be so in your personal life.

If you hear or think of a great idea, go ahead and put it into practice immediately. If it doesn't work out, scrap it and move on. Maybe make a note of why it didn't work out in case you want to try it again later. Maybe you'll come up with a better idea for implementing the idea later on.

Labels: Time Management

Having The Right Tool

I've been formulating this blog post for a while. I've always hated yard work. I didn't know why. I always thought that I just haven't been gifted with whatever part of the brain it takes to do yard work. Sure, I can go outside and work really hard, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. As the ThinkTQ materials I've mentioned previously often say, don't confuse effort with results.

When my wife and I bought our house, for whatever reason I bought an electric lawnmower. I had one growing up and I hated it, but I figured there must have been something to it so I bought my own. I hated it just as much as I did the one my dad made me use in middle and high school. A few years ago, we bought my father-in-law a new lawnmower, so I took his old one to a friend to fix up. It was a gas mower, but I still didn't like using it. My lawn killed it many times. It was a 4.5 horse power Briggs & Straton. One day last summer, I was cutting the grass on a very hot afternoon and the mower finally died. I don't know how old it was when I got it, but now it's dead. I tried to use the electric mower, but the handle is set too low and one of the nuts was loose so the handle kept slipping.

I finally told my wife that I had to get a new lawn mower. Just at that time, her mom stopped by and needed me to run an errand with her. She said we'd stop by Sears while we were out and look for a mower. She works for K-mart and gets a discount.

I ended up buying a 6.5 horse power model with the big field wheels. You know what? It worked great. My law was cut so much faster because I finally had a mower with a powerful enough engine to handle my thick grass (which gets thicker through my procrastination for not wanting to deal with it). The wheels can take the soft ground and uneven terrain of my back yard, and best yet I don't have to mess with my extension cords.

This brings me to a vital point. I can't stress the importance of having the right tool for the job. Looking back, I have always been more worried about keeping the price down than getting a tool that will handle my needs. This is often a horrible approach! I have a quarter acre lot with lots of rocks and tree stumps, so I obviously need different equipment than somebody with a town house would.

Buy your equipment based on your actual needs. Don't be afraid to spend a little bit more to get what you need. I understand that there are times when your resources are very limited and you just have to work with what you can get. I've been there many times myself. But if you have the resources, get what you need. You'll spend even more money and time when you have underpowered tools. You wouldn't run a multimedia server on a Pentium II laptop, or a G3 iMac, and I shouldn't have been cutting my grass with an electric mower.

Labels: Time Management

More About University of Phoenix Part 1- Time Management in the Real World

I write now and again on the subject of time management. This week really threw me for a real world loop involving all kinds of time management and priorities. I wanted to write more about the University of Phoenix, but I don't feel like I can do it without filling in some other details leading me to this blog entry. When I first went looking for information on the subject, I really couldn't find many independent blogs and web pages with opinions on the school, so maybe I can contribute somewhat to the world of information.

I'm in the 4th week of a class called SQL For Business. UOP classes are 5 weeks long and can be fairly intense. I've had some classes that were easier, and other classes that had me running up until the last minute. This one, I've managed to stay ahead somehow, but I have really worked at it.

I used to be able to get some work done on Sundays. I don't have near as much time anymore, because my church started up small groups and my wife and I are leading one. We're very happy about that.  I spent Monday reading most of my material for the week as I got time at work. It's tough to get evenings for class because I do need to spend time with my kids. Tuesday I was supporting a test, and I wasn't at my desk. I was hoping to get my work done Wednesday, but my oldest didn't sleep well and I stayed home so my wife could get some sleep. Today I ended up working late, hoping I could get my work done for school. I had a staff meeting, a company brief by a VP, and I also had to swing by the car dealer to pick up my registration and then to the inspection facility to get my car inspected. At least I passed. Normally I fail the first time and I have to take my car back. Anyway, tomorrow is out because I have another system test and Saturday I have a hiking/camping trip to go on.

To put it lightly, I really had to work to prioritize this week. Obviously, the camping trip is a goal I am shooting for, and the two tests I'm supporting are important because I'm trying to work my way into another position. There was nothing I could have done yesterday, because my wife and children are very important to me and staying home with them was the right thing to do, as I was able. And so, I had to sort through all of the things I should do and all of the things I wanted to do and either delete of put off quite a bit. Actually, when you're really pressed for time, it's amazing how many things on your schedule turn out to not really matter in the long run.

Labels: Goals, Time Management, U of Phoenix

Can Somebody Invite the University of Phoenix into the 21st Century?

Last year, about 2 weeks after my second son Caleb was born, I suddenly realized that I needed to make a serious decision about my future. I wrote a few weeks ago on Think TQ, which I had discovered and been reading their materials for a few weeks about the time I made this decision. I had been reading a lot of David Allen and Michael Hyatt and several other productivity personalities and they were beginning to have an effect on me. I sat down and set some goals, and the product of these goals really made me change my direction. Now, I have made thousands of goals in my lifetime, and I'll make thousands more and most of them will not happen at all. Goals are very important, and yet goals must be aligned with your values and long term outlook. I could write a goal to "learn to crochet", but it probably won't happen because I really don't have any talent or interest in it. That goal will gather dust until I face the facts and delete it. I have learned however, that when I do set a goal directly in line with my values, things start to happen.

I'll give a little bit of background before I go further. I became a Christian in May of 2002. Shortly afterward, I made an emotional sort of decision to go into the ministry. I pretty much jumped at the first distance learning Bible college I came across and enrolled. The school was not accredited, but I didn't know what that meant anyway and I figured if it was God's will then there shouldn't be a problem. I enrolled in the Biblical Counseling program. I'm sure it's a very noble field, but I soon found that I did not dedicate myself very well to my coursework. I ended up having to request (and pay for) an extension. After I changed jobs, I started to look to my career. I began to realize that a non-accredited Biblical Counseling really won't carry me far in my career field, would not get me certified to actually counsel anybody, and I really don't like people anyway so why did I think this would be a good idea? (Note, I am not a sociopath, I just mean that the world is a much better place with me troubleshooting computers instead of people).

I was having a fight with my wife about the program. Actually, we had several fights. She was rightly upset at the money we spent on the program and the little I had accomplished. I was trying to work on my class one night and kept getting interrupted. I blew up. The next day, the same thing. I finally said "Well, I'll call them on Monday and tell them I'm dropping out!" When my wife didn't try to stop me, I left the room to think. Could this be the right decision?

I had made a 90 day goal about this time to complete a certain milestone in this program, and I was making little progress. But this goal was forcing me to confront an unpleasant little truth: as noble as I thought this field could be, it did not seem like a good fit for me. I'm a computer geek/wannabe engineer. I like to work on computers and other information technology subjects. I really do enjoy it. After thinking for a little while, I sat down on my computer to check the websites of some of the adult education institutions that I knew about: Phoenix, Kaplan, and I forget others. I did a Google search for others. I then called a good friend of mine who had completed a Bachelor's degree from Phoenix to ask him what he thought of the school and ask him what he thought of me dropping out of the Bible college. I told him I spent a lot of money on it but we might be better off if I admit that I made an expensive mistake and try to move on. He told me that sometimes we have to admit that. I gave it a lot of thought and prayer, and looked at the programs that were offered. I found that Phoenix had the best all around IT degree. Kaplan had IT, but wanted you to specialize in one of 5 fields: network, database, design, and a couple others. I did not at the time want to specialize that far. Actually, I still don't. After reviewing some of the options and talking to my friend about his experiences in the IT program at Phoenix, I decided to call for more information.

Caleb was 2 weeks old when I took the High Speed Line (commuter train) into Philadelphia to meet with the admissions counselor. I must have been smoking crack to want to start a bachelor's program with a new baby, but I had to do something. I completed the paperwork and got my transcripts sent in, and then I sat back and waited for the program to start. I enrolled in a program called FLexNet. The on ground program meets once a week, but if you know anything about the Philadelphia area, you would not want to try to fight your way from the southern part of New Jersey to Wayne Pennsylvania (near King of Prussia) by 6 PM on a Wednesday night. My friend advised me not to take the online program because during his time as a hiring manager he felt that online degrees are too new and some older managers might think it is a degree mill. FlexNet seemed to be just about right. You attend the first and the last class sessions in the classroom, and everything else is done online. So far, I am very happy with the FlexNet program. It meets my needs well. I am able to attend class just about anytime that is convenient for me but I am also able to meet the instructor and my classmates in person twice a class. I can work on class during the day at work when I have time, or at home in the middle of the night. Last year, while visiting my grandmother, I set my laptop up in her kitchen and dialed into a 30 day trial People PC account in order to attend class. When my mom passed away, I was able to keep up with my coursework while visiting with my family. I was given some lattitude by my instructor considering the circumstances, but I did mostly keep up. I am very happy with FlexNet and would recommend it to anyone.

OK, with that background in place here is the point to my post. The equipment and services that University of Phoenix uses seem outdated. For FlexNet, we use an Outlook Express newsgroup. Seriously, I thought those went away after 1998. Another gripe I have is that our accounts only support an 8 Meg limit. I began this blog entry last night while frustrated because I could not get a 7 Meg database to upload in time for the deadline for the assignment. The newsgroup can be accessed through Outlook Web Access, but that's even worse than Outlook Express. You cannot reply to a post through OWA, at least, it won't stay in the tree. It shows up as a new post. During one class when several people had to use OWA, the newsgroup was a mess. Conversations could not be followed at all.

I can understand business or medical students having to live with this, but seriously, this is an IT program. Can't we actually use IT for our class? How hard could it be for an organization as large as UOP to broker a deal with Microsoft to allow students to use a web based version of Live Meeting? On the one hand, we are getting pretty good at document version control through a newsgroup, but this causes a lot of problems. I can't tell you how many times, the night before a presentation, 3 people are working at the same time. I'll upload what I think is version 5 of the team presentation, somebody else uploads version 3, and another uploads version 7. Which one is most current?

I've been so tempted to take out a free website from Microsoft's Live Office just so we have a place to store and access documents online.

OK, that's a lot of babbling for a short rant. Set goals, further your education, and if you decide on University of Phoenix (which I do recommend), ask them to actually provide some IT for their IT program.

Labels: Goals, U of Phoenix

Thoughts About Think TQ

I came across Think TQ last year at about the time my son Caleb was born. A look through gmail shows that I started receiving their daily emails on August 5, 2005. At the time I found the TQ site, I had read David Allen's Getting Things Done and I was searching for ways to apply what I gleaned from the book to my own situation and life. For someone who has spent as much time as I have reading about time management and buying into systems, I sure am a procrastinator and a very inefficient performer.

I started with the Franklin system around 1996 while involved with a certain multi-level marketing scheme which I will not name but I am sure it will not be very hard for you to guess. ( See Merchants of Deception for more information.) Franklin later became Franklin Covey and is a good system but can become very intensive with prioritization. David Allen's system proposed some interesting concepts such as keeping tasks undated and off the calendar but on seperate context lists. This is an interesting idea, but not one I've been able to follow wholeheartedly for reasons I will discuss later. Part of this reason is what sent me looking for websites that offered tips on how to implement GTD for my own particular situation, which led me to ThinkTQ.

One of the biggest problems that I have with most time management systems is that they are all mostly geared toward salesmen and executives. I hate looking for a productivity book and finding that most of them are geared toward selling. I hate selling. I have no talent for it, and no desire to sell anything. I've tried multi-level marketing and I hate it. Even if it is not just a huge pyramid scam, no matter how many times I read "The Magic of Thinking Big", nothing will convince me that selling is a skill that is part of my makeup. Just give me a computer to fix or an information system to design or a technical problem to solve and I will be  happy. Tell me to sell a product and I'd rather live under a bridge. I can't even sell the idea to my wife to pick up a six pack of beer for me while she's out. I don't sell, and likewise I have little interest in reading books about how to sell better. I recognize that there is some selling inherent in everything, and I am not saying that I won't try to "sell" myself to a prospective employer or "sell" my ideas to my management. However, I am not going to sell anybody soap, and I am surely not going to sell "owning your own business" again.

The other end of the spectrum, as I said, is executives. Again, not everybody searching for ways to manage time better is an executive. Getting Things Done seems to be geared for this crowd, and it does not exactly help technology centered peons. As Merlin Mann so eloquently pointed out, most computer geeks only have one context: @computer. We carry our laptops around all day or we go from one computer to the next. I go to work and log into my computers at home through Log Me In when I have time. If I put a task in the @computer context, I wouldn't even know which computer I meant.

While Getting Things Done focuses on highly practical tips and techniques, I think it falls short in several areas. Most GTD disciples will refute that, and I'm happy for them. I'm glad they find it to be a perfect, faultless system. I don't. Something occurred to me one day while I was reading a discussion forum about GTD. One poster pointed out that GTD is great for people who get 1000 emails a day. Suddenly, I wondered what particular value or long term goal would lead you to stay in a job that left you burried in email day in and day out. That opened me back up to Franklin Covey.

I finally got around to reading Steven Covey's 7 Habits this past Spring. The book had been out for more than a decade and a half, and I just read it. Covey also takes an approach that seems to be geared toward managers and consultants. He tells a lot of stories and spins a lot of platitudes. These are inspiring but seem to fall short on application for a low level computer geek. I am simply not creative enough to apply ideas written for an executive with a secretary and a staff to delegate to in my own life when I can't even write a script to automate Windows XP tasks. That would be the limit of my delegatory abilities and powers. Oh, wait, last week I did manage to delegate my laundry to my wife, but only because I had a really busy schedule and she wanted to go out of town Thursday night. I can delegate putting my dog to bed to my 2 year old, but he can't quite close the latch on the kennel yet, so that's not really delegation.

All of this led me back to Think TQ. For most of the year, I have glanced over their emails, read relevant quotes, and ignored the rest. I almost canceled my subscription a few times, but I was too lazy and it is free anyway. I recently began to take them more seriously and I went back to their site to retest my Time Quotient, which I did test last year when I found the site. When I retested I found that my TQ went down from abysmal to just plain pathetic. I think that a TQ score below 80 means that you don't accomplish much, and I didn't even score an 8. I also don't think I'm being that hard on myself. I feel that I answered the questions truthfully.

I have been debating the last couple of weeks on whether or not to buy the complete ThinkTQ system, which includes their custom book "published just for you", all 10 workshops, and a screen saver as well as complete access to their site. I took their offer for a free CD, and I chose the "Act Now" color of the time prism.

I am really impressed with the fact that the TQ system is not geared toward any strict demographic. They do not focus on salespeople or executives and their materials are applicable to anyone. I really like that. They have no platitudes. Even though their materials are highly repetitious, they are full of simple and practical actions that can be taken right now to improve your situation. Most of them are total common sense, such as "I plan my day around my values, vision, and mission". If you think about it, however, that affirmation is very deep. What exactly are your values? What is your vision? What is your mission? I couldn't even answer all three of those questions right now. TQ provides a system that helps you to discover those 3 things as well as so much more about yourself that you can put into practice for immediate results.

One thing that disturbs me about TQ is that there is almost no information on the internet about it. When I search for TQ, I get plenty of hits from their site, as well as a few other URLs that are either purchased by them or are from affiliates. Most of them have the same information, word for word, as the ThinkTQ.com site. I think that if they truly have as many customers as they claim, SOMEBODY would write on their blog about their experience for others to read. The only testimonials seem to be in the possession of ThinkTQ.

One option that I have is to simply purchase the personalized book along with a CD for approximately $40 plus shipping and handling. If the system for some reason isn't very good, that's no problem. However, if I decide that I really want the full system, I have to pay for the whole thing. This is a tough choice.

It is apparent to me that this system is not fluff. A lot of time, energy, and research went into it and I am impressed with what I have seen so far. I think this a great mix of all of the best time systems combined. GTD is good for low level or runway time management, or the day to day stuff. Franklin Covey helps a lot with high level management or values and lifelong goals. I do firmly believe that value based time management is the most effective, while context based task management is highly effective, and ThinkTQ really does a great job of putting these concepts all together.

When I changed the format of my blog, I was originally going to call it "Bring Back Franklin Covey- value based time management for peons". I first named this blog "Eric's Watchtower" because I was going to do socio-political commentary. You can see that some of my earlier posts followed this line, but I gave up because the world has way too many socio-political bloggers and most of it amounts to less than farting out the window. I settled on "Life Integration" for my format change because I don't believe in compartmentalizing life. Life should be a healthy balance between all of the factors that make it up in your individual case. I am a husband and a father, yet I'm also a computer geek. I'm an "information worker". All of these things make up who I am and how I live along with many other roles like church member, citizen, etc. My goal is to share information on how to balance all of these in a healthy way.

Labels: Time Management

Using OpenOffice.org 2.02

When the Microsoft Office 2007 public beta was released, I couldn't wait to install and run it. As I reported in an earlier blog entry, Office 2007 sucked up a lot of my system's resources and rendered it very near useless. I promptly uninstalled Office 2007. The uninstall created quite a few problems for me, however. For one thing, Office 2007 still shows up in my Add/Remove programs list, but will not uninstall because "no files can be found". Office 2003 will not reinstall in a usable state because 2007 apparently has a lot of uninstalled components that were not in the Office12 folder that I deleted. I spend a couple of hours yesterday deleting office keys from my registry, yet barely made a dent in the total number of keys that Office 12 inserted.

After I originally uninstalled MS Office, I did install OpenOffice.org 2.02. I've installed and played with it in the past and found it to have a lot of potential, but I always gave up when hit with a limitation over what MS Office can do. This time, however, I was forced to use OpenOffice for a reason. I'm a student at the University of Phoenix, and I had a learning team project due for the final class session. I just finished up my second class on Java Programming. I had to create the requirements document as well as the class diagrams and incorporate them into our presentation. I used the draw feature in Writer to create the class diagram, then I used Impress for the slideshow. I found a few shortcomings, however.

• OpenOffice does not yet share very well between programs. I wasn't able to copy and paste the drawing from Writer into Impress. Only the text copied over. I ended up having to recreate the drawing in Impress.
• Tables do not copy over either. I had to copy the text into Impress and then tab it so that it looked like a table.
• Power Point allows for inserting slides from another slideshow, but I could not get Impress to do this.

However, my worries about format were for naught. My files saved into MS compatible format and were easily incorporated into the overall presentation in Power Point. Nobody could tell that I used a non-Microsoft suite to create them.

Seeing how apparently nothing short of a reformat will correct my MS Office problems, and I don't feel like reformatting my laptop now anyway, I will probably be using OpenOffice.org a lot more. I have also installed it on my work computer and have used it for a few light tasks, however, for official work I still use Microsoft Office.

Labels: Software

Sometimes Low Tech is Best

This is in conjunction with my  previous entry. I was at work on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, and after I got  my flight changed I realized that there were quite a few things that had to be  done and I needed a secure system to make sure that they do get done. I realized  that for the time available, it really would be overkill and probably take too  long to add these tasks into Outlook or Pocket Informant, so I took out a legal  pad that I keep at my desk for making notes on phone calls and for capturing  ideas while that come to me while I'm focusing on other things (I'll write about  that later), and started writing. I made a list, not in any particular order, of  all that I had to do in order to tie up all my loose ends at work, school, and  with family and friends. With each item that I put down, I also drew a box to  check off. My list included such items as :

• email supervisor
• cancel lunch with friend
• reserve parking
• email changed itinerary
• Turn in timecard

And the list continued. Right before  I decided to log on to Airport Parking  Reservations to reserve my spot, my wife called and said that since I'm  leaving in the evening instead of 0600 (6AM for those who don't do military  time) she can take me. I crossed that off my list.

And so, I kept going until my entire  list was done. It took a couple of hours. I didn't get fancy. I knew that I  wasn't going to be able to handle 60 pages of my Java textbook or starting my  program for this week, so I printed out the pages to read on the plane if I can.  Once I was done, I knew that I could leave town, knowing that I was caught up at  work and I could be reached if necessary.

The moral of this story is that  sometimes, high tech is just too much. Sometimes a good old-fashioned list of  tasks is what will get you through. I bet if I'd spent the afternoon trying to  put these tasks into Outlook or My Life Organized, I'd still be  there.

Labels: Family, Time Management

Outlook Rant

I think I have established that I use Outlook a lot, and I have been using it steadily for several years. I began using Outlook probably with Office 2000, though I may have been using it for email with the 97 version. I had always preferred the built-in email client that came with Netscape's classic web browser up through version 4.0. I think Netscape finished with 4.9 before selling out to AOL which did nothing to really improve the browser. I was using 6.0 for a while, and I think I might have downloaded 7.0, but by then I had given up. I had a computer at work with Outlook on it, so I started using Outlook at home to keep standardized. Later on when I quit buying refills for my Franklin Planner, I went looking for ways to adapt the Franklin method to Outlook.

In all this time of using Outlook, I really can't believe how little the functionality of the program has actually been improved. Outlook 2003 added some pretty colors and the ability to flag a message, but I still maintain that none of the developers use Outlook and they don't realize how frustrating it is to have already bought it and then you need to spend even more money on add-ins to make it useful for anything more than an email client and a very basic task and calendar display.

I want to rant on some email features or lack thereof. First off is the lack of a real security mindset. Outlook either ignores security or takes it to extreme levels. This morning I was reminded of how stupid this is. I got an email newsletter with links in it. When I went to click on a link, Outlook told me that links had been disabled and I have to click the Information Bar to turn them on. When I click the information bar, I get three options, one of which says "Turn links on (not recommended)". Excuse me, BUT THIS SENDER IS ALREADY IN MY SAFE SENDERS LIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't understand how it can make sense to Microsoft to add a sender to a safe sender's list and still disable links until you manually enable them. What is the point to having a safe sender's list? I may explain my method for dealing with spam in another post, I won't take the time here.

Also, for some reason, some of my emails have the message that says "to protect your privacy, some images have been turned off" and you have to click the info bar to show the images. Perhaps I should google this one, because I don't know what the point is when again, the sender has already been placed in my safe sender's list.

This isn't part of Office per se, but annoying nonetheless. When a program wants attention, the window will flash. We all know that. But why can't programmers set up a routine so that if you acknowledge the program once, it will leave you alone for a few minutes? Norton is the worst. Anything Norton does constantly notifies me that Norton is doing something, so that anything else I try to do becomes painful. Any window I'm in keeps flashing to inactive and the Norton window flashes my taskbar. Since I keep my taskbar hidden, this always seems to happen when I need to do something at the bottom of the page and the taskbar keeps hiding it.

I guess we'll have to live with it until either I learn to program or somebody else comes up with something better. Speaking of which, I remember back in 1998 or 1999 when I was on the Bash Microsoft bandwagon. Sun seemed to be leading the chorus, along with Oracle and everybody else. We all spoke of how shoddy Windows 95 and 98 were and how Microsoft is keeping down everybody else.

Suddenly, I woke up and realized that nobody has come close to doing what Microsoft has done. Nobody was producing a comparable product. I stopped complaining at that point.

Labels: Email, Security

How To Make Outlook Today Useful

I recently found the blog of Melissa MacBeth, a developer on Outlook 12, the Outlook component of Microsoft's upcoming office suite. This time around, the developers actually read some of the premier time management books such as Getting Things Done and others listed in the blog. I am happy with this development, because I have become convinced that no Outlook developer has actually USED Outlook for a calendar, task list, or contact management suite. You can read Melissa's blog for the details. I am happy with the developments, and I will eagerly bug my wife for a copy when it comes out if I can't somehow score a beta copy.

Until Outlook 12 comes out, we're pretty much stuck with the older versions, be they '97 (don't tell me people still run Office '95!), 2000, XP and 2003. I believe there was an Outlook '98, but I didn't use it. Outlook works fine for email, but when it comes to the calendar and task list, Outlook is a little deficient. Over the years I have worked hard to adapt Outlook to systems such as Franklin Covey and now Getting Things Done. One component of Outlook has always been more on the useless side than any other, especially Notes: Outlook Today. I never completely understood the point to Outlook Today, although I have tried in the past to use it as an overall view of what I needed to do. You can set it to show you a list of calendar entries for up to a week, and you have some very basic task display options. It isn't very usable for GTD, which teaches that tasks should not be dated. Any activity that is date or time dependent belongs on the calendar, or the "Hard Landscape". Tasks should be, in GTD, sorted into lists of contexts, such as "@home", "@work", or whatever your particular contexts may be. Merlin Mann of 43 Folders raised the issue that GTD is designed for professionals who work in offices, have lots of appointments, and travel. It is much harder though not impossible to be adapted by computer geeks who often have only one context "@computer". I'll let you read Merlin's perspective on that, and I'm always looking for ways to do GTD more efficiently in my situation as well.

In any case, the task display on Outlook Today is useless. It is useless, that is, until now. Thanks to Flipping Heck, I now know that Outloook Today can be customized to be somewhat useful. The Outlook today page sources an html file. You can develop your own, or adapt someone else's. Check out the file available for download on Flipping Heck's website. I took that one and did some tweaking for my own use. Flipping Heck has the inbox and task list side by side in a 50/50 split. I tweaked it to my inbox and calendar in a 30/70 split. It sources the views that you normally use. I normally set my calendar to display my task list sorted by categories or "contexts", so now this is on my today screen. If I get a chance, I might run this file through Frontpage and see what else I can do with it. I am not sure if blogger allows for the uploading of files, but if you're interested in my file email me at emuelle 1 at gmail dot com. (simply format email address correctly.

To implement, right click on Outlook Today, which is the uppermost folder in the Outlook folder list. Select "Properties for...(whatever your Outlook Today folder is named on your system)" and click the "Home Page" tab. Under the address bar is a Browse button. Click that and navigate to the location of your new file. Before you do that, I need to advise you that I do not know how to change it back, but I'm sure somebody on a discussion forum or a group at Yahoo or Google will know.

I'm not sure if I'll use it, or if I'll just use separate windows for my inbox and my calendar. At work I sometimes need two windows, at home one is good enough. Happy tweaking!

Labels: Email

Agenda Fusion and Today Screen plug-ins

As a GTD (Getting Things Done) and Pocket PC enthusiast, I'm always on the lookout for better ways to keep track of my life between my Pocket PC and Microsoft Outlook. While the Office version of Outlook is plenty powerful and capable, it doesn't take a Franklin Covey or David Allen disciple very long to realize that Pocket Outlook, the "out of the box" planning and email software that ships pre-installed in the ROM of a Pocket PC is very ineffective for much more than the basics. The time it takes you to decide that you want more is very short.

I began using Ulti-Planner from Birdsoft, and it worked fine for a while. I liked it because it is graphical while Pocket Outlook is not, and it allows for tasks display with calendar items. I like being able to see both what I'm doing each day and what I need to get done on the same screen. However, when I came across GTD, I realized that I needed a more powerful planning suite. Birdsoft had promised an upgrade to Ulti-Planner in April of 05, and so far that upgrade has not been released. They are busy with other projects according to the developer. That left me searching for another solution. I tried a few different freeware programs, but no one program did what I wanted it to do.

One day at PocketPC Thoughts, I saw an advertisement for Pocket Informant at a reduced price. I decided to download the trial. I do not like to download trial versions, not because they aren't effective, but because I often don't use the program until the trial is over and also I can't often get my wife to approve purchases. To be fair, I'd break us if I bought everything I liked. I found Pocket Informant to be what I needed, and I have been using it ever since.

I recently got the urge to try Agenda Fusion. I'd heard a lot of good things about it and that it has a project center, something that Pocket Informant lacks. I downloaded the trial version. I quickly found that my today screen was littered with undated tasks. I searched for a way to change the display, but gave up quickly. I poked around the program and realized that, project center aside, Pocket Informant does what I need so I uninstalled Agenda Fusion. I have no doubts that it is a fine product, and it seems to have run head to head with Pocket Informant for many years.

I figured that while I was being brave with trials, I should test some Today Screen plug-ins. I have been using tAgenda for several years since the days of my iPaq 3765. It's always been a basic yet faithful plug-in. However, there doesn't seem to be any development on it. The application is freeware, so I have no complaints there. I decided to try SBSH Pocket Breeze. The screen shots look very nice and I've heard a lot of good comments about it from the folks at PocketPC Thoughts. I downloaded the trial and went to try it out. I found it to be just as graphical and comprehensive as I had imagined. As I went to customize it, however, I found that it kept locking up my device. The problem could very well be my Dell Axim x30, which seems more sensitive to locking up than my old iPaq was. Often, all the items on my Today Screen will disappear and I have to reboot to get them back. Sometimes this will happen back to back. I decided that even if the device was causing the problems, a plug in that I couldn't play with because it locked wasn't going to be useful. I also felt that it was a little too comprehensive. I uninstalled it and figured that I would go back to using tAgenda.

Later that day, I decided to try one more thing: SPB Diary. This seems to be the Today Screen application that I've been waiting for! It's comprehensive but not too comprehensive, it gives me a quick run down of what I need to do and my device doesn't lock. Once again, the problem with Pocket Breeze could very well have been my device, but with two small children I really don't get the time to troubleshoot that I used to. A few notes, however: SPB Diary does not allow you to change your settings from the Today Screen. You have to go into the Device Settings for the Today Screen to change them. That's not a big deal for me. You can adjust what information you do get. I can't say that I worry about having access to my notes or contacts on my Today Screen, but the calendar and task integration are great. David Allen says to create tasks with no due date and assign them contexts (ie. categories) in which they are to be done. I do from time to time assign dates to tasks if they fall within a certain time period. I like these to show up with my agenda. I also like to display the non-dated tasks by category or context. SPB Diary allows me to do both. Now I have 14 days to convince my wife that it's worth $15.

All of these are very fine products and I would recommend any of them to you.

Labels: Software, Time Management

The Inbox- Unsightly Annoyance or Useful Tool?

Lately I find myself developing an interest in time management. I wrote an entry in the recent past about David Allen's system, "Getting Things Done", or GTD as it's being called in the vernacular. I am working to embrace GTD, yet there are still a lot of qualities to the old Franklin Covey system that I find useful. Many other bloggers have pointed out that Franklin Covey is a really good top down life management system, and GTD is a good bottom up system. Quite a few people have found some useful ways to combine the two in a way that works for them.

One tool that both systems differ on is the inbox. Years ago, I bought the tapes that compliment the Franklin Planner, and one of them got into a discussion of the inbox. The speaker said to get rid of it; to give it to somebody who is trying to take your job. Their method is to have a drawer or some other "out of sight, out of mind" collection place for paper. This was in the days before email. I attempted to follow their suggestion, but found that paper would go in and not be touched. It is very easy to forget to get back to it.

In GTD, the idea is to have inboxes; as many as you need but as few as you can get by with. You collect what comes in and put it in your inbox, then you go through it and process everything at a convenient time. Everything must have a decision made about it based on two criteria: is it actionable, or is it not actionable? If it is actionable, do you do it, delegate it, defer it, or drop it? If it's non-actionable, do you need it for reference later or do you trash it? I find this useful because it forces me to go through my inboxes. They are prominently displayed where I can see the clutter that builds up in them if I don't process them. I have one at work and one at home, and of course my email inboxes on my computers. I have been trying to consolidate all of my email into gmail, which offers pop3 access and permanent archival of all emails. I am really impressed with it. I use ypops for my Yahoo account. It is a pity that I cannot use the MSN Outlook connector anymore. I really appreciated getting my MSN email in Outlook, but I'm not going to pay for an MSN subscription and I canceled Verizon DSL when the service stopped working and they couldn't get a tech out for more than a half of a week. It's a long story.

In addition to the stuff that normally makes it into your inbox, David Allen also says to write down anything that comes into your head and place it in there. I keep a small notebook in my inbox to jot ideas down in and come back to later. I get sidetracked very easily and I find it useful that, when one of these sidetracks pops up, I can write it down and feel confident that I won't forget about it. My Pocket PC also has a voice recorder, so while I'm out and about I can make a voice note to come back to later.

I find that, as long as I process my inboxes regularly, fewer things slip through the cracks. Often, I will put my inbox from home into my work bag and process it the next day at work. I do this because with a one year old and a one week old, I don't really get time at home to go through very much. My job permits me to set my own priorities, and I'm able to fit in a few of my own interests at times.

On the subject of inboxes, GTD 1, FC 0. GTD is the clear winner on this front.

Labels: Time Management

"Getting Things Done", David Allen

In today's world, we always seem to be strapped for time. As the days go by, we have less and less time. I currently have a ten month old and another baby due in the next two months, so I'm looking at less time than I ever imagined.

In 1996, I came across the Franklin Planner while I was involved in a multi-level marketing organization that shall remain nameless (they have lawyers and know how to use them), but you can probably imagine which one. I guess it doesn't matter which one. In any case, my upline introduced me to the Franklin Planner and I was thrilled with the system. It is based on a top down approach: you define your governing values, use those to choose your long term goals, break those up into intermediate goals and again into daily tasks, and each day you spend 15 minutes or so planning your daily tasks in accordance with your governing values. It sounds good, but I was never able to get it to work properly. I believe part of it is that, at 22 when I discovered the system, my true governing values had to do with drinking beer and the rest were influenced by said multi-level marketing concept ie, "Go Diamond!" or "Pay Cash for Lexus and retire at 24!"

I finally gave up buying the Planner refills each year and settled on a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). My wife had a Casio Cassiopia PV-400 Plus, and I tried to adapt the Franklin system to it. Being a computer geek, however, the K-mart PDA just didn't do enough for me. Notes had limited character spaces, and I was beginning to figure out how powerful Microsoft Outlook could be and how Palm and Pocket PC could interface with it. I got a Palm Zire for Christmas (the original 2 MB model) and was able to do more, but I still wanted my appointments and tasks to show up together. I also heard that a Pocket PC operated more like Windows and had more memory. A coworker offered to sell me his Pocket PC for $120, and I took it.

My first Pocket PC was an ipaq 3765, and served me faithfully for 2 years. I later bought my friend's Dell Axim x30, which is a good model.

All this time, I tried hard to adapt the Franklin Covey system to Outlook for interface with a Pocket PC in order to keep track of my life. It just didn't seem to be happening easily. Even if I did sit down and plan and prioritize an entire day, I would end up getting done half or less of all that I had planned and prioritized. Needless to say, I started and ceased using the Franklin system many times.

Months ago, I borrowed a productivity book from my in-laws because the title sounded interesting. I brought the book in to work and promptly forgot about it. One of the forums I check regularly is at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com. I kept reading posts about something called "GTD", as in "How do you implement GTD?" or "How I implement GTD with Pocket Informant". I finally made the connection that GTD was a system written about in a book by David Allen called "Getting Things Done- The Art of Stress Free Productivity". I opened up my cubical compartment and discovered that is the exact same book I borrowed from my in-laws and forgot about.

And so I began to read it.

I'll post more on it as I go along. I'm fascinated by the system. It is true that in our age of "Knowledge Workers", it is hard to prioritize an entire day when you're constantly being hit with shifting priorities and emails and emergencies. This system is built for dealing with that.

I'm about 3/4 through with the book now, and I'm learning how to implement it using MS Outlook and Pocket Informant on my Dell Axim. I'll share my thoughts and tips and tricks as I go.

Labels: Time Management