Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

Some final cool tidbits from the 43folders podcast with David Allen:

-On committing to your organization process: either your head is your organization system, or it’s not. David obviously recommends against using your head, but if you’re going to start getting things out of your head, you’ve got to get everything out. As soon as you track two items in your head you’ll distrust your other system.

- Merlin Mann likes using the phrase ‘Ninja Moves’ for really cool techniques. I like that.

- organization is like training kids and dogs: use as few rules as possible but never break them. HUGE head nods after everything we’ve done training Buddy Dog.

- if you can’t do it [organize] with paper, you can’t do it with ‘e’. You’re going to get paper, and you’re going to get emails. if you can’t deal with both you’re in trouble.

- one crazy, step back from the ledge thought: what if I set up my email / blackberry to only push emails every two hours? Would I get more done? *whew* I need to sit down….

Another gem. Merlin just referred to one Amy Lamonte, who says “you need to give yourself permission to write a shitty first draft.” Something good will come of it, even if it had nothing to do with the original draft.

My airplane listening (hey, it was a long flight!) was a series of podcasts by Merlin Mann at 43folders with David Allen, the personal productivity guru and one of my heros. I stumbled across David’s email newsletter back in 2001, and printed/saved them until his best seller Getting Things Done came out in print. Heck, GTD was my first Amazon book purchase, OK? So getting to hear the maestro for 90 minutes while cramped in a ‘regional carrier’ was a thrill indeed.

OK, ok, ok. Enough Dave love. What did he have to say about procrastination? Lots, actually. I was just getting around to telling you…

We (you? I?) procrastinate for three reasons: it’s not worth doing anymore but I haven’t conciously killed it yet; I don’t know what the next action is (so I need to figure that out to get unstuck); or I don’t feel confident that I can engage [on the item] with control and success. Zowie! That last one hit me like a ton of firebrick!

Wait! There’s more! He quoted another book [War of Art], (he couldn’t remember the author but he remembered the quote) “the thing that is closest to your soul is the thing that you avoid the most.” Not much you can do about this one, says Dave, other than be aware of it, recognize it and give yourself permission to deal with it anyway.

Taken together, this helped me out quite a bit. The toughest thing about building my brick oven was ordering materials from suppliers who knew everything about their products but nothing about ovens. I could write a whole post just about finding fireclay. In those cases it was my lack of confidence in having a successful conversation with the supplier that caused delays. The thought of being treated like a goof caused huge anxiety. In hindsight, there was more I could’ve done to ensure ‘control and success’ when interacting with suppliers.

Lately however, I’ve been avoiding doing more to get the bakery going. Things like taking two weeks to spend an hour re-assembling the mixer, never chopping wood, etc. In these cases the actual task is easy. So why the delay? I think it’s the last bit — ‘the closest to my soul.’ I’ve still got a ‘fear of something’ with regard to the bakery which I haven’t identified yet. So quit trying to identify it; just recognize that I’ll be nervous about it, and get going anyway.

(Meanwhile, back at home, Cindy just rolled her eyes. Karma. She gets this in her genes. I’m good at other stuff.)

My airplane reading this for this trip is a book I’ve wanted to read for a few months now: Small is the New Big by Seth Godin. It’s a collection of ‘the best’ of his blog posts over the past 3-4 years. While I spend a lot of time reading online I still appreciate holding some paper in my hands.

He riffs on the troubles associated with anonymity on the internet. Seth’s against it. Says it causes a ton of problems, not least of which are spam, flame wars, trolls and general bitchiness. My favorite line:”anonymity is the enemy of civility.”

You know, I completely agree. When I started this blog I thought about writing under a pseudonym or leaving my blog completely anonymous. But within a week of my first post I read two blogs by people I know in Regina and i was appalled by how cranky the blogs were. Not really the tone [not my style, but that's OK], but more that they didn’t have the guts to put their name behind what they were writing.

My question: who do you respect/admire more, someone who anonymously puts up a web page criticizing local government, or some kids who recorded a song criticizing local government [click 'ode to Pasquala'] and perform it live on stage all over the city no matter who attends?

I arrived in San Diego late Sunday afternoon and have checked in at the lovely La Avenida Inn on Coronado Island. It’s a very comfortable (and affordable) little motel which is the perfect place for my psyche. They have friendly staff, clean and spacious rooms and a top notch cable TV selection. I’ve never really felt comfortable at the ‘five star’ accomodations where one usually stays during business travel. I’ve had my fill of Pan Pacifics in Vancouver, Fairmonts in San Francisco or even Marriotts in Minneapolis; lovely buildings with a lobby to match their high pricetag, but no real soul.

La Avenida Inn is exactly the type of hotel I would stay in if I were travelling with my family. However there are two things missing that I now realize are Essentals when I’m travelling on business. The first is an iron in the room. I don’t pack very well so my shirts are creased up pretty good, but a quick steam in the bathroom should fix them well enough. The second missing item is internet access. I’ve grown used to free wireless internet, but I thought every hotel in the planet at least had a for-money broadband service available. La Avenida has neither. So I’ll get to spend part of each day at one of the nearby coffee shops posting to the blog. Not as ‘live’ as I originally planned but I’m adaptable!

For me, it’s worth checking in advance for irons + internet before I book my next hotel.

[Posted at Cafe 1134 in Coronado -- worth walking to!]

I’ve acquired a slight head cold so that can mean only one thing — I’m heading off on an airplane! Yep, I leave Sunday for the Stellent Crescendo conference. I’ll be meeting with some of our hosting customers, the Stellent sales / partner crew and hopefully learn some more about content management too.

The only downside (other than the massive sinus pain I will indoubtably suffer) is that I’ll miss most of the Super Bowl. I’m loading up on pre-game hype instead. My motto is the same as NFL network — everything but the game!

I’ll blog as much as I can from the conference, but I’ll have to split between internal stuff and what I can share publically. Hopefully you’ll get more than descriptions of the beaches and palm trees.

Some extra links: The conference is at the lovely Hotel Del Coronado

I’ll be staying at the even more wonderful (for me) La Avenida Inn across the street. To be honest, I’m not one for ultra-swanky accomodations and this is a great little hotel I discovered when I was here back in 2000. Clean rooms, great location and friendly staff. That’s all I could ever want!

I for one am glad that January is over. Nothing but cold and snow with some hockey thrown into break the tedium.

I’ve been a little behind in my posting on this blog since I’ve been getting an internal company blog going at work. I can’t link to it since it’s, well, internal. Sorry. I still think that it’s better in the long run to blog outside the firewall but we’ll start in small steps.

Not sure if it made the local paper but those kooky funsters at Apple have announced a new cellphony/music player/web surfer thingy. It got a little bit of press on cable.

Honestly, I was worried that I would end up as the only blogger who didn’t post about the iPhone announcement. But then I couldn’t figure out how to market the fact that I didn’t post about iPhone without posting about iPhone. It started to make my head hurt. I’m glad that’s finally been resolved.

What I found most interesting was how the CEO of Cingular got skewered for being such a poor presenter. I guess style matters, at least when you’re on the stage with the Grand Master himself, Steve Jobs. I’ll be watching my own executive’s performances with a new set of filters from here on out.

Some links:

iPhone announcement [Apple.com]

Steve Jobs is a Great Presenter [Presentation Zen]

And the Cingular CEO isn’t [presentation zen]

This blog is now available as an RSS feed thanks to Feedburner. If you don’t want to come back to this blog day after day, just hoping against all hope that there’s a new post, you can click the little ’subscribe’ chicklet on the right [over there ---> ] and subscribe to the feed.

If you’re using a useful browser like Firefox, it’ll create a live bookmark which will show new post titles as they are published. If you use multiple computers, or just want to manage all your blog subscriptions, Google Reader or Bloglines will make blog reading easy.

It makes me giddy just thinking that one of my posts may one day show up on the same screen as Seth Godin or Doc Searls. OK, it’ll likely only be on my own reader, but I can dream, can’t I?

In Left or Right? « Touamoto Sakimata-Smith my buddy Greg talked about being ‘fiscally conservative’ and it got my blood flowing a bit — brought back an earlier conversation I had with my city councilor.

I’ve had a problem with the term ‘fiscally conservative’ for a while now, because I see it as having mixed meanings.

I think I’m ‘fiscally conservative’ with my own money because I don’t do into debt for things (pay cash whenever I can, pay down the mortgage ASAP, do without if I don’t have the money.) I also don’t own any penny stocks or precious metal funds.

But insofar as public policy, I believe that we’re better off as a society if there is a strong ‘Common Good’. I believe that there is value in public services far beyond the cost of them. Because of that I’ve been a strong advocate for public libraries, public education and city services.

I don’t subscribe to the opinion that all taxes are evil by definition and that we should cut every public service possible in order to keep taxes down. I want to make sure my governments are managing our shared pool of money well, but I WANT to pay taxes and I WANT my taxes to go toward strong public services. So I’m much more concerned about getting the most common ‘bang’ for my tax buck than paying fewer tax bucks.

I also don’t have a problem paying more taxes than someone who lives in a smaller house or makes less money. If I have ‘more’, I don’t have trouble paying more.

Can I still call myself fiscally conservative? Has the term been co-opted to imply ‘I Hate Taxes’ or am I using the term incorrectly?