A framework for setting goals
Many of us have an allergic reaction to goal setting. We’ve set goals before and not stuck to them, so why bother this time? If a person doesn’t have a goal, they can’t fail. That’s…
Showing posts tagged productivity
-
-
The Case for RSS
David Sparks on why he prefers to use RSS:
The reason I’ve stuck with RSS is the way in which I work. Twitter is the social network that I participate in most and yet sometimes days go by where I don’t load the application. I like to work in focused bursts. If I’m deep into writing a book or a legal client project. I basically ignore everything else. I close my mail application, tell my phone service to take my calls, and I definitely don’t open Twitter. When I finish the job, I can then go back to the Internet. I’ll check in on Twitter, but I won’t be able to get my news from it. That only works if you go into Twitter much more frequently than I do. That’s why RSS is such a great solution for me. If a few days go by, I can open RSS and go through my carefully curated list of websites and get caught back up with the world.
When Google Reader shut down in 2013, I stopped using RSS. RSS felt like yet another inbox to attend to, so I ditched it and used Twitter instead. But in the past few months, I’ve returned to RSS and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed keeping up with a select few sites.
My return to RSS was based on two factors:
1) I’m using Twitter way less than I used to. I’m not enjoying it as much as I did. Twitter was how I kept up, but not anymore.
2) I’m using an iPad more. Reading RSS feeds on a tablet-sized device is a great experience.I completely agree with Sparks advice on subscribing to high signal, low noise sites:
RSS is so easy to implement that it’s a slippery slope between having RSS feeds for just a few websites and instead of having RSS feeds for hundreds of websites. If you’re not careful, every time you open your RSS reader, there will be 1,000 unread articles waiting for you, which completely defeats the purpose of using RSS. The trick to using RSS is to be brutal with your subscriptions. I think the key is looking for websites with high signal and low noise. Sites that publish one or two articles a day (or even one to two articles a week) but make them good articles are much more valuable and RSS feed than sites that published 30 articles a day.
-
How to build a successful freelance business without going crazy
The following is a transcription of a talk I gave at Staffs Web Meetup in October, 2017. I share some of the lessons I’ve learnt during the first 3 years of running my business. You…
-
What is the smallest step you can take?
Charles Roper wrote a great piece called Kaizen in which he talks about breaking down big things into small steps:
In taking tiny steps, we become accustomed to the change. We get used to it little by little. As time goes on, we increase our exposure to the change. Habits form, routines solidify, and, as if by magic, we find we’ve grown. We’ve made progress. This is how we defeat the fear. We practice. We do something so easy it seems stupid. That’s the trick.
Charles asks what is the smallest thing I can do? in the context of writing daily:
Five minutes of writing per day, perhaps? That sounds reasonable. How about one sentence? That’s pretty Kaizen. Or a tweet’s worth? Ideal. So I’ll aim to write just a tweet’s worth of something every day for 30 days. A paragraph, maybe. Or just a sentence or two. It’ll take around five minutes at most.
That’s a great approach to daily writing. But it applies to much more than just writing. If there’s a habit you want to build, ask what is the smallest step you can take?
-
Todoist: the filters I use
This is the second post in a mini series I’m doing on how I use Todoist. The first was about how I stay focused using a custom start page. Here are the filters I currently…
-
Todoist: how I stay focused using a custom start page
For the past few months, Todoist has been my task manager of choice. I’ve invested a lot of time in tweaking it to find a setup I’m happy with. This is the first post in a…
-
Cortex on time tracking
In episode 44 of Cortex, Myke and Grey discussed time tracking. I have a love/hate relationship with time tracking. As an employee, I hated it. It made no sense to track 7.5 hours per day (because who does that much productive work in a day?). But as someone who is self-employed, it makes total sense (and I can see why I was made to do it as an employee).
As Grey says in the episode: if you care about how you’re spending your time, track your time.
Myke and Grey talk about the revelations they had while tracking their time, which match my own:
- Your brain has no idea how much time you’re spending on stuff. You can’t trust yourself to have any sense of how long it takes to do things.
- You think you’re working way more than you actually are.
- You’ll spot patterns. You’ll notice that those busy periods will catch up with you.
It’s worth a listen. And FWIW, I track my time using Freckle.
-
Clouds and dirt
I recently picked up a copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest book, #AskGaryVee. It’s a fun read, with the self-confidence and raw energy you’d expect from Gary. It’s what I call a loo book: the Q&A…
-
Dumbphone
The other day, I talked about trying to unplug more often. This is a continuation in that journey. My phone is the biggest distraction device I own. It’s always at arm’s length and it’s full of…
-
The importance of a checklist
I’ve been working my way through The Checklist Manifesto, which, as you can probably guess, makes the argument that we should all be using checklists. The author tells lots of stories to demonstrate the importance of…
-
Today’s priority
Words change meaning over time. Soon, for example, originally meant now. In The Etymologicon, Mark Forsyth explains: Soon was the Anglo-Saxon word for now. It’s just that after a thousand years of people saying ‘I’ll…
-
My daily routine
Yesterday, Darren Beale wrote a great post about his morning routine. Like Darren, I won’t go into the benefits of a daily routine. But I’ll say this: my productivity, and more importantly, my output have…
-
Trello: tips & tricks
Over the past 12 months, Trello has become a crucial part in how I run my business. I now use Trello to manage all of my client projects, keep on top of my project pipeline, and to…
-
The raft
A raft at sea is useless. It moves around aimlessly—back and forth—to nowhere in particular. One day it moves forward and the next it’s back where it started. There’s no sense of direction… and the…
-
An Alfred time tracking workflow
Chances are, if you work at an agency, you’ll have to fill in a timesheet. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty useless at it. Logging entries after each task I complete takes up…
-
Scratch: a quick input notepad for iPhone
I’ve been using Scratch for a couple of days and I love it. It has replaced PlainText as my main writing app. Scratch is a quick-input notepad for your iPhone. At £1.99, it’s a premium…