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Doug Fisher is President of Mission Control, a productivity methodology for increasing productivity and reducing stress. Sounds like Getting Things Done? Well here’s a comparison from someone who has done both; GTD-er’s Perspective on Mission Control. Mission Control adds a layer of time based action into your calendar, so that the things/actions you are going to do are set in time. Mission Control also looks at how you are being with the things you think you “should” do.

We also talk about Team Productivity and High Performance Teams.

(Disclosure. I work for the company (JMW) whose owners also own Mission Control)

Accomplishing things and wanting to make things happen -What does it take and how can you be fulfilled in the doing of it.
How can the IT solution deliver on the promise to the end-user - Alter what people see as possible so they can accomplish a new realm of performance.
What is Mission Control? - Power! Having what you say realised. Producing the results you say you’re going to produce. Resourcing time and resources. Power in your life.
Key Productivity Issues - Changing your habits. Our ingrained habits worked for us in the past. Our habits may also limit our level of productivity. More channels of information hitting us. Now over 20 communication modes 24/7. Not the same world we live in as when we developed our habits.
What occurred to me as “Work” first in my life - I developed my work habits based on what I developed aged 9! Do these habits work now!
Altering your work habits - Resigned about our ability to change our habits.
What we see as possible - Changing our world of what we “See”. Fundamental assumptions that limit what we see and limit our productivity.
We should get it all done! - And we’re failures if we don’t. Let’s challenge that. You’re never going to get it all done.
What if you can’t get it all done? - What are we going to choose if we can’t get it all done? Give people more power to change their habits.
How do we mentally deal with all the things to do?
Implementing Mission Control - One and half days, but can vary, with coaching and support to implement new practises.
Calendar based productivity - We live in a fantasy of when things get done…..Later! For something to get done there has to be a duration of defined time to do it! Schedule it. Schedule 50-100% more time than you originally think!! - Top Tip
Sticking to the schedule - Make it something I want to do rather than something I have to do.
Compelling Occasions - What I have in my calendar creates my future. A holiday/vacation give me an uplift. So “Do Expenses” doesn’t give a compelling future, it’s something we have to do. What’s fun and compelling for “Do Expenses”.
Being Fulfilled - Why do we do what we do? Because it’ fulfills something of fundamental interest or importance. Keep asking “Why is that important to me” even with something “I have to do” keep asking why to get to something of fundamental importance.
Why do we have dread about certain projects or calendar entries? - Ask why we’re doing them to get to something more compelling and less tedious which we’re less resistant to.
Go into something more positively disposed to it - More focused, and accomplish more in less time.
Tony has a spreadsheet for shopping - Just a checklist, nothing more sinister.
A compelling future is more uplifting in the present.
Making a conscious choice about what you are aren’t doing gives you control.
Contact Lists - I’ve moved from Outlook Tasks for each person to Contacts with categories, and then call the group, but also calendar single phone calls.
Waiting For - Drag sent email into Calendar for review. Emails are handled as calendar entries where there is follow up.
Agendas - Capture what you want to review or say to people you meet consistently
Team and Group Productivity - Start with existing habits in the group. Naming the habits that bother us, in each other. Notice and examine our own and other’s existing habits that would effect the group, and shared habits of groups that are unwritten. People recognising their own habits so that other people can talk to you about it and you don’t take it personally because it’s for the performance of the group. Start to talk about things that haven’t been talked about before.
What’s the “noise” in the work group - Lack of clarity about commitments, lack of communication, misinterpretation. Having the difficult conversations.
Meetings and Emails - Protocols that work which reduce the meetings by half, and reduces the average meeting time by half. Less email by 30%.
High Performance Teams - What does the Group exist for. Defining the group. Freedom to communicate. Meetings and email consistent with what needs doing. People take on a new level of performance because they’re freed up!
Flow of information in the group - Best sharing of information that allow people to have their attention on producing what they need to produce.
Taking on Breakthrough targets - End up with more to do to have Breakthrough performance. What are the things you’re not going to do.
Footballers’ Favourites - Capture to pad and then Outlook. “If you’re gonna do it, Schedule it!”. Italian.

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My guest is John Duckworth. He wrote to me a few weeks ago with a short guide on doing the Weekly Review. He asked me to read the guide for him. Better than that, I invited him on the show. John has read a wide variety of productivity books, and combined that with cognitive solutions to getting the Weekly Review done.

Getting Thing Done - To help with software development.
Weekly Review - Needed improving and John looked at other systems to help do GTD.
Web Development - In Wigan, Lancashire
Mixed Nuts - The greatest productivity tool ever. John hates them and uses them with the guide of Aubrey Daniels. Need to reinforce something immediately after the something happens good or not. Getting off the internet. Mixed nuts worked best! Use something you hate, immediately, to reward yourself for bad behaviour!
Stopping things being a chore - Don’t see things like the Weekly Review as a chore, but something you’re motivated to do. Improve the thing you’re doing so you love it.
What is a weekly review - An hour per week, to review. But many don’t give the time over to fully do the review or something interrupts you.
Divide the Weekly Review into tasks - It might not end up as a single complete hour, but several tasks which can be split. Split the parts of a weekly review into actions which can be completed in different contexts.
When to do the Weekly Review - Calendar it. Make it crucial to start it to get into the habit of doing the weekly review, even if you don’t complete it, to get into the habit.
Why don’t we do our Weekly Review? - Procrastination. Not well defined. Give it a next action. Have a checklist to complete for the review. Picture it in your mind so that you encourage yourself to do it.
Task list of physical action to do for the review - Get Folder out. Dump papers in in-tray. Small tangible things.
Commit to the Preparation - The set up to get you moving. Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow. Getting ready to do the action. Getting the ironing board out as a precursor to ironing.
Essays, Reports, Proposals - We have the solution! Morning Pages (The Artist’s Way). Something to get you moving with a set (small) time.
Make Tasks Smaller - If a task is endless you probably won’t do it. “You can do anything for 5 minutes” Set the time as smaller and smaller until it gets you started. It breaks the resistance down.
8 minute training! - There’s a school in the UK trialing Eight Minute Lessons! With 10 minute breaks! YouTube?
Match your concentration span to your task - Cut it down to chunks of your concentration span. Why 1-2 hours of working on something when it doesn’t work for you.
Flow - Paul McKenna. On auto pilot in the zone. Focused on the single activity. Getting into a flow state. Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Just to Get Going - The preparation to getting going. Next action. What about after the first action? Do the next action at the same time.
The Weekly Chore! - Convert into something more pleasant. Anthony Robbins - Quality Quantifiers. Change the environment, put music on, gingerbread man! Improve the experience at the time of doing it, not as a reward afterwards. Make things fun.
How to enforce the habits - A reminder. But also make it a pleasant experience. Get the GTD Buddy.
Rehearse a Habit - Do it 20-30 times.
Getting Horizons of Focus to work - Do It Tomorrow (book), Scatter Mapping (text only mindmapping).
Follow through on projects - Belbin Roles (John’s a Plant), putting a flagging project in every day even if it’s 10mins per day. Authors of productivity books fix themselves but this doesn’t always work for the readers.
A Perfect Mess - We don’t need to be organised.
4 Hour Workweek - What would you do with only 2 hours in a week to do things.
Capture Notes - Task diary (Do It Tomorrow tip), capture goes into next day’s diary, projects captured in John’s own coded software. Capture on to mobile phone. Take a photo of any visual notes/reminders. Use the voice/note taker on the phone.
Footballers’ Favourites - Windows Mobile, MyYahoo, Do It Tomorrow, Buy a Kitchen Timer, Less Travel, OMD, Bad, Huey Lewis, Bolton Wanderers.

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I thought it was time to go back to the technology of productivity, and who better than David Gray of the The Global Geek Podcast, to discuss all things geek and beautiful.

Patient Admin Systems! - Tony sold ‘em, Dave now uses them. They record things like blood pressure straight into the patient record. They didn’t in my time! They now have bandwidth to move X-Rays. They didn’t in my time!
Frogs - Love of all things Frog
Getting Things Done - Dave needs the pressure to perform. Once you start, you stick with it. Use the deadline to drive you.
Geek Distraction - A disease. Cool stuff. Twitter.
Twitter and Second Life - Help or Hindrance to productivity? Twitter as a quick blogging and marketing communication tool. No need to engage in a conversation. It doesn’t have to be just a social networking tool. Make sure you control the tools and they don’t control you.
Twhirl - Twitter client running on Adobe Air. multiple accounts, cross posting to Pounce and Jaiku.
Chat - As a knowledge sharing productivity tool to find things.
Second Life - For sky diving! Improved levels of communication. Great potential meet up service. Easy to get distracted but a good potential video conferencing tool so you don’t have to physically travel. Greener to use video conferencing than all that real transport.
FeedDemon - RSS Feed/Reader gives Dave 10 fold productivity for reading a large number of websites. Subscribe to specific searches in your reader for key words that come up on the web. Dave has 281 feeds and 9848 unread items! I have 24 feeds and no unread items in my SharpReader RSS Feeder.
Follow the Readers - Robert Scoble will read the sites for you so you don’t have to! Or try Louis Gray for early geek stuff. TechCrunch, Mashable for early news on tech. You might have to avoid sites with too many postings because it will snow you under.
XP - Vista No Thanks.
Notepad and Google Docs - for creation and sharing documents.
Thunderbird - For email. Getting off Thunderbird is a bit difficult. Rooting email via Gmail.
Tucows and Domain Direct - Not good for my pop3 email. Go Go Daddy. Gmail spam filter is very good.
BlackBerry - For tasks and contacts but not sending email.
Cheapo handset for making phone calls - That’s what mobiles are for aren’t they. Nokia 2310. Pre-paid call divert to another mobile. Vodafone Australia pre-paid won’t let me do it.
iPod for music - In the car. No radio for 3 years. No TV in over 3 years. Dave watches when he wants to watch.
Tony doesn’t listen to The Global Geeks Podcast because the show is too good!! Similarly, Merlin Mann, Kathy Sierra, and Guy Kawasaki, are too good to read! You want to save them to study them in more detail but never get round to it.
RocketDoc - Get rid of your icons and look like an Apple! Dip cursor to look at applications and clean up your desktop.
Launchy - Launching applications with short cut keys. And word completion as you type for which application. Not good for Tony if you have the memory of a goldfish, but good for most people. Index your entire Start menu. Makes it much easier to launch applications.
Skype - For VoIP of course. I’m recording this podcast on to CallBurner.
Roboform - Password manager. Plugs into your browser and Roboform fills in your password and can generate different passwords for each website. Dave has 90 site passwords. Or Keepass which is an open source product.
Tony’s Software on new 2GB Laptop - Office2007, Outlook2007, MindManager, GyroQ, Skype, Firefox, Gmail, Microsoft CRM. No Twitter, RSS Feed, or Second Life yet.
Gmail Plugins - Better Gmail via LifeHacker, to change the Gmail interface.
Desktop Search - I’m missing my Google Desktop search at work. Will it slow the laptop down?
Life Streaming - Aggregates all your content, Blogs, Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, into a single feed of yourself, or of other people you want to follow. FriendFeed, takes data from all your sites and puts them in one aggregated place, or track other people. Shareaholic to share links you find, straight into Twitter, Facebook etc.
The Future is Mobile and Wireless - Mobile web applications.
What takes up Dave’s time? - Podcasting! Trying to record live, to save time.
Pressure needed to perform and Get Things Done - Remember those last minute assignments and essays. Never Again!
Kill the Perfectionist - Near Enough is Never Good Enough! Just Do It, to overcome the perfectionist. Action Action Action. Kids will kill the perfectionism.
Plan in Real Time - No long term life plan. Recent guests tend to be living in the present and organically growing their goals. Finishing tasks no matter how small. Completion.
Footballers’ Favourites - Try video blogging. Traveling. Midnight Oil. Worst Habit.

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I talked with Sue Knight, author of NLP at Work, and a pioneer of the use of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) in business. Sue has great experience as an NLP Practitioner, trainer, and coach, and is a great person to have on the show, to discuss what motivates us in terms of productivity. Enjoy.

NLP at Work - Way of studying excellence, and discovery of what makes outstanding performance.
NLP - Neuro Linguistic Programming, what makes outstanding people. Ways in which we think, patterns of our language, running programmes on ourselves.
What makes for high productivity - Distinguishing between what deviates from goals and what takes you towards goals, and high pay-off and low pay-off contributions. We often hold beliefs about ourselves which may get in way of how we use our time.
Procrastination - “I’ll think about it” encourage to think about it now rather than later. Do it now.
Artist’s Way - To help do it now and get writing.
Perfectionism - Action to overcome perfectionism. Keep writing even if it’s rubbish. Just Do It. If “blocked” write something easy to write, note to self, journal entry, something you enjoy.
Writing a book - Setting time aside, and maybe changing the environment. Cut off from day to day environment. Routine for the day. Ride a bike to formulate your thoughts.
Integrate the things you love doing into your work - Riding a bike is part of your work.
Training - Work in the moment, real time, not knowing. Coaching rather than lecturing. It just seems to happen.
Alignment and Goals - Checking in with what’s important to you. Take the opportunities on what important to you at the highest levels of your alignment. Things will work out. Just live your life that is truthful. We start to filter towards the things we really want.
122 year old Yogi - Starting a new business in India! It shows what’s possible.
Success in business - Do what you really want and believe in. Specialise. Dedicate yourself to it. Area of interest and become a specialist. Do what you love.
Explore without failure - Many don’t believe their talent, or think everyone has their talent, but they don’t.
The higher levels of productivity - Finding your bliss. Everything we do is a step in right direction.
Blackberry - For picking up emails whilst travelling.
Airset - For actions and bookings, and joint access. Fridge list of things to do.
Wi-Fi Sniffer - Detecting where Wi-Fi is available.
Intuition - For getting things done, and quick decisions.
Google Mail - To keep documents online and label them.
Sue Knight’s Website - Blogging before blogs, online diary in the 90s
Footballer’s Favourites - More patience, Less Milk! Shane Fenton! Beatles. The coolest first concert yet!

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Welcome Tim Ferriss author of The 4 Hour Work Week. For me, it’s the most important adult non-fiction book I’ve read recently, maybe ever. Why? It questions my belief about time and how I use it, and how I can cut out 80% of the things I think I should be doing. Tim’s legacy to me from the book, is I’m reading novels and I’ve given up the business books. Thanks a lot Tim! But I’ve also restructured and had a look at what’s important in life to me, and it’s things that don’t usually involve money except for skiing and holidays with the family.
We talk about the writing and promoting of The 4 Hour Work Week, Productivity, Outsourcing Your Life, and Future Projects.
The 4 Hour Work Week - Based from class lectures on profitable cashflow without outside financing. The volume approach and overwork ethic is epidemic and isn’t scalable or sustainable.
15 month sabbatical - Tim developed concepts for lifestyle and a student suggested writing a book. Many people are earning good money but feel unfulfilled.
Getting Things Done - Read The 4 Hour Work Week before Getting Things Done to cut 4/5ths of of your workload before you set up Getting Things Done.
The book was turned down by 13 publishers! - There are 5 potential books within The 4 Hour Work Week.
How to write a book - Vagabonding (Rolf Potts), Bird by Bird (Some Instructions on Writing and Life), writing is hard! Feel better by identifying the demons.
Is there something missing in your life? - You are not alone!
Filling the Void - Depression can set in, when you have it all. What next!
Using Google Adwords to research book titles that work - The Four Hour Work Week wasn’t the first or favoured name. A title that appeals to people and gains media attention.
Activity v Productivity - Identifying what’s important and stopping the procrastination tools. Get a clear list of priorities. One thing to do and complete today. Busyness is not necessarily true productivity.
Reduce your procrastination - You don’t have to be perfect about it.
Breaking the 9 to 5 thinking - You don’t have to literally work 4 hours per week. Overcoming the guilt from preconceived notions.
Need for Speed - Fill it up, fill it fast. Filling in time by feeling productive, by checking email, and not just one email! Art to creating a lifestyle and designing a life that isn’t just filling in time.
What are the 3 things you do to fill in time? - Meetings? Email? We fill the hours to avoid the important things. It’s what we all do.
The Deferred Life Plan - Trade peak physical time in life for something you’d rather not be doing! So why not distribute retirement throughout life, rather than at the end. Putting things off through fear and not living your dreams now.
Vague FUD - Overcoming fear - Definition and Action. What is the worst case scenario. Seldom that bad or permanent.
Media Diet - Ask a waiter. Only glance at the front page of a newspaper.
How do you keep informed - What “should” you be reading. Information overload. Catch-up rather than Keep-up. Go to a conference every 6 months, to summarise.
Think and Grow Rich - Henry Ford, knew where to go for the information, he didn’t need to know it all.
Outsourcing your life - Automation and Income generation. Creating a life after you’ve outsourced everything.
Purchasing Power Parity - Enables you to pay other people in the world, where they are satisfied and you are satisfied, because the dollar you pay them is worth more in their country. Big Mac Index. It’s NOT slave labour.
Delegation - How well do you delegate. Elance, Brickwork, Get Friday to find people you can delegate to. Save yourself one day per week and employ a person for $5 per hour, for 8 hours to save you a day of your life! Give it a go!
The Anatomy of Automation - p185 nice diagram for automating your life. Ways to free up time.
Book Promotion - What uses up the most time….Book Signings!! New channels to market - Blogs, Podcasts, Second Life, Scott Adams (Dilbert) YouTube groin kicking!, radio satellite tour. Referencing to shows there the answers have already been given.
Future Projects - It’s not about aiming to sit on a beach for the rest of your life. Social Media and education impacting 15,000 students (LitLiberation.org) including many well known guests you all know. Science and Maths education. New TV Series from Tim!
Tim doesn’t stand still - The 4 Hour Work Week Blog - more impact than the book, and check out the book chapters and community. Tim blogs for pleasure not just part of his 4 hours. Educating the future thought leaders.
Tim’s Footballers Favourites - Do not check email first thing in the morning! More Delegation. Less replying to email. Whinging Poms.

(The show was recorded, using Callburner for recording Skype conversations, so shout out to Jeremy and Paul at Netralia)

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I talked with Kyle McFarlin, who specialises in visual capture tools such as Gyronix Results Manager and MindJet’s Mindmanager. I bag MindManager 7 and Kyle defends it! A good discussion for how we capture and learn.

Gyronix Certified Trainer - Results Manager gives you a dashboard summary of you mindmaps
MindManager - For MindMapping, nearly 1 million users of the software
Why MindManager 7 - The Ribbon Bar. Works well with Office 2007 look and feel. The ribbon bar brings up more options. More visual and aesthetic. Isolate single topic/branch.
Message to MindJet! - Spend more time on the interface. Easier to print, overlap topics, fit more on the map, slanting and zig-zagging branches. Cut the cord or add organic options. Yahoo MindManager group.
The future of Mapping - Concept Mapping, Linking topic but not centrally, flow charting, less of the bullet like maps.
Second Life MindMap - George Kurtz vertical mindmap in Second Life. Go fly around a mindmap.
Microsoft Research - Image Visualisation, unbelievable future of software, creates 3D map from tagged photos.
Uses for Second Life - Scott Adams book promotion. Conferencing, interacting, 3D. Building the interfaces for 2D software.
Virtual Reality - To move around a spreadsheet. Wow! The Croquet Project, open source development software for online worlds. I have seen the future of my 3D spreadsheet. Check out the YouTube demo.
Kyle’s GTD - Results Manager for Getting Things Done. Yet another Moleskine user! VSS template sets. “Eat your own dogfood“. Input folder on PC. Projects in VSS templates. Horizons of Focus - 3 main objectives. Bi-weekly review. List of actions and project generated by Results Manager.
GyroQ - Pop-up text box for capturing info and thoughts, and web addresses, which each generate a branch/sub-topic on a mindmap. Capture manual notes into GyroQ.
Tony’s reset his life - Kicked out most projects by reviewing my Core Values. What are we doing projects for? Intent of our plans. Highlight intent and values to work out what you really want to work on.
The World’s most offensive rap album! - Massive Undertaking
Are the projects you capturing really necessary - Are the people you’re dealing with really necessary!
Visual Strategist - Entrepreneurs and high level business managers coaching.
MindMap projection on wall - Capture of meeting/thoughts/ideas
Go To Meeting - Coaching over the internet. 90% of Kyle’s coaching is over the internet. Cost, Time, and Green savings. Remote meetings.
Skype Prime - Charge a per minute rate for the service you’re offering.
8min Chunking - 8 minute lessons and 10 minute breaks! All learning will be in 8 minutes.
Tablet Laptop - Replaced by DV9000 to run Second Life. Tablet to highlight PowerPoint presentations. Go cold turkey and burn the bridges to force tablet pen use. Marc Orchant and The Tablet PC Show.
Outlook - Strip out the attached files to reduce the .pst size.
Windows Mobile - Palm Treo
Turn the technology off once per week - Get a life, get out.
Less Fried Chicken
Hocus Pocus by Focus - Tedious! best summarised by Louis Balfour and Jazz Club.

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Today’s guest is Randall Dean, The Totally Obsessed Time Management PDA Email Guy, who specialises in training people in productivity, dealing with email overload, and using PDAs. Oh, and he attended David Allen training long before Getting Things Done, so he’s seen it evolve.

Totally Obsessed Time Management PDA Guy and Email sanity expert.
David Allen early workshop - Randy attended a course in the early 90s, a planner system. Evolution to Getting Things Done and included Horizons of Focus for a higher view.
Business diversification - Corporate workshops, University sector, conference speaking, overseas work, open/public course, book, ebook.
Taming the Email Beast - Randy’s new ebook on dealing with email overload. 25-50% of the working day is spent on email, and less than 5% have had formal training on dealing with email. More info on emailsanityexpert.
Issues around email - Time spent on email. Not leaving enough time for the bigger picture. Bad habits around email, such as “blinging” - dropping whatever they’re doing to read email just arrived, which can drop their IQ!! Messy inboxes. 21,000 emails in an inbox.
Utilising Outlook Tasks - Do it in 2 mins or drag and drop email into a task. I didn’t know you can do this - drag the email to the task icon in Outlook, and it creates the task with the email text in the notes field. And saves the email. Cool.
Re-reading email - Waste of time. 3min one look rule for email
Media diet for a week and only look at email at midday and 4-00pm - 4 Hour Workweek
4 Hour Workweek - Get rid of 4/5ths of everything you think you need to do!
Single Tasking - Working on one task at a time and stop multi-tasking. Stop the send/receive on your email.
Find a new desk or work area - Working at home, set up another blank desk another room. Grab the one thing you want to work on and take it out for a coffee!
Major Satisfactors = Major Success - Randy’s first book. Major Satisfactors. Fun/Energy. Necessities (Eat and Pay the bills). Empty Satisfactors (TV, too much news). A brilliant way to sort out the things you do into the four sectors. Love it.
Ask a waiter for the news!
Working from home - Give yourself time for fun during the day, rejuvenating. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
PDAs - Pick the device, or no device, that works for you.
The Outlook 5- Email, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Context - synchronised with Blackberry.
Blackberry email - Do as much as you can on a PC/Laptop keyboard. Use Blackberry to clean up junk and Spam. Use deletion key, and answer emails on laptop, or brief reply on Blackberry.
Call phone number from email on Blackberry to not send email. Save time.
Don’t respond to email on a PDA - Or get a keyboard, or be 17 years old.
GTD - David Allen principles from 20 years ago and combined with Randy’s own principles.
Capture - Outlook and paper, portable office on the road. Tasks and Priorities. No distractions in a hotel room.
2-3 min rule after kids have gone to bed - Improves family life
Horizons of Focus - Long term goals
Daily Review - Pick up weekly what’s missing. Morning review of everything. Get things to top of pile. 3-4 hours of planning time per week.
Mid to long term goals - And look around your office to check if discipline is still there. Don’t let little things stack up.
Life Planning - Every 12 months
Get systems into place - If it’s not working, Get Help!
Promoting Your Business - YouTube, National Speaker Association, Books, Speaking, Networking, ecommerce, PR, Public Courses, Web enabled courses, MultiMedia, eBook. Spokes of the wheel. American Society for Training and Development. Alex Mandossian on teleseminars.
Outlook Tip - Drag email to task to create new task.
Randy’s love life! - More time to slow down and read books, self-help and fiction
Delegate more busy work - Time to grow company and delegate activities
Deep Dish Pizza - Chicago style Gino’s Pizzeria
First Concert - New question for Footballers Questions

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An outdoor recording with my Getting Things Done buddy Daryl Cook. We talk about GTD and his implementation of it. Apologies, the wind was blowing against the mic, I’ll know to keep the mic cover on next time!

Sponsored cycle - Amy’s Ride. Discussing GTD whilst cycling into a 40km/h wind!
Buddying - The value of buddying up with someone to implement GTD
Re-Read GTD - If you’ve read the book, read it again a few months later. You’ll pick up new things and a different perspective.
Toilet Reading - Skim reading a book a second time!
Natural Planning within GTD - Getting everything captured, including the small stuff.
Buddy Timetable - Skype call every week, Friday afternoon, meet-up once per month. Keep at it, even if you miss a call.
Capture all thoughts on A4 - Capture everything in your head on to separate pages of A4.
Weekly Review - The one area most people fail with productivity and GTD, doing the 1 hourly weekly review.
GTD Flow Chart - Quick reference guide available from DIYplanner.com.
Capture Levels - Importance of 30,000ft, 1-2 year actions. What are we doing today that helps us with our medium term goals. Focus on short term goals as a means to achieving long term goals.
Desire to achieve the goal - Creating the desire to achieve your goal.
Moleskine front end capture - Handwritten capture and MindMaps.
Apple mail client - Daryl’s a Mac boy. iGTD for Macs and managing tasks. Another reason to get a Mac
Reviewing higher level long term goals and projects - When changing jobs.
Reviewing goals achieved - Congratulate yourself on what you have achieved.
Setting the right contexts - Setting up the right contexts for where you do your work really helps. Know what you can do in a cafe or on the train.
Procrastination - Perfectionism causing me to procrastinate. It has to be done perfectly or not at all. None completion for fear of failure. Overcoming the internal critic.
Advice to kids - Compound Interest! Set several projects off and expect most of them to fail, but one will succeed big time. Throwing mud at walls.
Breaking Projects into the smallest do-able action - Define action and then do it! Widget Widget Widget.
Distractions - Working at home, the dog, Dick Dastardly, Wacky Races, Catch the Pigeon.
Capture Tools- NOT Microsoft Project. Don’t need a Gant Chart! Detailed plan with an Outliner or MindMap.
Feedreader - Google Reader.
MindMap Tool - Inspiration, MindManager, FreeMind.
Footballers’ Favourites - Nokia N73 synched, Mac Mail, Both way synching, Just Do It, Don’t put it down, put it away, Bike, Less Time at Desk, Veggie, Coventry City, Kiss.

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Today’s guest is Lissanne Oliver, author of Sorted! The Ultimate Guide to Organising Your Life - Once and For All and director of Sorted!, a Professional Organiser, who provides hands on organising of your home, your business, yourself. We talk about getting organised, not just online, but around the house and workplace. (Thank you Cait for putting me in contact with Lissanne)
Sorted! the Book - 40+ recipes for organising yourself in different situation.
Sorted the Company - Getting organised, consulting with people to have a better quality of life, and improve their time management.
Key Issues to getting Sorted! - Dealing with paperwork. Not having a handle on mess. Too much email. Feeling overwhelmed. A Perfect Mess - relationships and different mess areas. Time management in a relationship.
“Get on with it, or Get Over it!” - Commit to doing it, or let go, say no, do less. I’m letting it go.
Procrastination - Sometimes a good thing to making the right decision. But you can let others down with it. The choice . How to overcome indecisiveness. Perfectionism and Procrastination. If you don’t complete anything you can’t be judged.
Getting in Action - The cost of things not being in order and in action.
Getting Organised - A practised skill, like getting fit. We know how to do it, but we don’t always apply it.
“Don’t Put it Down, Put it Away!” - My 24 hour commitment to put everything away instead of putting it down. Opening mail over the rubbish bin, and file the mail after it’s opened. Completion. Coming back from holiday, but not unpacking. Lack of completion is fear of failure if you did complete it.
“Clutter is anything you Don’t Love, Don’t Use, or Don’t Need.” 82 Litre Bins! We expand to fill our space. If we move to bigger house, we fill the space. Set criteria for getting rid of clutter.
Managing Information Overload - Make friends with your Del key. Use it or chuck it out. Using desktop search to not be slave to filing.
Starting up the Sorted! Company - Professional Organisers.
The all time best quote - “She’s the kind of person who’d fold the clothes at an orgy!”
Tidy is a misconception - It’s more about being organised - planning, time management, decision making. Being in control and doing action, not being super neat. It’s organic and balanced. Flexibility.
Lissanne Oliver - Collector of Snow Domes!
Footballers’ Favourites - Eudora, Thunderbird, Nokia, The “Magazine” Home, More Nothing, Blondie, Abba, and Debbie Harry!

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Talking productivity with Michael Specht who works for Nortel, knows his stuff in the HR technology industry, oh, and just happens to be Cameron Reilly’s Getting Things Done Buddy. So let’s hear the other side of the story!

(In true blogging about blogging tradition, the sound quality is a bit variable, and the recording ended abruptly with Phil Collins and Genesis!)

Doing those Weekly Reviews
Falling off the wagon - and getting back on by doing the Weekly Review
Moving your Weekly Review time - Working in Corporates often means that on Friday afternoon there are urgent things to do, so find another time such as 8-00am on Monday morning to do your weekly review, instead of the ideal 2-00pm on Friday.
Checking in with your Buddy - and bouncing ideas off them
Dealing with large amounts of email without a Gatekeeper
@Action for dealing with actionable emails
GTD eBook by David Allen that explains Getting Things Done in Outlook, and the GTD Outlook plugin
Outlook Tasks - Dragging and dropping incoming actionable emails in to Tasks, and then categorising each Task.
Using Outlook keyboard shortcuts
Setting an appointment for urgent tasks and colour coding the appointments
Index cards - for note capture, and using notations
Capturing each thought from your desk onto a single sheet of A4 to put in the Inbox, or on to Post Notes, to prioritise on your desk
Making notes in meetings - Different methods
Windows Mobile device - For carrying tasks
Outlook Notes - for Horizons of Focus (Roles and Responsibilities etc)
Outlook Tasks - for creating Projects, which makes sense, because you could capture all the actions, and set the task for the next action in each project
@Waiting - To check up on actions of others that you’re waiting on
GTD for managers to follow up
Instant Messaging in corporates - As a primary form of productivity
Twitter to help Brainstorm - SMS No Thanks
Reputation/Identity - and the Wisdom of Crowds
Just one more thing - Individual and team benefits of doing one more thing each day
Achieving 1 year goals - Tony bangs on yet again about achieving 1 year goals (30,000ft)
Goals that stimulate - Defining a goal that really excites you
Create a Crisis - to make things so bad you’ll do something about it
Process Widgets - to achieve your longer term goals
Email etiquette - Accepting that emails are read but not always answered, poor subject lines, and copying
Made to Stick - Sticky subject lines and intros which people remember
The 4 Hour Work Week - How to outsource your life and work 4 hours per week!
Footballer’s Favourites

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So this blog and podcasts have to be a shining example of productivity! What’s my next show after Cameron, I kept asking myself!! Kill the perfectionist and procrastinator, Tony! Ah Ha! Just do it. I had a coaching call this week with a couple (Simon and Sandra Allars of Soothe Mobile Massage) who are growing a business, with help from a business coach. Let’s record the conversation!!

They’ve implemented Getting Things Done over the last few weeks. Let’s see how they’re getting on and applying it in their business. I’ve been using Skype with them over the last few weeks, talking about productivity and Getting Things Done. And let’s include their their business coach who is helping them with their business plan, Peter Christo.

Next show done! Enjoy!

We can almost see our desk! Nice to know something is working.
Buy the book then read it! It’s a nice idea to actually read Getting Things Done, once you’ve bought the book. My advice - Read the first 20 pages, and you’ll probably be hooked.
Empty your brains on A4 - Capture all thoughts (Work and Home) on single pages of A4, it reduced your stress. Sort each A4 to action, project, incubation, Do Now!
Horizons of Focus - Seeing the bigger picture
Capture Systems -Try to move to a single front end capture system, paper or electronic, it doesn’t matter. Capture everything for a “Mind Like Water”
Thunderbird mail client - But what about calendar and task reminders? Google Calendar for sharing.
Basecamp online for project management - Milestones, Tasks, Completion. “GTD on Steroids” Group Completion of tasks.
Capturing and bringing things down from the idea shelf - Using Horizons of Focus
Pen and Paper may well work best - Sometimes you have to forget the gadgets and just get on with it.
Virtual PA -As an effective way of being efficient. $1m per head or person in a small business, by using technology! (I’m not sure I believe that one)
Print out your electronic system into a paper pack - With blank pages on the front to write on.
Projects - A Wipe Board to capture things.
“Never muck with a person with a plan!” Dealing with the 1 year view (30,000ft Goals and Objectives) and doing things now about it. Follow your bliss. Find the mountain you want to climb. Make sure it’s something you really like doing. Passion for what you’re doing. Take time out to make sure you’re in the right forest first.
Keeping track of the Non-Urgent and Important
Go get a real job! 10 Reasons you should never get a job!
The passion to stick with it - E-myth way of not being a technician. Do all the processes with passion. Do a Business Plan as a working document, not just a compliance thing
Business Card folder - as a prompt for making contacts (a tip not in the show, but collect business cards and sort them chronologically for when you received them)
Palm Trio 650 keeps rebooting
Get involved and have a crack - If you do do what you did did, you gonna get get what you got got (whatever that means)
Have your vision written up where you can see it every day
Outsource more
Footballers’ Favourites - Fight Club and Planes Trains and Automobiles, Drac’s Back, C’mon Feel the Noise, Fragile (Yes), Bay City Rollers, Rockbird!

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It’s been a while, but here it is, the next show, with me, Tony Goodson, and a special guest (Cameron Reilly) who gives us a special tip on how to save the most time, certainly in his life! This show was easy, I skyped Cameron, and just sat back whilst he talked and talked and talked.

The irony of 9 months to make the next productivity show!
Productivity Buddy System - Find a buddy to check in weekly with and talk between you about what’s working and what’s not working.
Dealing with email - GTD gmail plugin. Firefox better gmail add-on. Putting filters on incoming email
Dealing with Distractions - Distractions as rewards. (10+2)x5. Xnote stopwatch. Less=More
Making 1 year goals happen - Doing today what makes a difference in a year’s time. Non Urgent but Important. Doing the numbers. Get your buddy to help
A Perfect Mess - A book on being messy
Filing in Bins! - GTD Filing system
Moleskine - One way to not do a Productivity Show! Separate Books -Daily Tasks, Big Ideas, Work Things
PDAs for audio capture of ideas
Three level capture system - Filofax Diary, Outlook for Task and Phone Calls, MindMap or Spreadsheet Overview
GiroQ - Capture ideas and actions for Mindjet’s MindManager MindMaps
Mindmap Desktop to Drag and Drop on to Mindmanager
GTD Projects - Anything with more than one action. Taking small physical actions (Widgets). MindManager Templates for GTD
Horizons of Focus - Levels of organisation in your life
Weekly Review - Make sure you review your whole system once every week
Go to the cafe without your Laptop - Mind Sweep. What’s getting in the way of my productivity. What’s the next action
Footballers’ Favourites - Leo Sayer and The Shadows etc!

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• technology is letting us down
• we both announce the death of the pocket pc as a productivity tool
• Cameron gives in and decides to buy a moleskine
• Des recommends the Treo
• We talk about GTDGmail
• Des talks about GyroQ
• GTDconnect
• We invent the idea of The Productivity Buddy System
• If you want to be a buddy, join the forum at the link above or email productivitybuddy@gmail.com
• We also coin the terms “productivity plaque” and “productivity floss”
• Cam likes lawdepot.com to create business documents
• And Cam also recommends you get a book keeper
• Des, who has made over 1000 dives, talks about the death of Australia’s latest saint, Steve Irwin

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Jodie Miners caught up with me recently to discuss her approach to productivity and how you have to bypass company policy sometimes in order to be productive. Among other tidbits, Jodie mentions her love for:

• David Seah’s Emergent Task Tracker
• Yubnub
• SlickRun - a free floating command line utility for Windows
  

She also talked a bit about how she is helping set up a community website for an organisation she is involved in, and the set of free online tools she is using to build their site.

I also mentioned Robert Scoble’s recent post about moving from Outlook to Gmail. If you’re also trying to make the move, or thinking about making the move, it’s worth reading the comment thread to learn some tips and tricks to make it easier.

Don’t forget to check out the TPN Ebay Auctions. Sponsor a podcast today!

And please pop over to our Productivity Forum to share your productivity tips and tricks with us.

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Hey it’s been a while. Apologies for the break in transmission but we were experiencing productivity difficulties. :-)

Des and Cam are back (eventually) talking about the tools they are using to help them be more productive. The tools featured in this episode include:

• Google Notebook
• Google Writely
• Google Calendar
• CompanionLink for Google Calendar
• Google Desktop
• Google Browser Sync
• Firefox Mass Installer
• RealVNC
  

Yeah it certainly is a Google Google Google World!

Don’t forget to check out the TPN Ebay Auctions. Sponsor a podcast today!

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Hell, I even forgot we were sitting on this show! This is the interview Des and I with Aussie tech journalist Brad Howarth a few weeks ago. Our apologies for sitting on this so long Brad! I assume your position on IM etiquette hasn’t changed since then! We had a few troubles with Brad’s skype quality, but the discussion is so good I wanted to share it with you, so please forgive the audio quality.
And if you dig the show, don’t forget to vote on Podcast Alley.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Des is at yet ANOTHER work conference tonight (I make it his third in as many weeks!), so my guest hosts David “The Lifekludger” Wallace and Hugo Ortega!

Shownotes:

Dave explains how a quadraplegic (like himself, auto accident) can type 25 words a minute!
Check out Hugo’s exclusive sneak peeks pictures of Microsoft’s “Origami” device.

Productivity tips for the week:

Foxmarks for Firefox
New version of Bloglines has Drag N Drop. Cam recommends Fraggin’ your Feeds.
Hugo recommends InkGestures for the Tablet PC
Put Wikipedia on your iPod!

And if you dig the show, don’t forget to vote on Podcast Alley.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

The response from our last show with Jason Womack (which, come to think of it, was our last show full stop) was so positive we decided to get him back on - quickly! Fortunately for us, Jason was happy to make himself available once again.

For those of you who missed that episode, Jason is a GTD guru and staff trainer at the David Allen Company.

On this episode, we talk about:

having the discipline to keep yourself organized
hacks for getting back on track
having too much to do… problem or opportunity?
handling complexity and ambiguity

And if you dig the show, don’t forget to vote on Podcast Alley.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

As part of our efforts to get clarity on aspects of the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach, Cameron and I had a chat with GTD guru and staff trainer at the David Allen Company, Jason Womack.

Apart from travelling 200-days a year to present courses and consult on GTD, Jason is a triathlete and clearly a committed husband to his wife, Jodi. He also seems to be a hell of a nice guy.

Knowing that we had spoken to David on a previous episode of The Personal Productivity Show (Episode #003), Jason helped to reinforce many of GTD’s key points and subtle nuances. He also provided the perspective of the guy who does this stuff because he needs to, not because it is easy for him (he does seem to do it well, however).

We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did, and we look forward to getting Jason back for a follow up.

And if you dig the show, don’t forget to vote for it on Yahoo podcasts and on iTunes (don’t know how to link to that from here).

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Chuck Frey is the author or the
MindMapping Software Weblog and the Mind Mapping Software E-book. We chat about how to get the most out of your Mind Mapping tools.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

My guest today is Karan Bavandi from Optimal Access, discussing Version 5 of their souped up browser (or “unified desktop” as he likes to call it) - OPTIMAL DESKTOP.

Optimal Desktop is an interesting product. A bit scary the first time I looked at it, but after spending 30 minutes chatting to Karan about it, I think I can see the value proposition. If you think tabbed browsing is cool, then this application will blow your mind. He’s right - this is more than just another browser. This is a new way of thinking about how you interface with all of your data, desktop and internet, from inside of one application.

The Standard edition is free to keep, download it here.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

It’s clean up time for Des and Cam this week, so we talk about what we’re doing to try to get rid of the rubbish and get on track for a good start to 2006!

Tools we talk about in the show include:
MindManager 6.0
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft OneNote
Writely
Getting Things Done
Bacardi Rum
Chuck Frey’s Mind Mapping Resource Center and his e-book on how to get the most out of mind mapping software
Jason Fried from 37 Signals podcast
The new and improved Tablet PC show on TPN

We’d both like to thank everyone for listening to the show this year and we look forward to helping you make 2006 your most productive year yet.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Cameron is away on a well earned break, so I flew solo on this episode.

• Started off talking about a common issue at this time of year, which Teri Pitman calls Productivity Meltdown
• This time of year is a common time to be a bit out of control, but the quieter period many of us have coming up is a great opportunity to get things back on track for the new year - clean up your inboxes, review your projects lists, brainstorm for new ones and rethink the optimal time for a weekly review.
• Also a good time to review your personal productivity methodology
• If you haven’t read Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen, now is a good time to acquaint yourself with GTD
• Played a segment from the Gadget Show Episode 33 where Richard Giles had a rant about email abuse, and 9 tips to be more productive with email
• Check out interviews with David Allen on the Gadget Show and also on Episode 003 of the Personal Productivity Show
• Going to talk about Web 2.0 (AJAX) Desktops in a future show, so leave a comment to let us know which of these you use, and how they figure into your personal productivity routine
• Also talked about Firefox version 1.5 - and how it extensability is great. Some of my favourite extensions include del.icio.us, LiveLines, IE View, BlogJet This and Foxmarks.

We’ll be trying to get in at least one more episode before New Years, so hope you have fun in cleaning up for 2005 and preparing for a productive 2006.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Des is back! And tonight we talk about:

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Had a chat with Buzz and Brad this morning about the Activewords scripts now available for Clear Context. Some of you might remember that Des (where the heck is he, btw?) and I chatted with Brad about Clear Context back in September. Well this is the update!

Since then, of course, I’ve stopped using Microsoft Outlook for my email, so I’m no longer using CC, but Brad and Buzz think I’ll go back once Office 12 ships next year. They’ve both been playing with it and sound pretty impressed. I’m skeptical, but we’ll see. As long as I can find one of my ex-colleagues to give me a freebie (can’t see The Podcast Network accountants forking over $1000 for it…).

Apologies for the crappy Skype line - it’s okay as long as I don’t talk (my voice was echoing back to me), which fortunately is most of the time. Buzz does most of the talking, which is exactly what you want. The guy knows his stuff. :-)

Oh, make sure you listen through to the end of the show, there’s a FREE PRIZE INSIDE!

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Mat Ripley is a Director of Yadabyte, the company behind products such as TomeRaider and NewsRaider. We talk about their approach to giving you the world’s information at your fingertips OFFLINE.

I’d like to thank Mat for being a good sport because we had to record this show twice - the first time we did it, a few days ago, my recording software didn’t work, so we had to do it over. The second time I used Skylook and it worked fine.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

This week my guest is Brian Dougherty, CEO of AIRENA, the company behind AIRSET. AirSet is a web-based application that lets you share calendars, contacts, and bookmarks with trusted individuals and groups. It synchs with Outlook and Palm desktop but can also be used as a stand-alone online application, so perhaps these guys might be an Outlook replacement. They’ve already built some pretty cool things into it (eg the ability to have multiple calendars separated by tabs inside a single application) and have some cool features yet to come (eg the ability to access the site via your mobile phone). People are saying some pretty complimentary things about it around the blogosphere, so if you haven’t already, listen to the show and then check Airset out.

Technorati Tags : airset, outlook, airena

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Bob Walsh from Safari Software joins me to chat about his recent posts on using Google Desktop from a GTD perspective. Des was unfortunately absent for this chat, working his real job. Priorities!?!

:-)

Check out Bob’s product MasterList Professional as well. Very nice task management software. We’ll get him back to talk more about it in the near future.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

This week we’ve got another special guest on the show.

Mathew Sumpton is the Managing Director of FCS Automation, an engineering company based in the Bedford, UK.

Mathew emailed us a couple of weeks ago to suggest we check out a replacement for Microsoft Outlook that he’s been using called TIME & CHAOS. It has a PC client that does Calendar, Tasks and Contacts. It will import your data from Outlook. And it also has a Pocket PC synch tool! On top of that, it’s only about a 4mb download (tried downloading even the Outlook service packs lately?!). Oh, and it’s about a tenth of the price of Outlook.

Mathew was so excited about T&C that we invited him onto the show. We also invited the people at CHAOS SOFTWARE but they didn’t reply to my email. Ah well.

Our thanks to Mathew for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with us!

And yes, it’s by 35th birthday today. Send gifts care of the old people’s home in Melbourne.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

This week, Desmond and I talk with Brad Meador, VP Operations with ClearContext in San Francisco. ClearContext is an Add-In for Microsoft Outlook (the product we love to hate) that is designed to help you regain control of your Inbox.

Even Outlook power users will love this product. Trust us - it’s smarter than you are. Oh yes it is.

Check out what the blogosphere is saying about it…

Getting the Most Out of ClearContext
9 hours ago by shawnmor
ClearContext continues to be my most-used add-on for Outlook. While I use
FrankinCovey’s PlanPlus on a daily basis, ClearContext has pretty much become a
touchpoint against every email I process. I use the “ClearContext Prioritized by …
Shawn’s Thoughts - http://blog.shawnlmorrissey.com/

Buzz launches Activewords Inkpad at DEMO FALL 2005
4 hours ago by Cameron Reilly
John Furrier is podcasting from DEMO FALL and you can hear him interview Buzz.
Gotta love Buzz, he manages to get a plug in for both G’DAY WORLD and ClearContext!
This man is the world’s greatest plugger. Thanks Buzz!
cameron reilly - http://reilly.typepad.com/cameronreilly/
(hey that’s me!)

Review: ClearContext
27 Apr 2005 by William Bartholomew
So it is mainly from this point of view that I am reviewing ClearContext.
ClearContext aims to tackle email overload (or is that overlord?) on several
fronts:. Filing. I’ve always kept a basic filing system for emails, comprising of a …
William.Blog() - http://blog.bartholomew.id.au - References

ClearContext and ActiveWords connect
20 Aug 2005 by Marc Orchant
ClearContext - an add-in for Outlook that brings order to crowded Inboxes has
teamed up with ActiveWords - one of my … In a nutshell, the agent provides
hooks into basic ClearContext functions so that you don’t have to take your hands …
The Office Weblog - http://office.weblogsinc.com/

Many thanks to Brad for getting up way way early in the morning to chat with us!

You can download a trial version of the product here.

Oh, and by the way, this show was recorded using Skylook, the awesome cool plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, based in Melbourne Australia.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Sorry it’s been so long since our last show folks! I could give you a list of reasons but none of them would be good enough. So… on with the show!

2.00 Des hates MICROSOFT OUTLOOK because it isn’t stable and has gone back to MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD
3.20 But we both love our XDA POCKET PC PHONE. Des prefers it to his old PALM. Even though Cam thinks the PPC isn’t stable either.
7.00 Cameron’s new method for dealing with unread email - just frag it!
11.30 Des is watching MOZILLA SUNBIRD - a new calendaring application
12.15 Cam is disappointed in the lack of progress with OPENOFFICE and STAROFFICE
14.30 Will Skype or Google move further into the productivity application space? Does ebay’s acquisition of Skype make much sense?
17.43 AIRSET - have your PIM information in the cloud
20.00 CLEAR CONTEXT and ACTIVEWORDS
22.00 GOOGLE BLOGSEARCH is a great entry into blog searching
23.45 GOOGLE ADWORDS for New Orleans kind of distasteful
26.45 Cam’s learns to trust his future computer masters via his SATNAV system
28.43 Back to GTD basics - spending a whole day “emptying the basket”
31.00 Health and productivity go together, like shananananananananadingdong
35.00 Cameron invents another new term - “hyperlink mania” to explain his insomnia
42.00 Using zen and martial arts philosophies to stay in the moment and avoid the negative aspects of stress
44.30 Mobile phone ettiquette and when people should be severely beaten with a 2-by-4

(this show was recorded using Skylook!)