Believe it or not, another Productivity Show episode, in which Daryl Cook and I yack about Productivity, Getting Things Done, Technology and catch up on the last year.  Good Stuff.

Music by;

She Stole My Beer
“Twisted Vehicle” (mp3)
from “Mule”
(Curve Music)

Buy at Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Stream from Rhapsody
More On This Album

Recorded with Callburner. Edited with Audacity.

Paul Ayling, a listener to The Productivity Show, is the guest.  Paul has a band, with the stage name Jimmy Yukka.  Paul, partly from listening to the show, has implemented Getting Things Done for his productivity.  One year of GTD, let’s see how he’s doing, and what recommendations he has.

The book of Getting Things Done – And the book of The 4 Hour Work Week.  Using GTD to manage ideas and projects.

Looking for things – Cause of procrastination in trying to find things.  “Don’t put it down, Put it away“.

A simple single in-tray to put everything in – Set time to clear inbox tray. Put everything including “things” in the inbox, and put each single note on a single piece of paper into the inbox.

Pocketmod.com – Print out A4s of tips which fold into a small book.

Capture tool with tear out paper – Spiral bound books for note capture and task lists.

Strategic MindMap – MindMap of MindMaps in Concept Draw MindMap.  MindMapping to push projects forward.

Gmail – Autofilters be careful you don’t miss an email coming in!  Coloured stars for gmail in settings, then search by star, “has:green-star” filters on green stars.

Outlook Short Cut keys – Move emails CTL SHIFT V to navigate to folder using the keyboard and not the mouse.

Lack of Contexts – Not enough contexts, which all merge into @home, when working from home.  Go to coffee shop to create another context.

PowerPoint outline to organise folders around – Or use a MindMap!

Email folders or a single folder with desktop search?

Using GTD to manage lots of projects when it becomes overwhelming.

Who’s got the cheapest Nokia phone? Using travel time to not be on the Internet and in contact with people.

Moving to the cloud – Gmail, paper diary, Office2007 too slow with Excel and Word load times, but Publisher2007 good.

Total software capture tool? – Excel?  Visio?

DropBox – Virtual online folder which synchronises with other people’s PCs/Macs.

Living the Dream – Just Do It, consistency.

Promoting music in a rock band – Website, online, calling venues, putting the promotion plan together.  Subscription models and selling direct.

Productivity Tips – Spiral bound book to tear out.  Short cut keys for Outlook.  Refining your mail folders and re-organising them.  Dump folders in an archive untouched and create a new empty folder structure.  Single in-box to dump everything in.  Mind Like Water now?  If not, what’s the gap, until your mind is like water!

Bring your dream forward into now – Base your actions and life around the core dream.  Post the actions on the wall in post its. Brings it to life with a visual.  Shuffle the colour post-its around.  Write 3 pages of A4 journal to help the dream.

Books – The History of the Isles, Biography of Malcolm X, The Bible, The Philosophy Gym.

Recorded with Callburner. Edited with Audacity. Music by Jimmy Yukka (The Dentist)

David Freer Symantec VP for Consumer Sales in Asia Pacific and Japan, is this show’s guest.  We talk about what the biggest security threats are to the end-user, beyond viruses and spyware.

Dave’s an Aussie living in Singapore for the last 2 years – Responsible for Symantec’s consumer arm in Asia

Data back-up and storage as well security

What are the potential threats? – Not just Viruses and worms. Threats more stealthy nowadays.  Online attacks via the browser.

Email threats and website visits – Flash players not being updated.  Website may attack from third party ads.  Or threat from websites asking you to update your Flash Player. Am I doing the right thing or the wrong thing.

Keyloggers and changing your password – Not using the same password for everything.   Unprotected wireless networks. Tony’s fear of registering his password at more and more websites.

We’re very trusting about giving detailed information about ourselves online – Which is stored on a server.  BBC’s “Amber”  fake to show how friends and data can be obtained.  Birthday not your birth year.

Threat from forums in traded credit cards and malicious software – Software writers, credit details and passwords traded, users of fake credit cards and bank details.  Cyber crime is now starting to exceed the international drug trade.

Mix and vary your passwords – Insurance for the unforeseen.

Back up of your data – Online back or spare discs to another site.

Singapore v Australia for data infrastructure – Data performance.

Safety for Kids and Teenagers accessing the internet – Norton online family safety. More agreement with kids than parental spying.  What are our kids’ profiles online.  How much information should they give.

Norton bloat and search speeds – Improved?  Go try it out for yourself. Good for recovery after a virus.

David’s email load - Laptop for email not Blackberry. Personal productivity through Outlook inbox.  Read once and file. 150-200 emails per day. Pre-colour code emails.  cc is black, direct to David is blue.  Boss is red.

Twitter for contacts rather than business cards – Collecting Twitter names at business meetings.

Channels to market – Twitter, Facebook, Website.

David’s Memory! – Notes and laptop

Electronic interaction is cutting down cultural differences between countries – India, China, Japan, Italy.

Game Fishing – And returning the fish, catch and release.

Lord of the Rings – A great story for a kid to read.  And history of the world

Music by;

She Stole My Beer
“Twisted Vehicle” (mp3)
from “Mule”
(Curve Music)

Buy at Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Stream from Rhapsody
More On This Album

Michael Deutch MindJet’s Chief Evangelist is this show’s guest.  We talk about MindMapping, MindJet’s MindManager for creating and sharing MindMaps on your computer.  Lots of productivity tips around Getting Things Done.

What’s an Evangelist! – Writing, talking, public speaking, podcasting about MindJet

Who are MindJet and what is MindManager – Software to help visualise your thinking and capture your thoughts into a visual diagram

Channels to promote MindManager – Building a strategy map to promote MindJet and MindManager, then work out ways to leverage Social Media.

The MindJet Blog – Blogging evangelism

Twitter Evangelism – Mapping out your Twitter strategy using MindManager.  Cindy King planning a Twitter strategy and Tweet Later.  A question, a link back, a link to other people’s site.

Social Media – Critical point at which people follow you instead of you chasing people.  Good business opportunities from Twitter.

Shutting off Twitter and laptop for the weekend

Facebook for marketing MindJet – Love to consolidate on one platform.

Second Life MindMap – MindManager mindmap in 3D on Second Life

Zoom mapping – Google Earth and Prezi for zooming presentations

Mike Jetter founder of MindJet – Whilst recovering from leukemia developed the MindManager software in 1994

MindManager – Customer evangelists. MindMaps to map out your life. Not just business productivity.  Undoing and redoing creates even more memory connections.  Tying in other data with completions.  Writing reports and books with MindManager to move topics with text around.

MindMap – Central theme, expanded outwards with associations and a relationship line.  Jamie Nast Idea Mapping, “Blooming and Flowing”.

Beyond Bullet Points – Cliff Atkinson, creating powerpoint presentations to visually tell a story.  Using MindManager to zoom in and out of a document instead of a linear format.  Flying around a document of PowerPoint presentation.

Presentation Mode in MindManager – Excellent alternative way to present to PowerPoint, and using zooming.

Group capture and brainstorming using MindManager – Projecting and capturing group ideas on a MindMap.

Mapping to layer information – Create a big big capture, to zoom in and out of contexts.

Miller Heiman Blue Sheet – As a MindMap?  Target Account Selling on a MindMap.

PRINCE 2 – MindMap the status for projects and project managing.

MindManager Web Export – Export MindMap as a single MindMap webpage or create a website from the MindManager output.

Sharing created MindMaps in browsers – Edit and share created maps, regardless of location.

Creating in MindManager and exporting – PowerPoint, Word, MS Project, Active map for others to open branches/topics.

Getting Things Done and MindManager – How does David Allen use MindManager.  Mind Sweep of everything in your head.  High levels (Horizons of Focus) on dashboard map.  Day to day actions in Outlook.

GyroQ – Front end capture of ideas and actions into MindManager

Voice Capture of ideas to BlackBerry – Send to email.  Jott to send voice to text messages.

Mind Sweep MindMap – Fantastic mindmap for weekly check in and Mind Sweep. Oh and the ultimate Weekly Review.

Weekly Review – Chunk it to smaller blocks over Friday and the weekend, so it’s not onerous.

Mind Like Water – Is my Mind Like Water and what do I need to do to capture and fix to be in that state.

Moving long term goals into today – We punish ourselves until we’ve done the small things.

You Can Heal Your Life – Louise Hay

Write down your dreams/goals – As if you’d completed them.  What do they look like complete?  Aligning with your long term goals.  Are you bringing your long term dreams into your weekly life.

The Classic Nice Guy – Taking it all on and helping everyone else to the detriment of yourself.  When to say No.

Blogging for a Living! – Part of Michael’s role is to blog of MindJet.

Books - Whole New Mind, The Back of The Napkin, Tony Buzan, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 4 Hour Work Week.

Life – Yoga, Sailing, Scuba Diving, more sailing

Peter Mahoney Senior Vice President & General Manager, Dragon Business Unit at Nuance is the guest on this productivity show.   As well as Dragon Naturally Speaking, Nuance are in the speech business including, desktop speech, speech on mobiles, navigation systems,  automotive speech systems, customer service speech recognition, medical transcription, imaging software, OCR and document management. We talked about voice recognition as an aid to productivity, productivity tips, how a company like Nuance view internet channels for marketing conversations.

Voice Recognition – 10 years ago, now, the future. Integrated into other applications, not so much AI yet.

Statistical Language Model – to recognise language. I scream v Ice Cream!!

Voice Recognition commands – Use in applications.  Bits of meaning.  Identifying key words in a sentence for likely customer support applications.

Voicemail to text – To send as emails

Do we use voice recognition when we have it – Getting over the learning curve to achieve productivity with voice recognition.  Instead of hitting the backspace key when typing. 26mins typing can translate to 6mins of voice recognition.

Lawyers, Insurance Claims, Police, Health – Uses for specialised voice recognition to create reports.

The Future of Speech Recognition – Make it easier for new users. Shortening the learning curve.  Increasing the recognition of more natural language.  Translating multiple conversations at the same time.

Stuck with the keyboard, screen and mouse – Making machines understand us, instead of adapting to machines. I dream of virtual reality.

Increase in use of mobile technologies – But keyboards are small

Peter’s Productivity – Lots of ideas and creativity, easy to be distracted, so email inbox is central, and “Getting to Zero” inbox with Getting Things Done.

Voicemails go to Inbox – Single channel with Inbox.

Dragon for email processes – Commands/processes,  and Voice to text.  Reducing the stress of typing.  Voice short cuts for filing, and finishing off emails with signatures, and sending.

Capture tools – Moving notes as soon as possible.  End of day reminder to transcribe notes by dictating and expanding into electronic capture.

Projects – Physical documents of long term projects to check up on a weekly basis.

Channels to market in the Web2.0 world – Customers can better communicate with Nuance. Blog, Facebook for Dragon feedback. Interact with brand. Respect the channel for what it’s used for. Do display ads on Facebook work for a company marketing?  Facebook is more an interactive tool.

Knowing from customers when things go wrong with a product – How to deal with it. Negative feedback can lead to a positive outcome, if a company acknowledges and acts on the feedback.

Twitter – Broadcast channel for realtime information. Something will catch your eye on Twitter.  Twitter search engine for real time search on opinion.

Second Life – Moving with consumer fickleness with which is the platform to communicate on.

Gaming World – Huge potential for voice recognition in gaming commands.

Sport – Boston Red Sox. The Ted Danson bet.  Boston Bruins hockey.

Another great discussion with Sue Knight, author of NLP at Work, one year on from the last interview, but this time we’re saving the world!  Looking at the world, and what next.  The questions we ask ourselves, the context we set, what can we do to have an effect on the world, our children, our fellow humans, ourselves.

Productivity and Getting Things Done whilst on the move worldwide – Using technology, iPhone, Blackberry, Wi-Fi sniffers, laptop.

iPhone v Blackberry – iPhone for WiFi and applications and web info, Blackberry for receiving emails.

Typing - First edition of NLP at Work was handwritten

Writing with a person in mind – One way to blog or write, is to imagine the person you’re writing for who would like to read your writing

Blogging v Twitter – Is it possible to read other people’s tweets.  Is it right to tweet but not read other people’s tweets?  Polite and Inefficient!  Everyone’s twittering and no one is listening.

How many Twitter followers to get an answer to a question? – 300 to 500?

Twitter to build a community of sharing – Build and support a community

Twitter (What am I doing) – Sticking to that frame of the present

Alignment - Aligning your life.  Purpose – what are we contributing to the systems beyond self.

Getting to Purpose – Start with looking at your true talent, what you’re good at, and doing what you love doing.  Passion about something.

Money - What do you need money for?

Living in India – Simplicity of life.  Spirituality and Faith. Only eat what you need. Eating to live.

Comparing India with France with UK with Australia – Passion for learning in India.  Rate of change is rapid.

Economic health – Ways of working are changing.  Opening for new breed of leader in the world.   Negative media in Europe perpetuates the problem.  Success is not highlighted.

Warped perception of countries, regions, media reporting

New media – Personal perspective of what’s happening in the world

Will thing stay the same? – Reframe away from “Money”.  Change will come from the questions we ask ourselves and what we are prepared to do personally.  Belief in change, action with change, how we personally live our lives.  Being not just doing

Earth Hour – Does it really make a difference?  Earth Hour every night in parts of India

Changing people’s lives by example – Home isn’t necessarily a place of fixed bricks

Cluetrain - Feeling of world connection

NLP Master Practitioners – Identifying their truth and speaking who they are on camera for 2 minutes

TED - 20mins of inspiration, what are you going to do in the other 40mins.  2 Minute presentations

Learning - Venues are important.  Getting the context for learning right.

Educating our Children – Models of excellence.  How we learn.  Seeing talent

Paul Smith - Inspiring, Creativity, Generocity, Integrity, Humility

Changing our Education system – What can our children do, what are they good at, how do they individually learn

NLP at Work – Third edition written.

Writing - Keeping a regular process.  No matter what.  Being engaged in writing.  Making the commitment regardless. Writing rubbish for days and weeks.

Artist’s Way – Committing to Morning Pages, Artist’s Date

“Laziness” – Really fear or being blocked. Labelling things.  Just Do It

Purpose - Finding what you love doing. Given free time what do you choose to do

Grey Nomads – Travelling around Australia.  Having it all

Challenging the question – Is the saving and changing of the world going to be based on money.  Challenge the pre-suppositions

Passion leading to success – Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours

4 Books as Pillars – The Bible, Road Less Travelled, Influencing with Integrity, 4 Hour Work Week, Getting Things Done, Artist’s Way, Catch 22, Built to Last, Tom Peters, Scott Adams

Another show with Daryl Cook where we chat about Productivity and Life.  What’s working for us and what’s not.

Dave Allen on Twitter – @gtdguy

Back to Twitter – TweetDeck v Twhirl runs on Adobe Air and runs well.  Twhirl only lets you save a tweet not to have group of favourite people

Is Twitter all noise and no signal? – We tweet but do we read other people’s tweets?  Does the software allow us to read mass tweets?

How many friends does it take to have a tweet answered? - What are the optimum numbers to follow and be followed by on Twitter? Jump in the stream and follow the here and now in Twitter.

A few Twitter celebs to follow – @lancearmstrong, Dave Allen(@gtdguy), @johncleese, @rustyrockets (Russell Brand), @alancarr, @wossy(Jonathan Ross), @dhughesy, @stephenfry, @eddieizzard (I exaggerated, not 100,000 followers yet!)

Using Twitter as a real time search engine – Threat to Google?

Follow people who use your language – Cluetrain and Bollocks!

Hash tags # on Twitter – Tagging and grouping comments on Twitter

Twitter is both a distractor and creativity tool -Tracking and throwing out thoughts

Moving away from Blackberry/Outlook – I’m not missing my Blackberry, good for reading emails but not sending emails.  Some of us just want a phone!

Can you password protect your mobile Gmail?

Synching tasks to your mobile

What are the minimum number of applications to have on a working old PC

One laptop per family member – What to buy next?  EeePC701SD linux, mini laptop, second hand laptop XP?

Not carry a laptop with you – Shifting contexts to reduce stress and go with the flow. Paper lists?

Capturing actions and setting the contexts in MindManager – Print them out to carry with me as paper lists

New Contexts – @Fun and @Thinking

Stress might be due to – Not capturing everything in your heard or Not fully doing a Weekly Review or Not having the Right Contexts.  Split @Computer into @Email and @Internet

Does all thinking time have an action to complete?

Not letting yourself have fun because you haven’t completed your non-fun! – You need some right side brain thinking to help you figure out stuff.  Ideas are usually in the shower. More @Fun and @Play

Lifehacker - Good Tips, Quality over Quantity.  Are people even completing 3 things per day, and are they the right things?

Getting to the Yearly Goal – Are the actions I’m doing today contributing to the 1 year future.

Do It, Delegate, Defer – What do I do next?  What do I do when I wake up

Writing a letter standing 1 year in the future – Today is Dec 31st 2009, what am I doing today and how did I get here?  Very powerful.  Then create a map of the letter and use that as a working day to day picture.

Artist’s Way – Just keep writing. Julia Cameron.  Overcoming creative blocks.

Morning Pages – Write 3 handwritten pages per day. Opens up your creativity.   Using the morning pages to develop things such as a website.  Tool to overcome a block.

Creative Force – Being a receptor.  TED Elizabeth Gilbert Eat Pray Love.  Can you capture the force?

Taking the captured creativity into a project and action

4 Pillars of Productivity – The Artist’s Way, Getting Things Done, 4 Hour Work Week, Wave Rider, Catch 22!

Reading Diet for 1 week – No news, blogs, internet, newspapers, books.

We discuss:

- Des’ decision to leave his corporate job and start his own business, with a “many irons in many fires” strategy

Then we get into talking about our current favourite productivity applications and methodologies, including:

- our mutual love for our iPhones

- Omnifocus

- Evernote

- Moleskines

- Twitter

- Remember The Milk

- Neat Receipts

- Outsourcing (4 Hour Work Week Style)

- Getting a productivity coach

- getting your voicemails sent to you as email attachments

Dividing your life into 15min chunks or eating chocolate

Catching up on things you normally do from your desk or at home

Maintaining your energy levels whilst being away

Myers-Briggs styles for generating energy and productivity – Introvert/Perceiving v Extrovert/Judging

Laptops and Blackberrys on planes and trains.  Who are these people?  Are they the Extroverts?

Back at the hotel room – TV and Mini-Bar or Productivity?

Hotels with no mini-bar and TV to aid productivity!

Going back to paper based productivity

Contexts for being productive and breaking up a long list of actions

Putting a sub-list of tasks on your mobile to get done whilst on the move

Filing from the hotel room, or gather everything together from the start and file it all

How much do you have to file? Do you file at home or at the office when you’re travelling a lot

Not using folders on Outlook- It’s sometimes easier to find things in a single folder and use Microsoft Desktop or Google Desktop to search

Not using MindManager8 for mindmapping – GyroQ for capturing thoughts into a mindmap, Omnifocus for GTD on the Mac.  Creating tasks from email

Getting a headset for your cordless phone – Handsfree and movement with good quality sound

15min chunking the day – How do you waste each 15mins!  Allow yourself thinking time and reflection

Moving task reminders into a category list so you don’t have too many reminders.  Categorise all your contacts so that you have sublists of all your contacts

Write the phone number of the person in your created task, so don’t have to look up their number and you have a summary list with numbers

Break the day in 4 quarters – Coach yourself in each quarter.  A weekly review in each quarter of a day

What 4 books/pillars would you stick to? – A Whole New Mind, Life is a Verb, Zen and the Art of Making a Living, The Dharma Bums. The 4 Hour Work Week, Getting Things Done, Scott Adams, The Artist’s Way, Impro and The Theatre, 7 Habits! 6 Hats!  Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Richest Man in Babylon.

International Man of Mystery – where he’s from and why he’s now here in Melbourne, Aus. It involves a girl.

Kissing frogs – a bit about Tony’s work background in Sales: from IT to soft skills and training and dabbling in Psychotherapy. Lessons from psychotherapy applicable to training and group work.

Manifesto – the Gerry Maguire of sales? Tony is a fanboy of the Cluetrain and sees sales as a conversation. He talks about not having a fear of sales, and being able to having fun.

Dyslexia – candidly talks about being borderline dyslexic and how that has affected his productivity and personal development.

Teaching kids to read – one method is phonics. We mention a book Daryl leant Tony. Here’s the link to that: Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons.

Different learning methods – structure and draconian learning. School as a lock-up – social contract.

Blogging – blogging has helped with expressing his own voice. Tony has written the equivalent of four books worth of content since 2001. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

Motivation – how does anyone stay motivated? Mission Control and creating compelling occasions.

Productivity show – common threads or themes noticed during this time. Less structure and more in the moment. Procrastination. Behind this is often the perfectionist.

GTD – Getting Things Done. Compelling reason to clear the mind. Free space. Challenge is doing some of the things you’ve captured!!

Tony’s hybrid system – GTD and Mission Control. Mission Control goes a step further than GTD in terms of motivations behind tasks. More calendar-based. Brief comparison of the two methods. Show 38 with John Duckworth has ideas for weekly review. We agree that buddying works well.

Practising in front of the mirror – Tony recounts his experience of practising a script in front of a mirror and confronting his internal critic.

Dark matter – Tony’s theory of productivity. Don’t realise how much ‘things’ consume our time. All little fillers in our lives are the dark matter, that occupies most of our waking hours. There’s a little interlude at the start of this conversation about Spurs and the 1987 Cup Final. See this wikipedia article for more information.

Recommended reading – The 4-Hour Workweek. Question everything you do first, then apply GTD to the 1/5 of what’s left. Different people and different styles.

Accountability – talking with others and holding yourself to account. The coaching/buddy system works quite well. Different ways of managing the relationship and task-orientation.

Footballers favourites:

• Collection – Filofax (thin)
• Phone – Blackberry. Doesn’t use to send email. Is not addicted.
• Email – Outlook.
• RSS Reader – Sharp Reader (Windows). Starting to use Google Reader.
• Tip for the day – 1. Set compelling occasions and stick to them!; 2. No media for a day once a week; 3. Don’t put it down, put it away.
• More of - Cycling.
• Less of – Procrastinate and Sugar.
• Fave meal – Salmon, peas and new potatoes and Sushi.
• Fave Film – The Graduate.
• First single – Take Me Home Country Roads – Olivia Newton-John.
• First Album – Tubular Bells, Mike Oldfield; Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd; Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Simon and Garfunkel, Best of Simon & Garfunkel.
• First concert – Focus

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.

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.

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.

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!

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)

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.

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

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.

Yeh, it shows you how to get down to a 4 hour workweek, but don’t judge it by that and think that’s impossible.  It’s about how we use our time, and how we distract ourselves, it’s incredibly practical with suggested tasks to try, and highlighting what’s not working for us, and what’s most important in our lives.

For me, it’s my curiosity which takes me to newspapers, news, websites.  It’s killing me, I’m burning up time.

I had thought about getting more into the psychology of why we waste so much time, but this book bypasses all that by just getting on with it.  I reckon this book is the foundation layer below Getting Things Done.  GTD allows you to gather all that’s in your mind and give you the option on when you deal with each thing.  The 4 hour Workweek gets rid of 4/5ths of everything!!

You don’t believe me?  Read the book.

Just a few things I’m implementing.  A no-media diet for a week, no newspapers, books, news, feeds.  Email at midday and late afternoon.  What do I do now, nothing to distract me!!  No multi-tasking, oops, slipped up on that one, writing this!  I’ll write some more in another post soon.

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!

I am not worthy.  I am the most un-productive person in the world.  Maybe that’s a good criteria for hosting The Productivity Show.  I was away working on a project for 3 months.  Ah-Ha I thought, away from the kids and wife, in hotel rooms, I’ll be very productive, get lots of thing done.  Nah.  Sleep.  Food.  TV. More Food. TV. Sleep.  Maybe I should have read this, My Evenings are a Waste of Time!

Getting Things Done shot to pieces.  In fact, I’ve never worked so hard in my life, every day full on, flying back late Friday night to Melbourne, flying again Sunday afternoon, so in reality I was totally focused on the single project with very little time or headspace to do anything else.  But now I’m back, it’s interesting to gather all the things together, and empty my head back into the system.

In fact my system is still in place and most of the projects and actions are captured, it’s just that I’m feeling overwhelmed and not doing them, except for the most important one.

In order to break this single mode  thinking, I took a small post-it pad and wrote some of the actions and projects on to their individual post-its, and then sorted them in order of priority, on my desk.  This still didn’t work.  Nothing was working.

Then mid week, I looked at the post-its and wrote two more…”FUN” and “NOT FUN”, and then sorted the post-its into the two columns.  I then proceeded with the “FUN” column!!  But the funny thing is, once I declared some things “NOT FUN” I started to do them!!

Time for another Productivity Show.  Who shall I interview?  All suggestion and contacts welcome.  You want to be on?  Let me know.

Now it might not be Outlook’s fault. My .pst is over 1GB, I have one or two add-ins.

However, would I recommend Outlook 2007 to an Outlook 2003 user? Nope! I can’t work out the difference other than the ribbon in composing emails, and coloured squares for categories (you can’t even colour in the whole line!). The “Ribbon” – isn’t it about time someone said the Emperor Has No Clothes. It’s just an expanded tool bar that is so thick it enables more functionality to be visible. Big Deal!! And you can’t find some of the things that you used to use! So it’s swings and roundabouts.

I can’t fully explain it, but Outlook 2007 seems very slow to load and use, just like the other Office 2007 products. Ok, I don’t have the latest processor, and I have 500MB of RAM, but that’s a reasonable configuration isn’t it? Maybe I should archive much of my email in Outlook, but why should I? I want it immediately accessible and searchable.

And Thunderbird ain’t no carnival. It’s a bit clunky with weird defaults, and I can’t work out if what I see is is what I’m sending, from a font size perspective. However, do you know how wonderful it feels to have Thunderbird load in 5secs, instead of the 2mins+ that Outlook is taking, plus another minute to populate the preview pane of an email I click on!!

I don’t use Outlook Calendar, being a SOHO, but I do use Outlook Tasks, so I’ve transferred my tasks over to my MindManager mindmap. Now what’s amazing is the lumpiness of having my tasks on my mindmap, have made it easier to actually do actions, rather then see line after line of uniform things to do.

So here’s the thing….if I’m no longer using Outlook, MindManager isn’t lumpy enough in organic feel and interface options, and I’m starting to think about OpenOffice, whilst I’m in the mood……what’s stopping me from moving to a……Mac!!!

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

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!

There are two parts to goals. The first is setting them. The second is doing them!! I’d learned a long time ago that a goal is a dream with actions. So you can get most people to dream a bit. Try these;

1. What would you Be, Do, Have, with $15,000,000?

2. Describe the perfect day, hour by hour, with almost unlimited funds

3. It’s your 85th birthday party, a family member, a friend, a work colleague, and Michael Parkinson, talk about you. What would you like them to say?

For most people, these types of questions allow them to dream and find out what they really want. When you’ve identified what you really want then set a time to achieve it by. Then work out the actions you need to take to get there, usually working backwards from when you want to achieve your goal.

Simple really! Except, human nature then intervenes. Procrastination, Distraction, Inactivity, Lack of Focus, The Urgent and Important! So we never continue to carry out the action required to achieve the dreams and goals we think we want.

If you’re not strongly action driven, then a more organic approach to goal setting might do the trick. Work out what you really want, think it, dream it, visualise it, and then leave your mind and the universe to work out how it’s going to happen. Very “The Secret“!!

Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen, looks at Horizons of Focus, different levels of focus in your life from the immediate, to the Life Purpose. it’s what I use to look at my current Roles and Responsibilities right up to what my Purpose and Core Values are. I think we’ll look at this in more detail on a podcast.

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!

UPDATE: Tony just reminded me that of last weekend he is now officially an Aussie! Welcome to our fair country sir.

His recent review of Outlook 2007 : "so far I haven’t found too many changes of significance… In my opinion, Outlook is an irony – a productivity tool which distracts and overloads. Outlook knows so much about me – my contacts, my activities, my communications - and yet it doesn’t use this knowledge to guide what information should be given or hidden in a given context."

He’s also made some very interesting insights into why my decision to go back to pen and paper is a good one (and, by the way, I’m still loving it):

An elegant moleskine notebook may be expensive, but in fact, the cost and quality brings a certain respect for your thoughts. You won’t throw that thing away when it’s full, and the book itself is robust enough to preserve your thoughts for years. In time to come, you’ll pick up that elegant moleskine book and flipping through, you’ll recall what you were thinking about in 2006, what you were trying to achieve, what you aspired to and what you were struggling with. This is beautiful. Dare I mention PDAs and Outlook in the same paragraph? Those things are disrespectful of human markings, they are almost programmed to forget. They aren’t trustworthy containers (remember ‘trustworthy computing’ ?).

Trustworthy. Exactly. I’ve lost SO MUCH DATA from Outlook and my PDA over the years it’s disgusting. The whole OST / PST mindfield that Microsoft imposes on you in the name of an Outlook backup is still a complete joke. If I want to find a particular email from the last ten years that I wrote in Outlook, first I’d need to find the right PST. I’ve got them all backed up on CD somewhere, but there is about 20 of the suckers. Each time I re-built my laptop I had to back it up and then would normally start a new one to get the old one off my harddrive. Not to mention the many times I had to re-build Outlook due to PST corruptions. So I’d have to import various PSTs into Outlook and then search the lot of them for the right email.

Now compare that to finding a Gmail message from 2004 (when I started using it in anger). Takes two seconds. One maybe.

Anyway… paper is good. I’m loving it. However, I still haven’t worked out a good way to back it up without doing a daily scan.

Well, as listeners of The Productivity Show already know, I finally broke last week and have abandoned technology as my primary productivity tool/s in favour of a Moleskine. The one I’m using is a large lined notebook. And okay, there is something strangely primitive-yet-seductive about writing, with a real pen, on real paper. You got me. It’s just like a Tablet PC but strangely different. It doesn’t take ten minutes to boot. I don’t need to calibrate the book each time I use it. The battery life is pretty good, the fan is quiet, and it doesn’t get too hot on my lap. It doesn’t make any loud booting up noise when I open it in a café. The screen resolution is pretty good in sunlight. And I don’t need to synch it between multiple PCs and PDAs. I won’t get separate out of date versions of my task list appearing in multiple folders scattered across my PC.

Of course if I lose it, I’m screwed. Which is why I moved away from my Franklin planner eight years ago. It got stolen out of my car and I lost ten years of important shit. After eight  years of using PDAs, I’ve decided – ENOUGH!

Now I’m becoming addicted to reading blogs with Moleskine hacks. And all of those annoying pens which people have given me as gifts over the last ten years when I speak at conferences, I can now finally put to good use. I apologize to all of you for being rude as well.

Now, I need a Moleskine system. That’s part of the seductiveness of the book I think. You can create your own mods without learning AJAX. I need a system that will allow me to capture and process. Is there a Moleskine hack which stops you from reading blogs about Moleskine hacks and makes you get back to work?

• 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

Microsoft is set to launch Windows Vista on January 30, 2007. No word on the final location (yet). We’re assuming – until we hear otherwise – that this also will be the official launch date for Office 2007.

It’s Official. Vista Release Will Be January 30, 2007.

What does GyroQ do?  According to Eric, it has a couple of important functions.

First, GyroQ allows me to quickly capture ideas and actions via a small pop-up window, regardless of the program I’m currently using.  Second, GyroQ automatically populates a MindManager Map with all of the the thoughts and actions I’ve captured.

I’ll be providing my own take on GyroQ shortly.  But it certainly looks intriguing.  On-the-go capture of thoughts, ideas, actions, etc, can be put into a “queue” for later processing.  For fans of GTD, this sounds indeed as if it will have symmetry.

Eric Mack On-Line.

Theres an interesting article called The 50 Who Matter Now.  According to the article, the 50 people listed are people

whose ideas, products, and business insights are changing the world we live in today – those who are reshaping our future by inventing important new technologies, exploiting emerging opportunities, or throwing their weight around in ways that are sure to make everyone else take notice.

I was pleased to see that David Allen, author of the book about the Getting Things Done methodology he invented, was not only listed, but was the 2nd person listed, right on the first page of the article.

I’ve been a GTD fan since 2001, and also had the pleasure of interviewing David on Episode 003 of The Personal Productivity Show on TPN.  Glad to see his work getting yet more praise.

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.

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!

Click here to vote and here’s a quick "How To Vote" guide like you’d get at your local elections.

TPN :: Gday World          http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com    

TPN :: The Best of TPN          http://bestoftpn.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Gadget Show          http://gadget.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Media Center      http://mediacenter.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Mobile Technology Show          http://mobiles.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Mobile Media Show          http://mobilemedia.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Tablet PC Show          http://tabletpc.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Tech Conference      http://techconf.thepodcastnetwork.com    

TPN :: The Cranky Middle Manager Show      http://cmm.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Personal Productivity Show          http://productivity.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Edinburgh Fringe Show          http://edinburghfringe.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Gaming Show          http://gaming.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Jazz Show          http://jazz.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Tha Hunga MixTape Show          http://mixtape.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Rock Show          http://rock.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Movie Show          http://movie.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Matt, Freak and The Fatboy        http://mff.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The AFL Show          http://afl.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Golf Show          http://golf.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Grand Prix Show          http://grandprix.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The NBA Show        http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/nba

TPN :: The Advaita Show          http://advaita.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Animal World Show          http://animalworld.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Dead Serious         http://deadserious.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Father Bob Show          http://fatherbob.thepodcastnetwork.com/category/podcast

TPN :: The Gay Parenting Show          http://gayparenting.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Real Women Show          http://realwomen.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Surface Interval Show          http://surfaceinterval.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Cafe Geek      http://cafegeek.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Community Admin Show          http://communityadmin.thepodcastnetwork.com    

TPN :: A Late-Night Blues and Jazz Hangout       http://bluesandjazz.thepodcastnetwork.com/

TPN :: The Smart Business Show          http://smartbusiness.thepodcastnetwork.com/

TPN :: The Geeks Of Hazzard       http://geeksofhazzard.thepodcastnetwork.com/

TPN :: SOUSED        http://soused.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Claybourne          http://claybourne.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Health and Fitness Show          http://health.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Heretic – The Official Podcast      http://heretic.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Travel Show          http://travel.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Napoleon 1O1      http://napoleon.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Social Capitalist      http://socialcapitalist.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Box Office Weekly          http://boxoffice.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Applied Karate Show          http://karate.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The ValuesHacker Show      http://valueshacker.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The All American Show          http://allamerican.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Melbourne Confidential       http://melbourne.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Atomic Show          http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Poly The Pollie       http://polythepollie.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Alternate Health Show          http://althealth.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Digital Photography Show          http://digiphoto.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Internet Media Show          http://internetmedia.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Mellow Monday       http://mellowmonday.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Bit Radio Show          http://thebit.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The PSP Show          http://psp.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The 2 Web Crew      http://2webcrew.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Alterntive Music Show          http://alternativemusic.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show          http://extraordinary.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Travel Stories       http://travelstories.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Martial Arts Explorer       http://martialarts.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Laugh Out Loud        http://lol.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Keoni And The Worm        http://keoniandtheworm.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Podcasting APB        http://podcastingapb.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Treading Lightlyhttp://treadinglightly.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: Hobo Radio        http://hoboradio.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The Ugly Girls Club        http://uglygirlsclub.thepodcastnetwork.com

TPN :: The GlobalGeek Podcast           http://globalgeek.thepodcastnetwork.com

Anyway, Wayne has written another book and it’s available today an e-book from his site. I’ve read it already and it’s terrific. It’s designed for those of you who spend your life in meetings. Fortunately for me, I am no longer one of those people but I feel your pain. I spent enough years in the corporate world to know what it’s like. This book will help you take control of the time spent in meetings which in turn will let you spend more time listening to podcasts on The Podcast Network. What more can you ask for?

As Wayne says:

It’s called “Meet Like You Mean It”- a Cranky Middle Manager’s Guide to Productive and Painless Meetings”.

The greatest praise and the biggest criticism I’ve heard are the same thing- it reads like the show sounds. One person called it “Stanley Bing meets the Training Manual”. Hopefully you’ll laugh, you’ll definitely recognize yourself and others, and you’ll find valuable tips for making your meetings less agonizing for you and your team.

It’s available now for download at the CMM store on my website, http://www.achismarketing.com/Meetlikeyoumeanit.html.  The cost is $7.97US, which if you figure the cost of a bad meeting, shows ROI pretty darn quickly.

RealVNC comes in a variety of flavours. I’m using the free edition. I have the server version installed on the desktop and the viewer installed on my laptop. Installation was idiot proof and took 30 seconds. Now I can run my desktop from my laptop. It’s faster and simpler than any other remote control system I’ve tried in the past.

Now… can anyone suggest a way to print?

CompanionLink for Google Calendarâ„¢ is a two-way synchronization solution for people that want to extend their Google Calendar onto their desktop calendar systems or mobile devices. It can synchronize Google Calendar with all the latest Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Palm, and BlackBerry devices in addition to Outlook, Lotus Notes, Palm Desktop, and Groupwise applications.

Well that’s half of the ideal solution for Pocket PC users like myself who no longer want to use Outlook but still want to use a Pocket PC. Ideally I’d like a Pocket PC application which can run offline but synch with Google Calendar once I dock it (or via the web, but at the rates mobileco’s in Australia charge for mobile internet…).

I’ve installed the 14-day trial of CompanionLink but I’m having trouble getting it to connect to Google Calendar. It keeps telling me my email address or password is wrong, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t. So I’ll keep trying. If anyone else gives this a try, please pop over to the Productivity forum and let me know what you think of the product.

I’ve been a devoted fan of Activewords for several years, ever since I got that famous email from Buzz Bruggeman offering me a coaching lesson. I’ve just signed him up to do one for my wife as well, as she’s just got her first laptop and can’t wait to install Activewords on it.

Anyway, this new version of Google Desktop has a very cool feature where you can hit the Control key twice (CTRL-CTRL) and it brings up a search bar in the middle of your screen from which you can search your hard drive or the web.

Now this is very cool but CTRL-CTRL has been the command I’ve used for several years to bring up my Activewords bar (from which I can activate any of my programmed activewords).

But fear not! I worked out a simple solution that gives me the best of all worlds.

1. Go into Activewords settings and turn off the CTRL-CTRL setting.

2. Use the Google Desktop search bar.

3. When I hit CTRL-CTRL out of habit but really want an Activeword to run, not a Google search, I simple hit the other Activeword commant (SPACE-SPACE) instead of hitting ENTER, which activates the Google search instead.

Oh and I’ve got the default Google search set to be my desktop. If I want it to search the web instead, I hit CTRL-W when I have the Google search bar open. This automatically takes me to a web search.

Thanks to the Firefox extension, Mass Installer, you never have to worry about downloading all your favorite extensions again when doing a clean install of everybody’s favorite browser. The only work you have to do is collect the links to all of your favorite extensions (i.e. to the XPIs) and put them in a text file (one URL per line). Be sure to check out some of the “extension packs” that the folks at Lifehacker put together as well.

What a great idea.

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.

Just a quick FYI – we rolled the website up and announced the new product this morning. I’ve highlighted what’s new on our weblog:

http://blog.clearcontext.com/2006/03/whats_new_in_im.html

Two things of particular note:

1. The Inbox Manager product is now free: http://www.clearcontext.com/products/inbox_manager.html - this is a lightweight way to get the Inbox under control.
2. We are continuing our write a review, get a free license program: http://blog.clearcontext.com/2005/04/who_wants_a_fre.html - we basically want to reward people who help evangelize the product.

Thanks as always. Please let me know if I can provide further information.

BTW – I’m recording a Tablet PC show with Perry this evening. Wish us luck!

Take Care,

Brad.

If anyone out there is still using Microsoft Outlook (smile) then I know you’ll want this upgrade.

Bottom line:

Looks like a very good start, is a long way off from release, is going to do most of what we want, except perhaps integration with the Pocket PC, although might integrate with Outlook Calendar, which will do the trick. Gotta love Google.

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.

A couple of weeks ago, Des told me how he’s been doing it – he’s created a del.icio.us tag called “mycomments” and he creates a del.icio.us bookmark with that tag every time he leaves his mark. I’ve been trying to the same thing, and it’s pretty cool, especially as you can create an RSS feed for the tag. But the only problem is that it doesn’t show you what the replies to your comment are (or even if there are any), so you need to go site trawling… how 1995.

Today I tested out cocomment, a new service for doing the same thing, but with added benefits. With cocomment, you can actually see the new comments, but only if they are made by another cocomment user. That’s sweet. The only downside is that you need to change the way you leave comments – but only slightly. You need to bookmark the comment BEFORE you leave it, you can’t do it afterwards. Not so hard, just requires a change of habit, and we both know how hard it is to change those goddamn things.

And thanks to Gail Watt for pointing me to Hawk’s post.

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).

I told Buzz I’ve also been using their Gmail agent a lot lately and it rocks. I can open up an Activewords entry field, type in the search term I’m looking for, and the ActiveWords script will open up my Gmail, automatically enter the term in the search field, and activate it. Totally brilliant.

Of course, if you don’t know what Activewords is, listen to a couple of interviews I’ve done with Buzz over the last year:

G’Day World interview Dec 2004
Productivity Show interview Nov 2005

Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly…at first.

Being an animation student, one book I read was Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist by Chuck Jones, a pioneer animator and director of the old Looney Tunes cartoons so many of us know and love. A story from that book made a deep impression on me, and even though I don’t remember it exactly, I want to share the gist of it with you.

When he was starting out, Chuck was told by a senior animator that everyone has about 10,000 (I don’t remember the exact number here) lousy drawings in them they need to get rid of, before they can really start drawing.’

According to Chuck he used that line to spur him onwards, sometimes drawing and re-drawing his work again and again just so he could get that one perfect drawing.

Whenever you do something new, you will most likely suck at it, or even fall flat on your face. Be prepared for it, it’s natural. Finding something difficult can be a sign that you’re learning something new, if it’s too easy it’s probably has elements of what you already know.

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.

Abstract:

We show that, in the context of Moore’s Law, overall productivity can be increased for large enough computations by `slacking’ or waiting for some period of time before purchasing a computer and beginning the calculation.

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.

Chandler is a free and open personal organizer being developed by the Open Source Applications Foundation, with design by Andy Hertzfeld of the original MacOS GUI team. Eventually it’s meant to integrate email as well as calendaring and to-do items, but for now it’s just the latter — that said, the latest release, 0.6, is finally something in shape that’s usable by civilians. The Chandler application development arc is a little reminiscent of Mozilla/Firefox: a slow start that lays a solid foundation, with major changes visible at each milestone.

Chandler 0.6 delivers an experimentally usable calendar for individuals and small workgroups. It is a test release for collecting feedback based on real usage. In addition to basic calendaring, advanced features include: recurring events; time-zones; overlayed multiple calendars; and managing a single event across calendars.

0.6 offers innovative new capabilities in calendar sharing to support workgroup collaboration. Chandler sharing is server-based, works across platforms and supports multi-author editing.

0.6 continues to improve Chandler’s developer platform framework. A developer looking to extend Chandler should be able to create a simple forms-based parcel.

is a tiny app that lets you email any size file or folder to anyone, free.

Currently in closed beta testing but sounds like a cool idea. I’ve often in the past had to send a large file to someone and haven’t had a simple way of doing it. IM transfers are often too slow and hampered by corporate firewalls. Not everyone is using Gmail (surprising as that may seem). Perhaps Pando is the answer?

As regular readers and listeners will know, I use a system that is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. That system is based on the concept of Collect-Process-Organise-Review-Do, and has as key tenets

• Collect everything
• Review regularly

So anyway, I’ve completed three days of my refocusing, and have blogged about it each day over at desparoz On The Go.

• Day 1 – Collecting, Processing and Organising my current Next Actions
• Day 2 – Reviewing, clearing and making current my Waiting Fors
• Day 3 – Getting my project list clean, clear and up-to-date

I’m now moving into the next stage – brainstorming and planning. Keep watching my blog for updates.

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.

The Top 10 Signs You’re a GTD Disciple

10. While driving home from work, you have to pull over three times to jot it down and empty your mind.

9. You put your weekly review on a Someday/Maybe list. NOT!

8. You go to McDonalds for lunch but before ordering you draw a mind map of what an ideal fast food meal would look and taste like.

7. You use a Brother P-Touch to label your kitchen drawers.

6. You actually know how to pronounce, “Moleskine.”

5. You actually understand the workflow chart in GTD.

4. You know the difference between 40,000 and 30,000 feet perspectives.

3. You know that the “two-minute rule” has nothing to do with the conclusion of football games.

2. When you get together with friends, you say, “Show me you project list!”

1. After five minutes of foreplay, you pause and ask your partner, “What’s the next action?”

I can identify with a couple of these – hell I did exactly what is described in number 10 last night.

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.

If you’re interested in keeping up to date with the latest developments in the corporate blogging world, then you may want to subscribe to The BizBlog Show on TPN! The multi-faceted Tyme White will be your guide to the new look version of the show!

Dion Hinchcliffe’s Best of Web2.0 Software list contains some gems I hadn’t seen before, like NetVibes and CalendarHub.

What happens when your computer blows up? Ahh…question 1, what in the world was I running when it did. Quick answer, run Belarc advisor and put the file on the Gmail account. That when if I have to reinstall things rather than looking around for some piece of paper with the list, I just go to backup E-Mail files on Gmail and whammo the list is in hand.

I just gave Belarc Advisor a try and it’s terrific! Lists not only all of the software you are running, but all of the licenses associated with them!

Sure – the mafia probably now has copies of all of the information but, then again, they probably had it already, so… no point getting too paranoid about it…

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.

Any suggestions?

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.

 With ThinkFree Office Online you can :

• Create Microsoft Office-compatible documents from the Web
• Open and edit your Office documents anywhere and anytime
• Post documents directly to your blog without any conversion
• Create powerful Web presentations using a familiar interface
• Convert your existing documents to PDF format

Who needs to wait for Sunoogle? We’ve got it here already. I’ll try and get someone from THINKFREE to come onto the show.

Thanks again Jeffrey!

Today Tris gives an overview of Chris Pirillo’s new search engine – Gada.be

Gada.be is totally different. You can search with a URL! Here are some examples:

http://tris.hussey.gada.be/

http://boston.red.sox.gada.be/

http://qumana.gada.be/

http://vancouver-canucks.gada.be/

A “.” is a double quote search so “tris hussey” or “boston red sox” a “-” is an AND vancouver AND canucks. There is already a Firefox search plugin for it too!

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.

Stay tuned for some really exciting news next week as we kick this thing back into gear, and I know that all of our excellent hosts along with Cam and myself hope that you have enjoyed the great podcasts that we have been providing for your listening pleasure since February 2005…the ride has just started folks.

:)
Mick Stanic
Co-Founder, The Podcast Network

Between the 29th of September and the 3rd of October, The Podcast Network web site will be undergoing some major server work that will increase (fingers crossed) both the speed and the reliability of the service you have come to love and cherish ;)

Access to the web site and the functionality of the RSS feed will at best experience a small blip of down time… and at worst…well..it could vanish into the bermuda triangle that is tech land for upto four days. I have also had to switch of the ability to post comments on all the sites till we are fully operational as well.

Stick with us through this little hick-up and I promise we will return to normal transmission as quick as possible.

Thanks guys and gals…

Mick Stanic
Co-Founder of The Podcast Network

The two most exciting new enhancements of Mindjet MindManager 6 for me:

1. The ability to organize and manage numbers and charts thanks to both the Spreadsheet and the Microsoft Excel Linker features. I can now visualize and better manage my budget, key metrics and business plans.
2. The new formatting options (text, image and topic alignment options, balance map features, org chart layout feature, snag to grid during drag and drop…). I can now build and publish easily and quickly maps that look really professional. It saves me so much time!

Des and I are planning to do a show on MM6 in the coming weeks, so go download and play with the trial version ahead of time.

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.

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!

Yes – it’s prettier, and that’s nice. I like pretty as much as the next person. The general tone of the demo reminded me of Windows ME. WinME was prettier than Windows 95 too. Remember what a great product Windows ME was!? Yeah… right. Now, of course, MS did much better when they gave us the prettiness of WinME combined with the stability of WinXP.

So, my question for Microsoft, is this:

How will forking out the money for this product/upgrade make my life significantly better?

To be specific:

* Will this product save me significant time and/or effort and/or money every day?
o Is it more stable?
o Will Outlook toolbars stop failing and crashing?
o Is it faster?
o Does it help me share information seamlessly with my colleauges and my customers?
o Does it have RSS integrated?

The “ribbon” is nice, but I don’t believe Julie’s demo indicated that it is really going to address the main concerns I listed above.

Example:
ACTIVEWORDS gave me an exponential productivity boost.
RSS Readers have me an exponential productivity boost.

Will Office12 give me an exponential productivity boost?

I like pretty. I love the OSX interface. But software is about more than being pretty, right?

Now, perhaps Office12 will make my life significantly better, but I just didn’t see it presented that way in Julie’s video.

Final point – I love what Robert is doing with Channel 9. Simply shot, no frills, but it bloody works. This is the future kids.

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!)

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

During the week, Des and I interviewed Microsoft’s one and only ROBERT SCOBLE for the show.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is, well, I was testing out some new recording equipment and the show ended up missing. Rumour has it, the show was last seen drinking a frappucino in Argentina with Elvis, Hitler, Marilyn and Osama bin Laden.

So, in the absence of the recording of the show with Robert, Des and I decided to talk about what Robert told us about how HE stays productive and what does when he falls off the program.

Robert’s lawyers have been in touch and say their client is willing to settle out of court for damages on the condition we have him on the show again soon. Stay tuned.

On this week’s show, we mention:

SKYLOOK - the new Outlook toolbar for Skype
Microsoft Research – Using Two Monitors

LISTEN HERE

LIVE!! Des happened to be in Melbourne yesterday so we did our very first LIVE show from Café Fiori in the Como Building in South Yarra. That’s the same building my old office used to be in, so it was like going home. But without the stress. :-)

This show is mostly about being productive with WIFI. Why you need it, why many big corporates don’t support it aggressively, and where it’s going.

The services we discussed were:

Azure Wireless
NetConnect
EVDO

LISTEN HERE

Nick Duffill is one of the principals of Gyronix, a UK based company that produces a plug-in application that brings together the power of MindManager, with the focus of a productivity methodology like Getting Things Done.

Cameron and I interviewed Nick for Episode #006 of the Personal Productivity Show podcast. During our discussion, we talked about ResultsManager, and the ideas that gave rise to it, along with its basic precept of extending the power of mindmapping from an approach for brainstorming to one that facilitates organising.

Nick gave some insights into his own productivity approach, which refreshingly focused not on tools and technology, but on the process itself.

Perhaps the most important aspects was the discussion on using the ResultsManager tool, and how to fast track its implementation.

We hope you enjoy episode #006, and look forward to feedback and suggestions.

LISTEN HERE

Hidey-Ho People! Cam & Des back with another Productivity Show! Due to unusual sunspot activity and a hex placed on me by one of my former wives, this week we have NO GUEST, so it’s just us chatting about our own current approach to getting it done.

Among the things we talk about this week are:

ACER TRAVELMATE 310 TABLET PC
ACTIVEWORDS INKPAD
BLOGJET
LINKEDIN
MYLIFEORGANIZED

We’ve actually had a few failed attempts. Cameron and I (Des Paroz) actually recorded an interview with Phil McCredden, a Melbourne based minister, blogger, geek and productivity enthusiast. We’ll be re-doing the show shortly – but thats been rescheduled twice for a whole bunch of reasons.

We were scheduled to interview Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords fame yesterday, but there was a syncing issue in getting that to happen. We will be interviewing Buzz later this week – and I am looking forward to that.

However, Episode 5, a simple discussion between Cameron and I was recorded yesterday. We discussed the importance of regular reviews, my TabletPC adventures and more. Look out for this episode to be up later this week.

LISTEN HERE

Our guest this week, Laura Stack, is the president of The Productivity Pro®, Inc. an international consulting firm in Denver, Colorado, that specializes in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations, and is the author of the bestselling book Leave the Office Earlier.

She is one of a handful of professional speakers whose business focuses solely on time management and productivity topics. We talk to her about how she coaches people to become more productive and on how she applies these principles in her own very busy life.