John Borwick's blog

June 4, 2010

Lifehack: reminder that I’m using the computer

Filed under: Self-Improvement,Technology — John @ 7:36 pm

Sometimes I use the computer too much–reading reddit, del.icio.us/tag/funny, Facebook, et al.

To help myself be more aware of using the (OS X) computer, I installed a dashboard widget called ProdMe.  This is a neat, simple program that will play a sound on command.

I then got a “chime” sound from freesound.org–specifically, “15.wav“.  I registered to get an account and downloaded the sound.

Next, the sound was a little long for me so I downloaded Audacity and edited the sound to make it shorter.  I also used Audacity to convert the sound into .aiff format.

ProdMe lets you use any sound that shows up as a “system sound” (System Preferences > Sound, “Sound Effects” panel).  So, I took the edited .aiff sound and put it in my “home directory > Library > Sounds” folder.  OS X checks this folder for any user-space sounds that should be listed as system sounds.

Finally, ProdMe is a dashboard widget and the dashboard stops running when you log out or put your computer to sleep.  So, I found “Dashboard Kickstart,” a utility that lets you say you want the dashboard to run after sleep or after login.  It’s really neat and imho should be added to OS X.

So–there you go!  ProdMe has a button you can hit to turn on or off chimes, so if we’re watching a Netflix movie or hulu I can click the button and stop the every-five-minute chime.

December 30, 2008

Trying out Ask Sunday, an outsourcing service

Filed under: Self-Improvement — John @ 12:42 am

Earlier this year I read the Four Hour Work Week.  Then I read the article “Diary of a Self-Help Dropout” and heard The Moth‘s recording of A.J. Jacobs talking about outsourcing.  (As an aside, check out The Moth–it’s a really neat recorded storytelling group!)

Today I signed up for Ask Sunday, the outsourcing service mentioned in the above article.  They are a concierge service that does small things for you, and they are cheap because people in other countries are doing most of the work for you.

You get a week with 4 free requests, and thereafter you pay a monthly fee for a certain number of requests.  They will spend up to 20 minutes on each request, and send you back the results.  For example, you can request that they get flowers delivered to someone, or that they research the cost of a product, or that they book a hotel room for you.

I have sent them four requests today (to quote painting a car, to find out about bicycle maintenance classes, to look into who maintains the alley behind our house, and to quote HVAC maintenance).  It’s an experiment!

If you sign up for the site please mention me! :-)

December 18, 2008

Amazon’s Subscribe and Save Program

Filed under: Self-Improvement,Technology — John @ 12:27 am

A couple of weeks ago I learned about Amazon’s Subscribe and Save Program.  You order items in bulk through Amazon, and tell them that you want them every one, two, three, or six months.  In turn they give you a 15% discount and free shipping.  Also you don’t have to worry about buying these items at the store.

We just signed up for it; here’s what we’ve ordered:

  • Paper Towels (30 rolls each 6 months)
  • Laundry detergent (6 bottles each 6 months)
  • Dishwasher powder (8 boxes each 6 months)
  • Clif Bar variety pack (24 bars each 3 months)
  • Cinnamon Harvest cereal (6 boxes each 3 months)

You’ve got to know that you like the products because they only ship in bulk.

This is very “non-Lean” of us (see Lean Manufacturing) to have so much stock on hand, but that’s the only way you can get the service today.  Maybe this can eventually lead to grocery delivery 2.0 (this time, it won’t go bankrupt).

December 17, 2008

The Power of Shims

Filed under: Self-Improvement,Technology — John @ 11:14 pm

I am not a very “handy” person–I don’t tend to fix things around the house.

A couple of months ago a carpenter built some bookshelves for us, and along the way he gave us a couple of shims to help straighten out our china cabinet.  This is when I learned that shims are awesome.

Shims, in case you don’t know, are tiny flat wooden doorstops. :-)   They are little pieces of wood that you can put in odd places to fix things.  They are like the duct tape of wood.

So far we have used shims for three sorts of things:

  1. Leveling out furniture around the house.  Our house is old and nothing is at a 90 degree angle, so all our furniture needs a little bit of straightening up.  We just put 1-3 shims under the appropriate furniture legs, and things flatten out.
  2. Keeping our car window from falling down.  This is a little embarrassing.  One of our car windows falls down on its own.  We took it to the shop and were told that we would have to replace the entire window motor, which costs around $400-500, to keep the window from falling.  We tried duct tape, but shims work the best.  We have two shims in this window now, and although it looks horrible, it works very well.
  3. Holding a blanket in place to serve as a door to keep our cats out of a room.  We are now getting the bookshelves painted, and today the painters primed everything.  We want the cats to roam the house, but we do not want them to “explore the paint.”  There is no door to where the bookshelves are.  Today I jury-rigged a blanket to cover the entryway, using an impressively sturdy Chip Clip (like for potato chip bags) and 4 shims, which are pressing the blanket to the entryway frame vis-a-vis a drop-down part of the ceiling.

December 7, 2008

Reflections on “The Four Hour Workweek”

Filed under: Self-Improvement — John @ 4:02 pm

A couple of months ago I read “The Four Hour Workweek.”  The author, Timothy Ferriss, is at times kind of a jerk, but the book overall was very helpful to me.

The book recommends a “nouveau riche” lifestyle based on outcomes, rather than bankroll.  For example, if you are saving money towards retiring to Sao Paolo, why not go ahead and get yourself an independent source of (US-denominated) income and move to Sao Paolo?

I say he’s kind of a jerk at times because the author doesn’t seem to be considering the suffering he may cause others.  For example, he brags about becoming a Chinese kickboxing champion by (1) finding a loophole in the rules and (2) using some magical means to lose weight temporarily.  He doesn’t seem to have any remorse for the people he beat using the loophole (he pushed people out of the ring).

That said, his four steps are:

  • Define: figure out what you want, e.g. to live in Sao Paolo driving a Ferrari you need $X/mo.
  • Eliminate: remove everything from your life that does not drive towards these outcomes, e.g. stop checking email
  • Automate: for the stuff that’s left, the stuff you need to do, automate it to the extent possible, e.g. by hiring an Indian concierge service
  • Liberate: chill out and repeat

(He does wax philosophic at the end and say that eventually you will no longer be satisfied by this lifestyle and your new goals will become more philanthropic.)

The book has been most helpful for me, so far, because he essentially re-iterates The 80/20 Principle.  You should be doing whatever is high-value and low-effort, where high-value is defined according to step (1), “Define.”

To those ends, I have unsubscribed myself from virtually every listserv I was on.  I’m talking like 30-40 listserves that I rarely read anyways.  I am probably on 2-3 listserves now.  It has probably taken me at least 15 hours just to unsubscribe from lists I didn’t even realize I was on!

Also, when I reply to email now, I try to “remove myself from the loop.”  That is, I am spending more time thinking about each email, anticipating possible future questions and answering them.  For example, “Yes, let’s send a present!  I think we should send X, Y, or Z, but I think you should have the final say.  Please feel free to decide.  I’ll put in half the cost, up to $50.  You can have it delivered to me at 123 My Address and I’ll wrap it and have it ready, or you can take care of it.  Just let me know what you decide, and I’ll meet you on Thursday!”

I have yet to decide whether this is really annoying to other people :-)

I’m also trying to decide on a “most important task” (MIT) for each day.  I haven’t been very good about keeping these simple, but ideally the MIT should be done early in the morning.  It doesn’t need to take very long.

January 24, 2008

AT&T Tilt and Windows Mobile 6

Filed under: GTD,Technology — John @ 12:07 am

I just upgraded from my Cingular 8125 to the AT&T Tilt. The Tilt is a neat looking phone.

As you may know, I was very attached to my 8125. I learned pretty much everything there is to know about the “vanilla” 8125. In particular, I use Tasks like nobody’s business.

The Tilt runs Windows Mobile 6. WM6 apparently has a bug where its “Active Tasks” filter shows tasks with a start date in the future. That is, it shows you stuff you’re not supposed to start until 6 months from now as “active.” This is frustrating, as I have tasks going well into 2009 that I don’t want to see.

My other issue with the Tilt is it no longer has a voice recorder button. Instead, it has a “PTT” (Push To Talk) button. This button lets you pay AT&T money (it’s their walkie talkie system). I cannot override what this button does. I no longer have a one-button solution for voice recordings.

Those two very frustrating issues aside, the Tilt is much faster than the 8125, has an awesome 3 megapixel camera, has lights to show when you’re hitting the shift or function keys, and has some neat new programs on it. It’s frustrating because you can just tell that marketers got ahold of it and added their junk, but outside of that, the task thing, and the voice recorder thing I’m pretty happy with it.

Update: This AT&T forum explains how to make the PTT button map to the voice recorder:

  1. Download a registry editor e.g. PHM Registry Editor
  2. Delete everything under and including HKLM/Services/PTT
  3. Create HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Keys\40C6 as a Key, and under that String Value named “Name”, value “Button 6″
  4. Create HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Keys\40C7 as a Key, and under that String Value named “Name”, value “Button 6 (hold)”
  5. Soft reset

(I’m recording this here because I know I’m going to need to do this every time I hard reset the phone.)

Also, “Pocket Informant” looks to use Windows tasks as its basis, but it doesn’t have the active tasks future date limitation. So it would still work with ActiveSync but it would show my tasks the way I like!

December 30, 2007

Productivity: the year in review

Filed under: GTD — John @ 9:42 pm

I’ve been using David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system for over two years now, and I’ve gone from having over 200 open tasks, to 80 tasks, to 40 tasks, and have gone from a task-level view to a (more-or-less) project-level view of what I’m doing. I’ve reviewed The Book several times and have gotten to what I believe is a steady-state in my task management.

From this experience, I conclude that productivity to me is comprised of four factors:

1. Follow through on (or renegotiate) promises

Getting Things Done is all about following through on promises: promises that you make to others or to yourself. GTD tells you what promise you could be working on at the given moment. Are you in the grocery? …then you could get these groceries you told yourself you wanted. Are you on-line? …then you could check out that web site your friend mentioned to you.

Notably, I’m emphasising “could” over “should.” GTD is telling you what your options are. It’s not making the call on whether you should really be doing those tasks.

Following through on promises is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of “productivity.”

2. Choose the “Right Stuff” to work on

GTD struggles with helping you choose what to work on: by starting from a ground-up, next-actions approach and working towards the project view, your one year goals, your three year goals, and your areas of responsibility, GTD helps you think about why you’re doing the work you’re doing–but GTD is not helping you much in figure out how to narrow your focus and choose the goals you really want to achieve.

GTD is a tool, but you’ve really got to be careful or you can drift towards burning your most productive time accomplishing goals you don’t really care about.

3. Don’t get bogged down in the mundane

With GTD, I do what my phone tells me to do. I don’t question why I’m going to the ATM once a week, and I don’t really think through why I spend an hour on e-mail a day.
The Pareto principle (i.e. the 80/20 rule) is more useful here: you should radically triage your work to maximize your time doing “the Right Stuff.”

4. Work very hard, focusing on “spinning the flywheel”

To steal from “Good to Great,” this last component–”spinning the flywheel”–means that you have to choose a goal and stick with it, and orient all your actions towards that goal, so that all your actions and therefore the outputs are getting you closer to that goal.

That is, you’ve chosen your goal, and you know how to work effectively towards that goal, and you know that you can follow through on the promises needed for that goal: now you need to bear down and do the work, and continue focusing your energy on that work.

So, those are my thoughts for the year about how to become radically more productive, and how GTD fits in with all that. Right now I’m using GTD quite a lot, but my current “steady state” really means that I have a list of tasks that I know I can wait until the last minute to complete. I think these three subsequent points, to complement GTD, could really help me/anyone be more productive.

September 25, 2007

Switched my pobox.com e-mail

Filed under: Self-Improvement,Technology — John @ 10:47 pm

I just switched my pobox.com account so it forwards to gmail. That’s one of the reasons why I love pobox.com; as long as you’re pretty good about advertising the pobox.com address over the actual address it forwards to, you can change your “back-end” system pretty easily.

I changed because I’d been experimenting with mixing work and personal e-mail–and that system has worked really well, because I can check that e-mail on my phone, but for a while I want to try gmail.com + alerts of some kind.

August 8, 2007

Sears is horrible

Filed under: Self-Improvement — John @ 11:35 pm

Lauren and I are excited about moving into our new house. In order to make our house liveable, we availed ourselves of Sears’s July 28 “10% off” sale. That in itself (today’s August 7, a week and a half later) should tell you we’ve had a problem.

We used sears.com to order a refrigerator, a microhood, and a stove. We checked the “ice box” option on the refrigerator: we asked for the ice maker that sears.com told us to get.

Here’s a summary of our communications with Sears Home Delivery and Sears.com, all via the phone:

  • Wed Aug 1: automated call: you’re getting a refrigerator tomorrow
  • Wed Aug 1: automated call: you’re getting a stove and microhood tomorrow. Yes, we will install these when we deliver them.
  • Thu Aug 2 6:45 AM: we can’t deliver your refrigerator they have to install the ice maker at the factory
  • Thu Aug 2 7 AM: we can’t deliver your refrigerator they have to install the ice maker at the factory.
  • Thu Aug 2 ~5 PM: mom, at the house, watches Sears deliver but not install our microhood and stove.
  • Fri Aug 3: automated call: you’re getting a refrigerator between 7:45 AM-9:45 AM tomorrow (Saturday).  I follow up: how are we supposed to get this stuff installed?  I am told to call “J D–z” (name omitted because I can’t spell it), who is our installer.  “You should have gotten that in e-mail.”  I think, “why do I have to call someone to get this installed when we paid you good money to install it for us?”
  • Sat Aug 4 ~7 AM: you ordered the wrong ice maker so we are not going to deliver your refrigerator.
  • Sat Aug 4 ~7:15 AM: you ordered the wrong ice maker so we are not going to deliver your refrigerator. Call sears.com.
  • Sat Aug 4 7:20 AM: I tried to call sears.com but they aren’t open until 8 AM
  • Sat Aug 4 10-10:30 AM: explain myself to sears.com lady, who listens politely for five minutes and then transfers me to someone without explaining my situation, so I re-explain myself and they call sears home delivery while I’m on the line and they talk about how my delivery zip code was wrong or something and they have to do an “even exchange” but they are going to have to e-mail it to someone but I should get a call in the afternoon.
  • Mon Aug 6: I call the phone number for “J D–z,” the installer.  The phone rings and goes to voice mail: “The person at the number you have called is not answering the phone.  Please leave a message.”  I leave a message but get no response.
  • Mon Aug 6 3-3:30 PM: I call Sears Home Delivery, they say my refrigerator has the wrong ice maker, they transfer me on the line to Sears.com, I talk with Sears.com people, they get Sears Home Delivery back on the line, they put in the order, and they say someone (“an expert”) will call back in 30 minutes.  This is essentially the same 30 minute conversation I had Saturday, except they tell me a specific date.  I threaten Sears that I will never shop from them and will return all our goods.
  • Mon Aug 6 4:30 PM: Sears person calls and says delivery scheduled for Wednesday.
  • Tue Aug 7 6 PM: I call Sears home delivery. Our refrigerator has the wrong ice maker. Mom offers to call them so I do not rain fiery vengeance. Delivery re-scheduled for Thursday.
  • Wed Aug 6:
  • Mon Aug 6: I again call the phone number for “J D–z,” the installer.  The phone rings and goes to voice mail: “The person at the number you have called is not answering the phone.  Please leave a message.”  I leave a message but get no response.
  • Wed Aug 8 6:15 PM: Sears home delivery scheduled delivery for tomorrow morning. What happen? We’ll find out tomorrow!

August 2, 2007

We’ve been very busy

Filed under: GTD,Work — John @ 12:40 am

At work, we’ve been re-organizing into a “Support” team and a “Projects” team.

At home, Lauren and I have been painting, moving boxes, and getting appliances for our new house.  Today the Wilson Pest Defense people came.
I just finished Harry Potter.

My Getting Things Done system broke down under the pressure; I didn’t do my weekly review on Monday and I didn’t even get through my e-mail inbox from Friday until today!  When there’s too much work to do I’m just piling it on rather than being more judicious with what work should be done.

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