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What Andy's Doing
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Recently Written
- How to Help Great Productivity Blogs Get Discovered
- My Scandelous Confession and A Royal Rant About GTD
- On New Beginnings (And More About Your Host)
- Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
- How to Use Basecamp and Backback In Perfect Harmony
- How to Chill Out
- Productivity Tweet of the Week(ish): Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
- Eliminating Distractions is Easy.
- Productivity Systems Don’t Suck, But Sometimes I Do
- Are you Ready?
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Archives
How to Help Great Productivity Blogs Get Discovered
It is my observation that writers of niche blogs have a fairly predictable shelf life. Most non-news-telling bloggers that see some early successes last a good 2-3 years before they stop posting. Most of the time the value posts are made within the first 12 months and it goes downhill from there. (Side tip: whenever you discover a new blog on a topic of interest that boasts a solid readership today, find the archives and start from the beginning. You’ll rarely be disappointed.)
There are only so many tips one person can have for how to make widgets, shave your body hair, make money online, collect monkeys, or whatever else may get a bloggers goat for a while. The symptoms are the same: deceleration of posting, the authors posts seem forced and/or repetitive, more guest posters, etc. My gut tells me we’re coming to an end of a cycle of higher-profile bloggers in the productivity world. I think its a shame because many were an invaluable source of inspiration and great ideas.
Here’s to New Blogs With Great Content in Need of Readers
A few weeks ago a fellow named Chuck Westbrook started a movement designed to give up-and-coming bloggers a chance to gain some exposure. Chris Brogan caught wind of the concept and tweeted about it to his ~20k followers on Twitter. Later Darren from Problogger and Guy Kawasaki tossed in some links and really gave the idea some legs.
Chuck is on to something, but my definition of an interesting blogger is slightly different that what has been selected so far. I like reading what helpful and/or inspirational productivity or personal development-oriented bloggers have to say. Since joining The Cranking Widgets Blog I’ve already been introduced to some new authors that I’ve found very valuable and are still loving their blogs. I’m confident there are plenty more out there that I’ve yet to discover.
I want to be introduced to other success-minded bloggers who are still excited about how to help others get more stuff done and reach their goals. I want to share the ones that are particularly valuable with you by giving a more in depth review or interview… Maybe even put something about them in the sidebar for a week or two. (If I get too many submissions, I’ll share my favorites on Twitter — follow me here.)
My Criteria
This one will be a moving target, but generally I’d say:
- I’m not interested in GTD calendars, notebooks or other productivity pr0n. I’ve seen some newer bloggers that appear to be all about trying to make a buck instead of helping others. I can’t blame them, but it adds too much noise.
- Insight and passion are key. That’s the beauty of blogs. “Ordinary” people can write about their passions and it actually shows! I’d like to give exposure to people who are passionate about helping people get more done and reach their goals.
- 5k RSS readers or less. I’m happy to promote the Zen Habits’ and Lifehacker’s of the world since they are definitely high-value, but I’m looking for smaller-scale. I realize 5k RSS readers is pretty significant already. The main objective is finding high-value blogs that aren’t already a “household name.”
How You Can Help
I would be grateful if you could help shine some more light on the quality bloggers that are out there. A couple options:
- Please share your favorite productivity or personal development oriented blog with our fellow readers via comments. Give us a link and tell us why you like it.
- If you have a blog and you feel like it fits the bill, writing up a detailed post that summarizes what you’re all about would be helpful. How do you like to preach productivity/reaching goals? Do you post tips? General concepts? Inspiration? What is your mission (following your passion is a perfectly good mission btw)? Highlighting your favorite articles that you’ve written so far would be value-added (I’m sure your readers wouldn’t mind either.) Include a link to your post as a comment below.
I have already selected the first blogger that I’ll be highlighting. He’s someone that Brett introduced me to a couple months ago and I’m grateful to be able to read what he has to say. I’ll be sharing his blog with you next week.
For now, please submit away! I’m really looking forward to discovering and sharing new blogs!
My Scandelous Confession and A Royal Rant About GTD
I have a confession to make. Actually, I’m pretty sure most lovers of GTD have a similar confession, but first I need to start by expressing some assumptions about most of us who are reading this right now (and feel free to challenge any of these via comments).
Most of Us…
Most of us have read Getting Things Done by The David and most of us loved it immediately. Most of us injected the principles into our work flow as quickly as possible. Most of us felt a sense of peace and control as a result.
Most of us found Merlin Mann (how couldn’t we?) Most of us bought 3×5 index cards to capture thoughts and created Hipster-PDAs to hold the cards. Most of us bought Moleskine notebooks to manage our lists because that was the cool thing to do and that’s what Merlin Mann liked best.
Then most of us went digital and bounced between Omnifocus and Remember the Milk and Things and Backpack for a while because this software was supposed to help make managing our lives digitally a lot easier. Most of us realized that bouncing between each of these pieces of software was a huge time investment just to trade one problem for another, yet most of us ignored it and kept switching anyway.
Most of us have tried our best to regularly process our inbox, maintain our project lists, maintain our to-do lists by context. Most of us saw the GTD honeymoon period come to an end and became frustrated by the overhead it took to keep our GTD system happy. Most of us got annoyed that the stuff had to go from our different inbaskets, like paper, Gmail, rss or Evernote, to Google Calendar and Remember The Milk or Things or Omnifocus or Backpack for doing. Most of us got fed up with needing to use 4-5 different systems to in order to follow GTD.
And then at some point most of us found ourselves procrastinating. Most of us stopped being diligent about promptly processing every last piece of stuff in our inbox. Most of us stopped doing the weekly review because it was really just too hard to find the time to sit down for an hour without distraction to evaluate our lists and our lives every week. Most of us know we should be processing and reviewing regularly. Most of us replaced the forgotten feelings of stress and being overwhelmed with guilt.
Most of us sung the praises of GTD to anyone who will listen, then secretly found it to be a pain in the ass in practice. Most of us want an easier GTD and/or a better way to productively manage what life throws at us.
My Confession…
On New Beginnings (And More About Your Host)
Now that Brett has officialy retired from productivity blogging, I’m sure long-time readers are wondering what will come of The Cranking Widgets Blog. The short answer is easy: CW is, and will continue to be, mainly about productivity. There is, however, a long answer.
What a blogger blogs about and the spin they put on topics will always be driven by their own experiences, interests and values. For Brett, this often led us outside of the realm of productivity, as evidenced by his insightful and entertaining posts about parenting, posts about tattos and posts about drinking games.
The range of topics that I discuss will most likely morph a bit while I find what feels most comfortable. So far all you’ve really learned about me is that I love productivity. If my interests and values will play into what I write about, then the only fair thing to do at this juncture is share more about who I really am and what makes me tick. After much reflection, I’ve come up with a list of 8 things that will have the greatest impact:
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
About two years ago, I first laid my hands on a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen. I tore through it and feebly decided that I wanted to share my discoveries and ideas with the world, so this blog was born.
There have definitely been ups and downs. I went from posting like a madman to hardly posting at all, in completely inconsistent spurts. While I tried my best to keep you kind people entertained and satiated, I definitely missed the mark on more than one occasion.
So, it is with more than a little sadness that I tell you this - I’m no longer going to be writing for The Cranking Widgets Blog. The site will live on in the very capable hands of my esteemed colleague, Andy Parkinson (who has been handling a good chunk of the writing duties around here lately), but the time has come for me to pass the baton and move on to greener pastures.
How to Use Basecamp and Backback In Perfect Harmony
I’ve read a lot of posts out there in the blogosphere trying to answer whether Basecamp or Backpack is the best solution for managing projects. The fact is that there is no reason that you should have to, or want to, choose one over the other. I have been using both for about a year now and I’m happy to be able to share what I’ve learned so far. I recognize some of you may not have heard of these tools, so let’s start with what they are.
What is Backpack:
Taken from the Backpack website: “Backpack is a web-based service that makes organizing your information incredibly easy. Backpack lets you make pages which can contain any combination of notes, to-dos, images, files, etc. You can keep these pages to yourself or share them with colleagues, co-workers, friends, or family.” (You can also see how Brett uses Backpack as a general GTD system here)
What is Basecamp:
Taken from the Basecamp website: “Basecamp takes a fresh, novel approach to project collaboration. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.”
First, I Had Backpack.
How to Chill Out
With all of this talk of accomplishing tasks, people like you and me can easily lose sight of one of the great pleasures of life. Freaking relaxing.I can tell you that I am usually finding myself consulting lists and checking inboxes when I should be enjoying the movie I’m watching or the book I’m reading. I get so caught up in the little mini-rush of being organized and productive that I don’t stop to smell the roses nearly as often as I ought to.
One way to curb this nasty habit is to pull the braindead move of putting your lists away. Whatever your data vault of choice happens to be, put it somewhere where it won’t be calling your name.
Productivity Tweet of the Week(ish): Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
Not only am I a GTD late bloomer, I’m a Twitter late bloomer too! Before giving the service a fair shake, I kept reading blogger after blogging telling the same story: “I didn’t get it until I tried it for a week, now I love it!” I tried it for a week, I didn’t get it. I asked Brett to help explain it to me. He did… I still didn’t get it. Then all of a sudden it clicked. I’m not sure why it took so long, but all of a sudden I’m sold just the same as the rest (you can follow me here 
)!
For those who haven’t joined up yet, the coolness factor is probably the hardest thing in the Internet world to explain. I know people I follow are broadcasting their 140 characters to hundreds or thousands of people, but somehow reading about whats going on in their lives makes it seem more intimate than it really is. I can turn a tweet from someone else into a conversation at any point, as long as I have something valuable to give back to the conversation starter. We exchange a couple replies and we both go on our merry way. Quick, easy, interesting and non-committal.
I’m going to start a regular(ish) post highlighting my favorite productivity tweet of the week(ish) — I add the “ish” because I’m not sure I’ll be able to find one worth mentioning, but I’ll do my best. Luckily this week we have a great one to kick things off. It comes from James of Organize IT and here’s what he had to say:
Eliminating Distractions is Easy.
OK, maybe it’s not “easy”, but there’s certainly no magic to it. Books upon volumes have been penned about this fairly straightforward topic; books full of hacks, wisdom and tricks that will help you maintain your focus and not get sidetracked. But I’ve got some news for you, Jack…
It’s entirely up to you. Anything that you allow into your peripheral vision while you’re hammering away on that big proposal is, yep, your fault. That said, it’s time for a little thing the Russians call “tough love”.
When people in this day and age refer to distractions, most of the time they’re talking about computer-related things. Mind-yankers like instant messaging applications, Facebook, your fantasy underwater basketweaving team, etc. You need to relegate things like this to your discretionary time (obviously). And if you want to remove them as distractions, you have to get freaking guerrilla about it. Removing them from your bookmark toolbar in Firefox isn’t going to cut it (as you probably already know), because the temptation is too great and the satisfaction is too immediately had.
Productivity Systems Don’t Suck, But Sometimes I Do
Few would argue that Merlin Mann is the Godfather of GTD/productivity blogging. About a month ago he posted Four Years and followed it up with Time, Attention, and Creative Work. If you haven’t read these, please do so now… It’s good stuff.
What do you think?
I look at both of these posts in a positive light. They are sobering reminders of how our personal productivity systems are nothing more than a means to an end. Why we produce boils down to reasons that live deep inside of us. I focus on being productive because my personal goals and commitments require me to get a lot of things done in a short period of time. I am passionate about productivity systems because they allow my over-achieving, over-estimating self to get closer to achieving my goals faster and with minimal affects on my health and overall well-being.
Are you Ready?
If you were to ask me for the true marks of a really productive person (which I’m not, incidentally, so take this with a grain of salt), I wouldn’t say anything about their work area, notebook collection, or pocket contents. I wouldn’t even necessarily cite their ability to consistently meet deadlines (because that just means they may not have very many commitments). You know what I’d say?
They’re ready. Like, for just about anything.
No, I’m not referring to the type of superhero cool that some are able to maintain during times of extreme stress or duress (think Jack Bauer). I’m talking about the guy who, when you walk up to his desk unannounced, turns away from his computer, busts out a clean sheet of paper and a pen and gives you his full attention. Immediately.
This is one of those skills that takes a hell of a long time to cultivate, and can really only be mastered by those who have two things:
- A hell of a lot of responsibility
- A hell of a lot of time to practice changing their immediate focus
For the guy whose job it is to make sure that the equipment at the oil refinery doesn’t explode, this may not be something he gets to spend any time working on (or maybe it is, hell if I know). When your job requires you to be ready to switch to firefighter mode at a moments notice, you’ll be faced with a “sink or swim” type of situation. After an innumerable amount of “sinks”, one day you’ll finally start to clumsily swim. After a whole mess of that, then (I imagine) you’ll be “there”.
Just to reiterate, I don’t see myself as possessing this trait. I can change focus easily enough, but the cost of doing so is incredibly apparent when I try to return to the original, pre-interruption task. So I’m giving advice on a topic that I, frankly, have no business giving advice on. But that’s how I imagine this type of skill being manifest.
So, are you ready?
