Productivity

Using the Same Bat Babe Ruth Used Won’t Make You Babe Ruth

My wife is a photographer, right on the cusp of going professional. People who are familiar with her work constantly turn to her for advice on photography and Photoshop. They want to know what tools she uses to get the results she gets, such as what lenses and Photoshop plug-ins to use. Often they end [...]

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Developers, You Do More Than Code

When it comes to estimating, developers live in an idealistic world. Despite repeated experiences of constant interruptions causing projects to overrun estimates, developers tend to look at subsequent projects with wishful thinking. It’s strange. Most developers associate so much pain with the last minute rush to deadlines, you’d think they’d surely tack time onto their [...]

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Talking to Yourself

When I drive to and from work, I listen to podcasts. It makes the trip go faster, and allows me to focus on something other than the traffic. It also takes my mind off the day’s events if it was a rather difficult one. Quiet Time But sometimes I need to shut everything off and [...]

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Wanting to Do Everything

I’ve been sick on and off for the past few weeks. It reached a pinnacle last week when I inevitably came down with the flu. I hadn’t been this sick in a few years, and like many of us who’s experienced this, not being able to do anything towards my goals was driving me absolutely [...]

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Autosave – Is it Too Late to Standardize?

One of Alan Cooper’s arguments in user interface design has been that explicitly asking the user to save a file is a waste of time. I’ve always agreed with that, but I wonder if we’re too late in making autosave the standard. These days, many applications have an autosave feature in addition to an explicit [...]

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Self Taught

Scott H. Young is one of the wisest and most intelligent self-help writers I’ve read, and the fact that he just started college makes this even more impressive. It’ll be interesting to follow his writing as he matures, and to see how he reacts as he experiences life as an adult. I have a strong [...]

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Using the Calendar to Focus

The ability to focus is one of the most powerful habits that a person can establish. The reason people try so hard to get organized with to-do lists, GTD, etc., is because of the inherent need to free themselves up to focus on something important to accomplish. There’s a building frustration over the lack of [...]

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A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama

We all learned that phrase in elementary school when learning about palindromes, but this is taking on a new meaning for me. So many of us feel that we accomplish way too little from day to day. The majority of our accomplishments take place at work, likely because other people depend upon us. But many [...]

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Key Launcher Experiment, So Far…

As you may have read, I’ve been testing several “key launcher” type of utilities for about two weeks so far. Although a key feature (sorry — no pun intended) of several of these utilities is an “autotext” feature, this is the least of my needs for this type of app (coincidentally, “app” was just expanded [...]

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The Go-To Person’s Conundrum

Are you one of the go-to people in your company? How do you like it? How long have you been one? When you first realized you were one, how did it make you feel? Did it give you a feeling of security? Did it boost your confidence and ego? Did it give you courage? Surely [...]

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Key Launcher Disclosure and Disclaimer

Amazing. I’ve only been posting on my blog regularly for a few weeks, and already I find myself in a position where I have to clarify something. It seems that by posting my intentions on trying out some “key launcher”-style apps, I’ve attracted some authors and employees of these companies. The power of Technorati, I [...]

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