"I'm not interested". "I love your energy and you're doing a great job selling, but I'm not interested, mate." "I can tell you REALLY want me to, but not interested. Thanks though! Happy travels!" "No, zero interested". There's magic in those phrases. There's abundant, liberating, FREEDOM in those phrases. What do those phrases do? Those phrases reclaim your time. Those phrases reclaim your life. In life, all you really have is time. It's arguable that you have decisions and time, but for someone committed to taking action (less decision-making), you truly only have time. Utilizing your time with the right decisions will earn you money, put you in the best place in the world, where you want to be.
If you don't have the capacity to say those phrases, and control YOUR time, do you know how dangerous life will become??!!! Your life will become someone else's life. Some salesman who invites you to test drive his car, or some teacher who wants you to pay them to take her class...all of those things you will do and people will drain you of money, drain you of time, drain you of life.
People may get offended if you politely tell them you're not interested. Guess what? Their feeling offended is NOT your problem! If someone says to you "I'm not interested" and I feel offended because someone expressed their opinion about an offer, I'd have a seriously low-esteem or "taking things personally" or confidence problem! So honor someone being offended by you politely saying "I'm not interested, but I appreciate your offer" as some problem THEY have!!
If someone "NEEDs" you to accept their offer for the sake of their own self-esteem, emotional well-being they have a serious problem!! Acknowledge that clinginess as a problem (obviously, they've tied emotional validity to someone accepting their offer which is not true!)
So cultivating the comfort and ease of saying "I'm Not interested" reclaims the power and clarity back in life!
I could list all the times NOT saying "i'm not interested" and then continuing on my current problem/agenda created massive havoc for me, but I won't do that...the list is too long! Here's a sampler:
Was sorting contacts in address book. Friend invited me to go to bar. What happened because I FAILED to say "Not Intersted".
--Almost got beat up.
--Almost got assaulted
--Got locked out of car for 24 hours
--Got shinsplits
--Had to ice legs for next 4-5 days
What happened because I didn't say "Not interested": I drove to the bar, met the friends, started hitting on a girl, her Iraq meathead 2.5 IQ boyfriend showed up and said "get back here punk" and almost assaulted me because he thought I was stealing his girlfriend (which I was), then I got back at the valet area late so my car was locked for 24 hours. I then had to wander around Los angeles for 24 hours wearing sandals. I got shin splints and thought I seriously injured my leg.
What Would've Happened if I successfully said "Not Interested":
--Productivity on my addressbook
--Clarity on all my contacts
--Great peace of mind, freedom of thought
--Greater likelihood of connecting with good people in the future
--Less baggage with my communications
--Clarity on who my contact friends are
"I'm not interested" is a great thing to do!
Showing posts with label Productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Productivity. Show all posts
5.02.2009
2009 POP Suite Upgrades!
There were some problems with the 2008 Code. 2009 Organizational code of computer and household files has greatly improved so that all computer files are primarily all mobile accessible from ANY mobile phone, laptop, and/or desktop. Amazing improvement! And for the reference files all of them are organized in a fashion so that manual backups are smooth and simple (in contrast the 2008 organizational system had scattered or less-consolidated files). The name of the game of 09 is Consolidation and Mobile access!
Basic Breakdown of all organization.
bu/ent holds ALL non-personal created files (blog image files, hollywood movies, iTunes mp3 from artists)
bu/my holds all my project files, audio recordings, film projects and film finished products, as well as all ebooks, and articles written. The key difference is that the all the finished audio, film, and document products are consolidated in the same folder, my/docs/ref/all_polished_finished_complete_audio_docs_film so that specific folder (the fruits of the work) can be easily backed up on a small to moderately sized flash. In other words all my files (my own creations bu/my and others creations but still my files bu/ent) are all consolidated adn then within that the fruists of all my work the final finished audio, film, and document files are all consolidated as well! We've got consolidation within consolidation!! haha!
The greatest feature though is the my/docs/ref file which contains all documents I created. Within that there's convos and correspondance for ALL letters (thank yous, old letters to friends, letters to this or that, text chats saved) saved, a food_recipes folder, various project folders organized by Year now which is MUCH more efficient than by topic which always ends up being confusing and sloppy. I've discovered time organizers (chronological by date for example) to be some of the best organizing methods. Additionally I have "Jobs and School Apps" for Alll the applications, job interview, college essays, and graduate essays and application work I did. I have a Personal Finance Success (PFS) folder for a few receipts and financial research I did to increase my fico score, I have all my school files in bu/my/docs/ref/school all MASSIVELY organized by school year, semester, and class, making that information easily accessible. Additionally, I have a writing-creative/nonfiction and writing-poetry for partial writing projects and a personal_brainstorming_ideas folder for a conglomeration of writings that I felt would be useful in a motivational seminar so that folder is a collection hodgepodge of folder files that I added that I felt would be resourceful in a motivational seminar.
Then gdocs contains polished books for reference, journals for review, and then 24 MainCopy docs which I can update from any computer (the reference and journal folders are basically read only) the include things like "forgiveness gratitude list", "current year IN journal", "temp_Things" which organizes all things to do, and other such files that you'd want to be able to update from anywhere as well as access for review from anywhere!
So then backuping up is a synch. There's a folder called bu/distributed_files_around_system which contain files that are distributed around the system, there's only maybe 4-5 or so that are all aliases, so you can just Find Original with those aliases and then consolidate those and then EVERYTHING is in bu already! And to make smaller back ups, one merely has to utilize the bu/docs/ref/all_polished_finished_complete project. Excellent!
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A Quick Breakdown of the Individual Concepts and Changes
ALL accessible from ANY iphone, laptop, desktop.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 9:01 PM (@ideas, @Tasks, @Waiting For) are ALL obsolete. @ideas is unnecassry an idea you share in convos or in a journal you don't need a damn list for it. Tasks gets jotted down on your temp_things list. and waiting-for, definitely DO NOT have a waiting for list. That will make you insane. You ahve three types of waiting for:
web waiting-fors (forum responses, page responses, forum issues, questiosn on boards) that you put in a safari or firefox toolbar
email waiting fors (you can slap a WF gmail label on certain emails you want to track, simple)
Phone wiating fors (you simply write SENTMSG in notes (or SMSG or your own abbereviaton) and then can do a smart contacts folder searching for that keyword so that it automatically tracks those. So a quick check of the Apple Address Book smart folder in contacts, email WF label, and the firefox "oi" (I use "oi" for open issues, my web version of waiting-for) folder will give you scope and a closed loop on anything for which you're waiting for a reponse. NOTICE that NO LISTS were used in waiting for tracking!! It's a folder of the actual sites (web), search tag SENTMSG (contacts), or email label WF (for email). Never maike a WF list it will be too crazy and you'll spend 4-5 as much time tracking stuff on it than getting things done and responded too. Less lists!!
Hardware (in office and home)
Basics of What you need in any home (you'll have to go out and purchase these or screws for them or find them in the trash or acquire them in someway (I found an AMAZINGLY-working lamp that someone had thrown out. One man's trash can be one man's treasure). There's NO way around this. If you don't have these items, they sound trivial, but if you don't have them, you will not stay organized, constantly "lose" keys and wallets and your life will be in shambles.
My FAVORITE thing to do is utilize wallspace. I was an expert in geometry in school and we live in a 3-dimensional world and should treat it like that. Utilize wall space with hangers and utilzie height. Huge space-saving clutter-elimination tips.
View my full post on how:
Kitchen. All pots and pans stay stacked on the countertop. I dislike putting things in drawers. Plus, having them out encourages you to use them to make home-made cooking. I have one pot, one large kettle pot, 3 pans. Those 5 always stay on three burners out. Their tops are stored in the oven drawer with the muffin tin. That's all I need and more than I'll EVER need for pots and pans (and I can do some elaborate cooking!). Countertops are clean. The papertowel roll is under the sink in cabinet to encourage you to use less papertowels. If it's not kept in a cupboard you can go through papertowels to quickly. Countertops are clean. I like having a plant in the kitchen. Adds life to the room -- to any room. I keep my retainer in most of the day because it discourages over-eating so I I have my container case in the corner next to the knives. Silverware. Silverware I primarily all store with the fancy cups and plates high up in an inaccessible cupboard. I am one person so I ahve 2 bowls, 2 plates, and a spoon, fork, knife, and chopsticks that I keep in one cupbard, but other than that I use know other silverware or plates. Minimizing the amount of silverware and plates you use creates simplicity and minimizes dishwashing. The 2 plates and 2 cups may be too much as it is, as I enjoy simply having a piece of fruit or a standing meal. I think anytime you get so into food that you sit down to eat it with a fork and knife for long periods of time, you've wired your goals incorrectly. Eat food that nourishes and revitalizes you; enjoying the food is secondary, after all it's designed to be sustanence!
I think in 2008, I encouraged keeping things drawers. 2009 is the opposite. You generate sooo much clarity simply seeing all your items at a quick glance with them out of drawers! So no drawers!
Clothes
ing things in drawers. 2009 is the opposite. The only items I keep in drawers are the items right beside the door (drawer for hat collection, drawer for outbox files, drawer for dog collar, drawer for running gloves). All other items are out of drawers. I even took the doors off the closets. All non-formal clothing is on ONE shelf. This includes pants, shorts, athletic clothing, casual collared shirts, t-shirts, undershirts and socks, dress socks, and boxerbriefs in three boxes on the floor infront of the shelf. It's MARVELOUS to take a 1-second glance at the shelf and see ALL non-formal clothing you have without having to open multiple drawers, rummage through belongings. All clothing laid out nice and neat folded well on one shelf. Being able to take one quick glance at something (a undoored closet, a shelf, one computer file) and see ALL of every type of item is MARVELOUSLY simple, clarify, and creates a sense of satisfaction. Other positive side effects of this are that you'll spend less on junk and purchase less clothes and items in general. When I consolidated all my items and saw that I had 5 collared shirts, and 11 collared informal button-up shirts (16 casual collared shirts total) the idea of EVER needing to purchase any bit of clothing like that EVER again felt absurd. Additionally, having 5 pairs of informal shorts, and 4 pairs of informal jean-cordoroy-cargo pants, you realize how much "STUFF" you already have. I have 15 formal collared (like the ones you wear with a tie) shirts, 6 suits, 2 dress vests, 5 belts. About 14 pairs of white socks, 5 pairs of dress socks, 9 white undershirts, 4 colored undershirts, 6 tshirts, 7 running shirts, 1 running vest, 4 running short shorts, 4 basketball/athletic shorts, 1 long running pant, 2 warm comfy pajama pants, 3 long-sleeved sweater shirts, 1 sweatshirt, and my leather jacket and windproof jacket and 2 baseball caps I wear I hang on pegs by the door. That feels REALLY collected and clarifying and simplifying and less scattered to consolidate that and you feel happy having such an organized awareness of your clothes. I could take that clothes inventory by glancing at the clothes shelf and quickly glancing at the formal (infrequently worn clothes) closet. (3 suits, 1 dress pant, and 5 formal collared shirts I keep with the outer sweater, sweatshirt and ties, and belts, and comfy pants. I also have 6 ties. And two pairs of dress pants.
Do you have any idea how LONG it would take most people to figure out the exact number of all types of clothes like the ones I just listed? Hours? Days? Months?! haha! It took me literally 5 minutes. THAT type of organization produces indescribable liberation. It's great!! Honestly, I'd rather have star trek clothes (all one uniform would mean less indecision about "what to wear" and in the future hopefully we'll never have to worry about what to wear as something insignificant as clothes will vanish or be made uniform). Life's fun naked. haha!
Here's the list in list form:
Miscellaneous -- 24
Office
Basic Breakdown of all organization.
bu/ent holds ALL non-personal created files (blog image files, hollywood movies, iTunes mp3 from artists)
bu/my holds all my project files, audio recordings, film projects and film finished products, as well as all ebooks, and articles written. The key difference is that the all the finished audio, film, and document products are consolidated in the same folder, my/docs/ref/all_polished_finished_complete_audio_docs_film so that specific folder (the fruits of the work) can be easily backed up on a small to moderately sized flash. In other words all my files (my own creations bu/my and others creations but still my files bu/ent) are all consolidated adn then within that the fruists of all my work the final finished audio, film, and document files are all consolidated as well! We've got consolidation within consolidation!! haha!
The greatest feature though is the my/docs/ref file which contains all documents I created. Within that there's convos and correspondance for ALL letters (thank yous, old letters to friends, letters to this or that, text chats saved) saved, a food_recipes folder, various project folders organized by Year now which is MUCH more efficient than by topic which always ends up being confusing and sloppy. I've discovered time organizers (chronological by date for example) to be some of the best organizing methods. Additionally I have "Jobs and School Apps" for Alll the applications, job interview, college essays, and graduate essays and application work I did. I have a Personal Finance Success (PFS) folder for a few receipts and financial research I did to increase my fico score, I have all my school files in bu/my/docs/ref/school all MASSIVELY organized by school year, semester, and class, making that information easily accessible. Additionally, I have a writing-creative/nonfiction and writing-poetry for partial writing projects and a personal_brainstorming_ideas folder for a conglomeration of writings that I felt would be useful in a motivational seminar so that folder is a collection hodgepodge of folder files that I added that I felt would be resourceful in a motivational seminar.
Then gdocs contains polished books for reference, journals for review, and then 24 MainCopy docs which I can update from any computer (the reference and journal folders are basically read only) the include things like "forgiveness gratitude list", "current year IN journal", "temp_Things" which organizes all things to do, and other such files that you'd want to be able to update from anywhere as well as access for review from anywhere!
So then backuping up is a synch. There's a folder called bu/distributed_files_around_system which contain files that are distributed around the system, there's only maybe 4-5 or so that are all aliases, so you can just Find Original with those aliases and then consolidate those and then EVERYTHING is in bu already! And to make smaller back ups, one merely has to utilize the bu/docs/ref/all_polished_finished_complete project. Excellent!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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A Quick Breakdown of the Individual Concepts and Changes
ALL accessible from ANY iphone, laptop, desktop.
- Email -- Gmail optionally IMAPPED to Apple Mail
- Docums
- MainCopy
- Referenence
- Journals
edit April 6, 2009 -- 9:01 PM (@ideas, @Tasks, @Waiting For) are ALL obsolete. @ideas is unnecassry an idea you share in convos or in a journal you don't need a damn list for it. Tasks gets jotted down on your temp_things list. and waiting-for, definitely DO NOT have a waiting for list. That will make you insane. You ahve three types of waiting for:
web waiting-fors (forum responses, page responses, forum issues, questiosn on boards) that you put in a safari or firefox toolbar
email waiting fors (you can slap a WF gmail label on certain emails you want to track, simple)
Phone wiating fors (you simply write SENTMSG in notes (or SMSG or your own abbereviaton) and then can do a smart contacts folder searching for that keyword so that it automatically tracks those. So a quick check of the Apple Address Book smart folder in contacts, email WF label, and the firefox "oi" (I use "oi" for open issues, my web version of waiting-for) folder will give you scope and a closed loop on anything for which you're waiting for a reponse. NOTICE that NO LISTS were used in waiting for tracking!! It's a folder of the actual sites (web), search tag SENTMSG (contacts), or email label WF (for email). Never maike a WF list it will be too crazy and you'll spend 4-5 as much time tracking stuff on it than getting things done and responded too. Less lists!!
Hardware (in office and home)
Basics of What you need in any home (you'll have to go out and purchase these or screws for them or find them in the trash or acquire them in someway (I found an AMAZINGLY-working lamp that someone had thrown out. One man's trash can be one man's treasure). There's NO way around this. If you don't have these items, they sound trivial, but if you don't have them, you will not stay organized, constantly "lose" keys and wallets and your life will be in shambles.
My FAVORITE thing to do is utilize wallspace. I was an expert in geometry in school and we live in a 3-dimensional world and should treat it like that. Utilize wall space with hangers and utilzie height. Huge space-saving clutter-elimination tips.
- Hangers (ALL types of necessary hangers for Clothes)
- Normal wire-plastic hangers -- for all collared shirts
- 10 Nice Hangers -- for suits and sport jackets
- 10 plastic hangers for any suits/suitpants
- 4-5 screws in the wall for belts (next to active dress clothes)
- Hangers -- Wall
- Hook Keyring hanger (near door or a stand near door to put wallet, keys, and outside to-go items)
- Coat & Hat hanger near door
- Kitchen
- Water Kettle (for tea and hot water -- an essential)
- Water filter (Brita)
- Boxes -- In fridge to organize items
- Fridge -- remove many of the shelves and drawers in the fridge for quick access to items
- Cooking -- 1 large stew pot, 1 soup pan, 1 mini frying pan, 1-2 cooking pan (for stirfries)
- Knives
- Knife sharpener
- 1-2 spatulas
- 1 tongs
- 1 kettle ladel
- 1-2 mixer giant spoons (For protein powder)
- spices and spice storage
- soy sauce (bulk)
- hot sauce (bulk)
- Measuring cup and funnels (for conserving bottles and pouring fluids into bottles
- Container for Flour
- Container for Sugar
- Cleaning
- 2 ammonia
- 1 windex bulk
- 1 windex spray
- ziploc bag of -- spare sponges, one rag, one scrubber brush mini)
- large scrubber brush
- carpet cleaner
- dishwaster detergent (bulk -- should have to purchase this like once every 2 years b/c of massive conservation adn washing own dishes frequently!)
- dial handsoap (bulk) -- refill the two hand soaps around house; only need to buy this 1x/year
- dishwasher soap (bulk) -- should have to buy every 1x/year use to refill the third and final "handdisnser" but this is for dishes
- 3 hand dispeners (2 used for refilling with dial soap; 1 used for refilling with dishwasher soap)
- Toilet
- plunger
- toilet bowel cleaner (bulk/generic, you should have to buy this like once every two years)
- toilet bowl cleaner
- tray for those things (keep this stuff in it's own section lol)
View my full post on how:
Buying Bulk Saves Money, Time, the Environment: Win-Win-Win
Kitchen. All pots and pans stay stacked on the countertop. I dislike putting things in drawers. Plus, having them out encourages you to use them to make home-made cooking. I have one pot, one large kettle pot, 3 pans. Those 5 always stay on three burners out. Their tops are stored in the oven drawer with the muffin tin. That's all I need and more than I'll EVER need for pots and pans (and I can do some elaborate cooking!). Countertops are clean. The papertowel roll is under the sink in cabinet to encourage you to use less papertowels. If it's not kept in a cupboard you can go through papertowels to quickly. Countertops are clean. I like having a plant in the kitchen. Adds life to the room -- to any room. I keep my retainer in most of the day because it discourages over-eating so I I have my container case in the corner next to the knives. Silverware. Silverware I primarily all store with the fancy cups and plates high up in an inaccessible cupboard. I am one person so I ahve 2 bowls, 2 plates, and a spoon, fork, knife, and chopsticks that I keep in one cupbard, but other than that I use know other silverware or plates. Minimizing the amount of silverware and plates you use creates simplicity and minimizes dishwashing. The 2 plates and 2 cups may be too much as it is, as I enjoy simply having a piece of fruit or a standing meal. I think anytime you get so into food that you sit down to eat it with a fork and knife for long periods of time, you've wired your goals incorrectly. Eat food that nourishes and revitalizes you; enjoying the food is secondary, after all it's designed to be sustanence!
I think in 2008, I encouraged keeping things drawers. 2009 is the opposite. You generate sooo much clarity simply seeing all your items at a quick glance with them out of drawers! So no drawers!
Clothes
ing things in drawers. 2009 is the opposite. The only items I keep in drawers are the items right beside the door (drawer for hat collection, drawer for outbox files, drawer for dog collar, drawer for running gloves). All other items are out of drawers. I even took the doors off the closets. All non-formal clothing is on ONE shelf. This includes pants, shorts, athletic clothing, casual collared shirts, t-shirts, undershirts and socks, dress socks, and boxerbriefs in three boxes on the floor infront of the shelf. It's MARVELOUS to take a 1-second glance at the shelf and see ALL non-formal clothing you have without having to open multiple drawers, rummage through belongings. All clothing laid out nice and neat folded well on one shelf. Being able to take one quick glance at something (a undoored closet, a shelf, one computer file) and see ALL of every type of item is MARVELOUSLY simple, clarify, and creates a sense of satisfaction. Other positive side effects of this are that you'll spend less on junk and purchase less clothes and items in general. When I consolidated all my items and saw that I had 5 collared shirts, and 11 collared informal button-up shirts (16 casual collared shirts total) the idea of EVER needing to purchase any bit of clothing like that EVER again felt absurd. Additionally, having 5 pairs of informal shorts, and 4 pairs of informal jean-cordoroy-cargo pants, you realize how much "STUFF" you already have. I have 15 formal collared (like the ones you wear with a tie) shirts, 6 suits, 2 dress vests, 5 belts. About 14 pairs of white socks, 5 pairs of dress socks, 9 white undershirts, 4 colored undershirts, 6 tshirts, 7 running shirts, 1 running vest, 4 running short shorts, 4 basketball/athletic shorts, 1 long running pant, 2 warm comfy pajama pants, 3 long-sleeved sweater shirts, 1 sweatshirt, and my leather jacket and windproof jacket and 2 baseball caps I wear I hang on pegs by the door. That feels REALLY collected and clarifying and simplifying and less scattered to consolidate that and you feel happy having such an organized awareness of your clothes. I could take that clothes inventory by glancing at the clothes shelf and quickly glancing at the formal (infrequently worn clothes) closet. (3 suits, 1 dress pant, and 5 formal collared shirts I keep with the outer sweater, sweatshirt and ties, and belts, and comfy pants. I also have 6 ties. And two pairs of dress pants.
Do you have any idea how LONG it would take most people to figure out the exact number of all types of clothes like the ones I just listed? Hours? Days? Months?! haha! It took me literally 5 minutes. THAT type of organization produces indescribable liberation. It's great!! Honestly, I'd rather have star trek clothes (all one uniform would mean less indecision about "what to wear" and in the future hopefully we'll never have to worry about what to wear as something insignificant as clothes will vanish or be made uniform). Life's fun naked. haha!
Here's the list in list form:
Miscellaneous -- 24
- Jacket -- 2 (GREAT windproof the best awesome black one and 1 black leather jacket from Venice, italy)
- Belts -- 5
- Ties -- 6 (all kept in this folding tie carrier thing)
- Total Shoes -- 11 (I rarely throw out shoes, some are from 10 years ago haha!)
- Dress Shoes --2 (1 in house, the other pair I've had for over 11 years and that pair I keep in the car. I've had multiple occasions going to places and needed dress shoes but didn't have them. LOL. Those incidents will increase, simply because I hate bars/clubs and will likely not go to many more (I hopefully/trust I won't anymore sweet).
- Sandals -- 1 (Oneil)
- Informal Shoes -- 3(old skater, old skater, boots)
- Athletic Shoes -- 5 (3 running, 1 soccer, 1 track)
Office
- Printer
- 1-4 spare ink cartridges
- ream of paper
- Stapler
- Tons of stickies and scratch paper (can be 1/4 of 8x11 paper)
- Container for pens
- Tons of pens, mechanical pencils, sharpies, and highlighters
Informal/Casual Clothing -- 26
- Shirts, Informal Collared -- 6
- Shirts, Informal Collared Buttonup -- 11
- Shorts, Informal Casual (with a belt) -- 5
- 1 grey billabong
- 1 white billabong
- 1 beige Pluge
- 1 beige Op
- 1 dark green Quicksilver (A lot of my brands are surfing brands weaved in like many of the shorts, informal collared shirts, and sandals)
- Pants, Informal Long -- Jean-Cargo-Corodory Pants -- 5 (2 blue jean, 1 black jean, 1 cordoroy, 1 beige. I basically only wear 1 paif of blue jeans out of these 5 though, my lucky brand jeans and I think the other 4 pairs are kind of other peoples possibly haha!) So the long pants are an example of something that I may change as only 1 of the five I wear. Could get few pairs of luckys as that's the only kind I wear really lol. The idea of multiple kinds of the same kind/brand/type/size of clothing is VERY good because creates connection and MASSIVE simplicity in life and less decisions about clothing which is good. Ideally, I'd like to all wear simply the same uniform or go naked so would have no clothes decisions, but that hasn't happened yet lol.
- Sweaters, Longsleeved -- 4 (2 structure-express, 1 Oneill (GREAT Brand), 1 billabong collared)
Formal -- 29
- Formal Collared Shirts --17 (likely too many! lol, but less dry cleaning fees! haha and this way I iron and wash them all in bulk which saves me time and money)
- Formal Collared Plain White -- 5
- Formal Collared Blue -- 7
- Formal Collared Misc (1 blue striped, 1 grey striped, 1 black, 1 white collared grey, 1 grey striped) -- 5
- Dress Sport Jackets -- 2
- Dress Vests -- 2
- Dress Pants -- 2 (Really nice ones. 1 grey armani and 1 grety-black pazoni italy one) nice..italiano
- Suits -- 6
- T=italian made
- N=Inheritted
- G=Gift
- TN--Beige Realta Messori Made in Italy (inheritted from pops)
- G--Grey Hickey Freeman Nordstrom (College grad gift from mom)
- --Black 3-piece Ciani (one of my faves and the only one I bought on my own $120 but looks awesome!)
- TG--1 Grey Realta Sartori Made in Italy (Highschool grad gift from mom)
- N--1 blue Konen Munchen Realta (inheritted from pops)
- TN--1 Black Pinstripe Redailli Made in Italy, Winter Tasmanian Super 120's Fabric Made in Italy (no idea what Winter Tasmania 120 means but sounds rad!) Ing Loro Tiana & Co. (inheritted from pops) cool one!
Basically 2 gift suits, one I bought on my own, and 3 inheritted from pops. Cool as!
Feel free to read my view on suits here.
Basically, they seem cheesy, I'll view a person the same as if the were in athletic clothes or a suit and think others should do the same, but others do not do that. So suits it is if neede in career mode if it'll get me income, I'd be all for suits!
Now, I mentioned the importance of putting fresh clean clothes on the bottom of the clothes stack (to ensure you cycle through all the clothes or undershirts or what have you). I have a similar method for collared forma shirts. After wearing one thoroughly (pit stains, sweating, and/or significantly wrinkled or stained) I know I'll want to wash that one so I simply hang it up behind the suits (so it won't get messed up with other collared shirts). Then after enough of those accumulate (10 or so) I'll wash those all in bulk and iron them all. I don't afford and frankly don't like to pay for dry cleaning when the meditation of it is kind of soothing (ironing) and additionally it saves me money in the longrun! :D
Athletic - 23
Athletic Short/Pants Total --9
Swim bag -- 1 blue jammer, 1 swim cap, goggles (counted as aquatic gear), a towel (counted as towels category)
Underwear -- 58
Towels -11 Total (8 total in House, 1 always in swim bag, 2 always in car)
When I wash things you put the fresh, clean, folded shirts, towels, shorts, whatever UNDERNEATH the stack of the ones already on the shelf so you don't just keep wearing and washing the same 5-6 pairs of whatever clothing. That way you cycle through the whole stack of clothes. It's important to cycle through the full stack because that way you can learn if a certain item you avoid wearing and if so, if you don't want it anymore instead of "avoiding it" in the stack of clothes, you'll simply eliminate (sell/discard/give-away) the clothing item you no longer wear. Cool!
Miscellaneous Bedding -- 10
Taking an inventory of all your STUFF is amazing. It's amazing what you find and how organized you can get with clothing alone! Sweet! I don't care if people think this is under or over-organized or ridicule or praise it; copy it or mock it. I don't care. I know this works for me and keeping an inventory of the clothes I have creates closure in my life! I know I have no need nor desire to shop and waste money on clothes. I have a TON of clothes! Which is great! And having an awareness of them is clarifying and ensures I won't waste money on something I already have and simplifies your life!
Additinally, you'll feel clear and have an inventory of your entire wardrobe. Now it may "LOOK" or sound like I'm obsessed with clothes making this list. But the truth of the matter is I am not. In fact it's the complete opposite. I hate clothes!! LOL! But my goal is to get all of the same brand/kind for each main category (like all lucky jeans in the pants-longlegged section which will create massive simplicity too. cool!!).
The other closet consists of sub-organized bins for :
Feel free to read my view on suits here.
Basically, they seem cheesy, I'll view a person the same as if the were in athletic clothes or a suit and think others should do the same, but others do not do that. So suits it is if neede in career mode if it'll get me income, I'd be all for suits!
Now, I mentioned the importance of putting fresh clean clothes on the bottom of the clothes stack (to ensure you cycle through all the clothes or undershirts or what have you). I have a similar method for collared forma shirts. After wearing one thoroughly (pit stains, sweating, and/or significantly wrinkled or stained) I know I'll want to wash that one so I simply hang it up behind the suits (so it won't get messed up with other collared shirts). Then after enough of those accumulate (10 or so) I'll wash those all in bulk and iron them all. I don't afford and frankly don't like to pay for dry cleaning when the meditation of it is kind of soothing (ironing) and additionally it saves me money in the longrun! :D
Athletic - 23
Athletic Short/Pants Total --9
- Knee-Length Basketball Allpurpose -- 4
- Short running/soccer distance shorts -- 4 (I wore these as boxers for many years lol!)
- 1 heavy duty intense athletic tights -- 1 (excellent for cold weather Awesome!)
- Long-Sleeved Athletic Shirts -- 5
- Short-Sleeved Athletic Shirts -- 5
- Athletic vest -- 1
Swim bag -- 1 blue jammer, 1 swim cap, goggles (counted as aquatic gear), a towel (counted as towels category)
Underwear -- 58
- White Undershirts -- 11 (13 if you include the other 2, but you shouldn't because they aren't wornand 1 I use in kitchen to remove hotplates and 1 other I use as a rag with cleaning supplies. Cleaning supplies btw are all consolidated neatly in kitchen with spare sponges, bulk soap, bulk windex, windex spray, another spray, spare sponges, 1-2 things of bleach/ammonium, 1 scrub brush. GREAT for cleaning!)
- Colored Undershirts -- 5 (calvin klein, 2 grey, 3 black).
- Tshirts with Logo on them (like rolling stones bigger bang, tony robbins firewalk, toes on the nose, bruce lee, costa rica, and punta laguna (from mexico) t-shirt (pretty damn cool tshirts now that I think about it, representing a LOT of my personal life experiences and interests and ME basically, wow cool! I didn't realize how my 6 t-shirts are from different countries, big events and various travels. wow! I'd kind of rather frame them than wear them because of their personal memorabilia value to me haha! cool!) -- 6
- White Socks -- 25 pairs exactly
- Dress Socks -- 5 pairs exactly
- Boxerbriefs -- 10 exactly (not much in the boxer brief category. haha I OWN only 9 pairs of boxer briefs lol wild. 12 pairs of underwear total if you unclude dance belts)
- Dance belt -- 2
Towels -11 Total (8 total in House, 1 always in swim bag, 2 always in car)
- Large -- 6 (1/6 is always in swimming bag, so 5 are only in the house and only 2 (body towel and floor mat) of those 5 are in use at any time
- Medium-Hand -- 4 ( 1/4 is in kitchen constantly to use less papertowels! and 1/4 is Constantly in the back of the car (as a backup towel for whatever needs and/or to pad the surfboard in the car so it doesn't bump)
- Miniature -- 1 (ONLY in Car glove compartment for on the fly cleaning of anything)
When I wash things you put the fresh, clean, folded shirts, towels, shorts, whatever UNDERNEATH the stack of the ones already on the shelf so you don't just keep wearing and washing the same 5-6 pairs of whatever clothing. That way you cycle through the whole stack of clothes. It's important to cycle through the full stack because that way you can learn if a certain item you avoid wearing and if so, if you don't want it anymore instead of "avoiding it" in the stack of clothes, you'll simply eliminate (sell/discard/give-away) the clothing item you no longer wear. Cool!
Miscellaneous Bedding -- 10
- Pillow Cases 2 pairs (4 total) -- 1 stored, 1 in use on two pillows
- 1 White Sheet (unused)
- 1 White fitted sheet (on the bed I never use, under the white quilty thing).
- 1 White Quilty thing (made on the bed I never use for sleeping in)
- 1 fluffy comforter (i use this as main bed sheet as I sleep on the floor with the comforter and two pillows (and peltor head-earplugs (to block out noise) and sometimes baseball cap lol true (to keep hair from frizzing))
- 2 mattress protectors (1 in use, 1 stored)
Taking an inventory of all your STUFF is amazing. It's amazing what you find and how organized you can get with clothing alone! Sweet! I don't care if people think this is under or over-organized or ridicule or praise it; copy it or mock it. I don't care. I know this works for me and keeping an inventory of the clothes I have creates closure in my life! I know I have no need nor desire to shop and waste money on clothes. I have a TON of clothes! Which is great! And having an awareness of them is clarifying and ensures I won't waste money on something I already have and simplifies your life!
Additinally, you'll feel clear and have an inventory of your entire wardrobe. Now it may "LOOK" or sound like I'm obsessed with clothes making this list. But the truth of the matter is I am not. In fact it's the complete opposite. I hate clothes!! LOL! But my goal is to get all of the same brand/kind for each main category (like all lucky jeans in the pants-longlegged section which will create massive simplicity too. cool!!).
The other closet consists of sub-organized bins for :
- Hiking
- Biking
- Computer-Media
- Electronics
- Misc-HouseItems
- Aquatic
- and then spare towels and bedding items
- Shower room -- 1 shampoo, 2 body wash, a body brush, facewash
Removing the closet doors serves three purposes:
- It makes you more aware of what you have
- Prevents stuff from "clumping and hiding and being overlooked"
- Makes your items, project materials, gear, essentials more accessible. it's really cool!
What about paper-based reminders? I do use a few paper-based reminders but they're all superficial compared to the core todo lists of Zenbe and temp_Things as well as other MainCopy gdocs in my marvelously liberating and clarifying system! If I want to make sure I stay focused on one or two projects (such as making a cool newsletter like-graphic digital imaging thank you card that I had to send by a certain date to ensure it got there on time) those things ALWAYS go digitally into the list (temp_things or zenbe depending on what kind it is) and then sometimes on a 3x3 cut out piece of paper on a magnetic board juxtaposed to my computer. cool stuff!
When you look at ALL of that stuff. you realize I have a TON of stuff. All that gear for specific projects (computer, film, media, biking, soccer, bastketball, tons of clothes etc) I realize I'll NEVER have to purchase, for example, casual collared shirts, likely for the next 10 years. NO joke!! It's so rare that I use any of those short-sleeved casual collared shirts and I have 16 of them!! Then after you've organized you stuff and removed all doors from closets (no places for clumps of random shit to hide!) you can witness how little or much you use certain items and will cultivate a cognizance of items that create MUCH more clarity for you and aweareness of what you use and don't use! This is remarkably cool! Cool!
The 2nd thing I'm tackling is eliminating items for the sake of simplifying, which is a bit more advanced. Eliminating items to eliminate clutter is a MUST. And it's simple, if you don't use items nor use them for memorabilia, they must be discarded or sold that's eliminating clutter PERFECTLY. Eliminating items for sake of simplifying is similar and related by subtley different. For example, take the bike and biking gear. I haven't biked in over a year, but all the stuff is organized and modularly consolidated so that if/when I do bike it'll be simple and accessible and easy. Eliminating stuff for sake of simplicity typically means, you've got everything organized and processed and eliminated all the clutter, but may remove an activity from your life. Like if I rarely play basketball, maybe you don't neex the xyz gear etc even though it's organized. Simplifying yoru stuff is challenging and difficult but if done correctly can have profound effects on your life!!
The best thing to do is to understnad how much time you put into collecting certain items and understand why you'd no longer pursue that. The biking stuff, for example, would be wise to keep because you could meet up with a friend and go for a ride, but then again, if you jsut focused on running, you could meet up for a run, too, and wouldn't need the bike stuff. Most of that is good to keep because its a BITCH to all gather up again if you want to do a simple project that would use those mateirals. A great example is eliminating for sake of simplicity is cat belongings. I thoguht I liked cats so I got a carrier, post, bowls, toys, and litter stuff, but realized after two cats that I'm not a cat person. I love the trustworthy, sturdy, fun, playful alive zealousness of dogs. But I am NOT a cat person. So I had all the "cat stuff organized" and other people are cat people, so it was a perfect method to elimanate for the sake of simplicity (I won't get a cat again), and eliminate clutter, and sell items! Great! The key about eliminating for the sake of simplicity is that NOT doing that activity (be it having a cat, or somet other activity) would have a positive effect on your life. Not having a cat would be good for me, because I love dogs and will have a better life, putting time into raising and living with and playing with and having a dog. Basically, organize your stuff in projects because it's worth a lot and if you get to the point where you KNOW you will or won't use stuff, you'll want to sell it and it's all organized there like that as well.
When you get this organized, you treat your stuff and your life better because you don't get sloppy because it's almost like living "in a store" of somet kind or something. you respect your belongings and are not owned by them and have much more control and freedom in your life!
I like a LOT of empty drawers.
Breakdown of the Organiztaional Containers:
Hiking -- 9
- 1 two-man awesome tent Eureka Apex 7x5 two-person
- 1 sleeping bag (with compressor)
- 2 sleeping bag compressors (1 on sleeping bag)
- 1 pair of hiking boots
- 1 pair of gators
- 1 fanny pack (containing filtration)
- 1 katydyn GREAT water filtration system! (for nalgene connection)
- 1 pants, hiking beige waterproof patagonia
Biking - 13 --- DIUT?
Electronics
Misc-HouseItems
Aquatic -- 12
Browser
clean out firefox bookmarks
All that is obsolete. Inbox is a journal text file and a folder I call _ibx. In the inbox there's seperate subfolders based on filetype. I have those aliased to my sidebar, so then I have _ibx_docs, _ibx_jpeg, _ibx_mp3 for any type of media (photos scanned in, pdfs on important information, etc) all that goes into subfolders of inbox so when I want to process my inbox 1/3 of it is already done. It's very simple to sort all the mp3 podcasts or soudn files you've accumulated into yoru bu/ent/am folder hierarchy or the bu/my/am
accordingly if youv'e already corralled all the mp3s (same goes for the docs and jpegs)!
@Projects no longer exists. All of this "@" shit actually no longer exists either. You're never "@" project "@ inbox" that's utterly absurd nomenclature. Projects and project planning ALL happens in your temp_Things file which is online accessible to all laptop, phone, and desktop. I WASTED hundreds of hours fiddling with fancy shmancy top of the line cutting edge Things, Omnifocus, iGTD, all the top of hte line gtd apps and they will WASTE your time and make things overcomplex. You just need that one simple text file when stuff gets down on it, you strikeout format it and put it into "Complete" section.
Here's the sofcopy files. NOTICE they're designed for being backed up; with this hierarchy backing up is extremely easy to do. EXTREMELY easy. All the aliases link to the system-distributed files and there's little storage of things scattered around which makes you stuck and difficult to back up. This is very clear:
Full
/bu
/bu/__Today'sDate
/bu/_ibx
/bu/ent
/bu/gdocs_bu
/bu/gdocs_bu/2008_Resolution_Accomplisher_.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/2009galvanizelog.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/acting_audition_notes.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Belief_Audits.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/career_end_of_day_outlook.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/comedy_material.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/comedy.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/dream_compilation.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/forgiveness_gratitude_list.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/it.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/limiting_beliefs_2009_03_09.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/log_auditionlog_comedysets!.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/log_peoplemet.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/mind_aggreements.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/mindagreements_polished_self_reliance_principl.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/mm_fnotes.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Movie_Reviews_addtoHD.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/my_can_of_worms.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/my_lists.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Nightshroud's Level 70 Hunter Gear Choice Calculator.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/passwords.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Quotations_Alphabetized_.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/temp_Things.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/VYL_Words2_BritishCockneyPhrases_SalesPhrases.rtf
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/_jtk_iphoto
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Address Book 2009-04-04.abbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iCal 2009-04-04.icbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Cultured Code
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iChats
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Events
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Projects
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iWeb
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Photo Booth
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Scanner Output
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iTunes Library
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/jtk_typeit4me.typeit4me
/bu/my
/bu/my/am
/bu/my/docs
/bu/my/vm
/bu/my:vm:mov:video recordings
/bu/myApplications
Partial
/bu
/bu/_ibx
/bu/ent
/bu/gdocs_bu
I have 24 docs that are backed up on harddrive b/c MainCopy is gdocs. This works INCREDIBLY well because I can edit those docs from phone, laptop, or desktop, pay no charges (it's free) deal with no superfluous cumbersome different app architecture (They're the good old text docs) but they're all online and live and accessible. VERY smooth, high tech and intelligent.
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/_jtk_iphoto
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Address Book 2009-04-04.abbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iCal 2009-04-04.icbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Cultured Code
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iChats
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Events
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Projects
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iWeb
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Photo Booth
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Scanner Output
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iTunes Library
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/jtk_typeit4me.typeit4me
/bu/my
/bu/my:vm:mov:video recordings
/bu/myApplications
So you can see the 2009 file hierarchy is perfectly designed for easy smooth backups and CONSOLIDATED files.
MyApplications
NameChanger is a lifesaver. I frequently encounter bulk files maybe created all on the same day or some other similarity. I just throw them into the AMAZING program NameChanger and can set a naming pattern, prepend, append, remove letters and the like. Huge timesaver.
The programs are for film editting (iMovie HD/ 08), Web design (Textwrangler/iWeb), and authoring (Pages, Firefox, Text Edit). Cool beans!
Here's the most complex of those files, the bu/my/docs/ref folder which, despite it's complexity, is MUCH less complex than previous versions and much simpler, more accessible, smoother, more Efficient, and with a far stronger and more stable and reliable structure:
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009_accounting.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009runlog1997-2008_master.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/all_polished_final_writings_audio_film
/bu/my/docs/ref/awards
/bu/my/docs/ref/bu
/bu/my/docs/ref/convos and correspondence
/bu/my/docs/ref/cooking_recipes
/bu/my/docs/ref/CREDS
/bu/my/docs/ref/Jobs and Job Attempts and School Admissions
/bu/my/docs/ref/Journals
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2008andprior
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2009
/bu/my/docs/ref/OLD_reference_organization_personalorganizationmethodONLY_historyonly_dangerousonlyforexaminingpastorganizationalmethods
/bu/my/docs/ref/personal_brainstorming_ideas_articles
/bu/my/docs/ref/PFS Supplemental PFS
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2005andprior
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2006
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2007
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2008
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2009
/bu/my/docs/ref/PROJECTS_CURRENT
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_terminated
/bu/my/docs/ref/school
/bu/my/docs/ref/writing - creative:nonfiction:misc
/bu/my/docs/ref/writing - poetry
/bu/my/docs/ref/zDONE!
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009IN.rtfd
/bu/my/docs/ref/_bu_checklist.txt
/bu/my/docs/ref/_movie reviews_o-z.rtf
/bu/my/docs/ref/_movie_reviews_a-g.rtf
/bu/my/docs/ref/_movie_reviews_h-m.rtf
/bu/my/docs/ref/_passwords.rtf
You can see the MASSIVE decrease in standalone .rt files!! Where'd they all go? Online gdocs accessibility from ANY computer or iphone!!! This is the dream (totally online) setup I've always wanted and dreamed of! This is fantastic. All the files in my/docs/ref now are primarily all just for personal self-history examination, which is essential for clarity and self illumination. "You must be the change you want to see in the world" writes Ghandi. So for me, having access to
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009_accounting.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009runlog1997-2008_master.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/all_polished_final_writings_audio_film
/bu/my/docs/ref/awards
/bu/my/docs/ref/convos and correspondence
/bu/my/docs/ref/Jobs and Job Attempts and School Admissions
/bu/my/docs/ref/Journals
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2008andprior
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2009
/OLD_reference_organization_personalorganizationmethodONLY_historyonly_dangerousonlyforexaminingpastorganizationalmethods
/bu/my/docs/ref/personal_brainstorming_ideas_articles
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2006
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2007
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2008
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2009
With special focus to
/bu/my/docs/ref/convos and correspondence
and
/bu/my/docs/ref/Journals
I can zoom back in time and re-examine ANY and every Event, thought I had for the past 8 years till 2001! I've kept journals and incredibly scientifically detailed and organized calendars and runlogs. Some journals for each year totally over 100,000 words!! They're extremely detailed! This cultivates success for me when I "do my homework" and create synopses of my emotional patterns, triggers, what was going on at this time, why xyz event preceded abc, or how this lead to that, or what caused me to feel anger, joy, rage, as a result of RandomEventa. ALL that miraculous story of your life and emotional patterns and clarities you can go back and access to learn from to track and scrutinize and take inventory of how you reached a peak state and how to maintain good emotional clarity, freedom, happiness, and success and what to avoid and what to bring into your life. People continually cycle into the same patterned traps because they don't journal and review their emotional lives on a regular basis. I'd say the average person has the scope of 1-2 weeks. They can recall and reflect back 1-2 weeks into their past; anything longer than that gets blurred and obscured and softens into "way too long ago to care"! But those myopic people SHOULD care. Because the event that happens every maybe 4 months or that same problem state that pops up every 6 months or whatever your obstacle is will be impossible to overcome without journaling. Journaling illuminates your past and gets your out of the "Dark Ages". The Dark Ages was the age in greece where there was little writing; we have no historical evidence of what went on for the 350 years from 1100 to 750 bc in Greece! Taht sounds outrageous right?! Like totally outrageous, historians know everything about Greece right? Wrong, 350 years of core history completely blacked out non-existent. Well, guess what most of this disorganized, unclear, myopic people DO live their lives in the dark! 90% of the world's people are dark, shambling, fools who failed to extract any meaning from their life! I am saying my method and system of journaling and reviewing your life to NOT be in the dark ages and to have a clarity about your own personal history, IS a superior way of living! You can't make changes without aweareness. You can't have changes unless you journal and review emotions and reactions and patterns and phases and stages of your life. I chose to enter this more lucid, more energetic, infinitely oh INFINITELY more impassioned and enthusiastic and simultaneously INCREDIBLY more peaceful and lucid part of my life to become a lifecoach in 2000 and I've kept at it; constantly improving my life; clarifying myself and trying to do the same for others. Improving thyself is the key here. These disgusting people who drag their brainless zombie corpses around with that 1-2-maximum scope of their life are CLUELESS and in my opinion highly DANGEROUS because they fail and refrain from choosing to engage the possibility of inculcating tremendously aligned clarity in their life. Basically, those people who don't journal, who remain perpetually in their own myopic "dark ages" or downward spirallers -- and their are TONS of those obfuscated people. So bottom-line: be the change you want to see in the world, get exercise, journal, review your life and patterns, and constantly upgrade the quality of your life. Because I journal and stay organized and massively aware of the belongings I have I'm always living from the most recent upgrade, the most advanced system while 90% of the world is dragging their lost, confused, miserable Dark Ages lives through 1-2 week scopeless life. The ability to look back on the personal history canvas of your life and see yoru experiences as a source of entertainment, intrigue, emotional understanding, and to see elements of causality is a galvanizing, and clarifying experience!
The only people I envision myself connecting with having achieved such a massively high level of clarity are other life coaches or mathematicians. But I didn't get to a high-level of math, but either of those embody the white-light sense of clarity that I embrace that is so unfamiliar to 90% of these Dark Ages people that cluelessly roam the earth not too far removed from their neanderthal and cro magnon ancestors. So I encourage people to use their mind, journal, cultivate a scope and an organization that gives you tremendous understanding, fulfillment and success in your life, as I have done and how great people have done as well!
then Bu/my and bu/ent are roughly organized identical to the POP Suite 2008 version, excet bu/my/docs/ref is MUCH more un controll with projects_2005andprio projects_2006, projects_2007, projects_2008, projects_2009 and alias to ibx's current projects_current that's for all the "scraps" that go into projects and files. If a "gem" if a very finished product came out of those scraps, the scraps say in the respective "projects_year" folder and the output goes into "all_finished_polished_complete_docs_audio_film" which is basically the essence of all computer work distilled and CONSOLIDATED (most important) into one folder containging three foldres (docs, audio, film) creations which can be easily backed up and is MODULAR.
Modularity is the essence of the POP Suite 2009 and it's HIGHLY flexible, smooth, and operates from a degree of sophisticated that completely transcends complex cumbersome UNNECESSARY apps!
The "distributedaroundsystemfiles" folders captures the actual files or alias of files that you'll have to gather but it's very few and very simple. The only ones are iMovie 08 (original stuck in users/Movies/) and a few users/username/Library/Application Support/"program name" files such as Cultured Code (old) and iWeb. It's import to capture these because if you forgot to gather your iWeb data you'd lose all your easily-editable iWeb sites, so this ensures that doesn't happen by collecting all the files that are stuck in folders other than root/bu.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 2:07 PM I no longer use iPhoto for album organization. I label the photos with such a meticulous system that adding the extra app overcomplicates it. With my photo labelling system, you have profound organization just within the finder. Remember, the Finder is an AMAZING app, too. Pathfinder is great because they so much aren't apps. We're eliminating excessive apps.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 9:00 PM quicken is obsolete, no need for extensive receipt processing.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 8:58 PM. Expander program still useful, typeIt4Me for the win. Much better than textexpander, and implementing 3-4 generic email responses would be massive time-saver, but ultimately difficult to do. Date and other simple expanders are grea though.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 8:58 PM write room is obsolete. no longer necessary. Textedit is fine, but most all docs are online google docs now so accessible to all iphone, laptop, and desktop simul.
Gmail straight in webmail is perfectly fine. It's the same thing if it's imapped, if you access it in Mail.app. I have a sprawling 33 folder byzantine email network of files that I may whittle down.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 2:05 PM
However, quicksilver has been recently very buggy and I've found it's complicated my life more than simplify it. So far now, quicksilver is out. You end up spending too much time using quicksilver instead of access things you need. It has great potential because it's not so much an "app" (we don't want organizational apps) as a service, but it's almost too app-like.
Other than that, that's it for the updates, about 80% has been deemed superfluous; almost all current or important files are accessible by any computer or phone the POP Suitet version 2009 is MUCH more improved!
How to Work "Outside Lists".
Now, all my computer, film editting, writing, email, etc (in office projects and todos) get thrown on the universally accessible "temp_Things" gdocs. But for lists that I need to access when running errands or at the grocery store or talking with people "Outside" I use Zenbe lists. It's an AMAZING and simple iPhone mini app that syncs up with the web page. So whenever I update something on my zenbe grocery lists (like a pepper grinder broke so throw on "pepper grinder" under "Grocery"-Misc on the desktop and then when I'm out and about with my phone I just pop open zenbe go to grocery if I'm in the grocery store and then see pepper grinder and milk and any of the other things I meant to pick up. Cool!! I have three lists on the Zenbe:
Agenda -- For conversations things to say to people when/if I call them (these also sometimes go under Notes on their Apple Address Book conatact)
Grocery -- all things I'll find in a grocery store
MS-ToDo -- this is all the weird items to pick up or do. Examples of somethings that have been on my MS-ToDo list is:
Vacuum repair pickup (pick up vacuum from repair store)
Walgreens -- mini eyeglasses screw (pickup a mini screw for eye glasses from walgrens)
Walgreens -- HP #27 est total $20 (pick up printer cartridge)
So Zenbe lists is killer and prevents clutter, ensures prudent spending, and is a GREAT the ultimate outside organization method so items become like quests!! So fun!! Like a computer game! Which I love for it's precision. What kind of dumbass would play a dumbass computer game where you blindly wander out into a city and the goal is to avoid getting lured into advertising traps without knowing what you're looking for? Stupid! Lists make the computer game of getting thigns fun and precise and you know the "objective of each quest" and can check it off and you feel a sense of accomplishment having acquired a "quest item". Sounds dorky and nerdy, but I don't care, it works for me and is awesome.
In summary my Productivity and Organizational Progress 2009 system is structured and implemented and utilized with :
*= Universally accessible (via desktop, phone, laptop wherever!) italics
Open Loops (This means things to check where new incoming information, todos or alerts could arrive (or just junk to discard mostly hopefully, or structured all todo proejctS!)
- 1 pair biking shoes
- 1 biking shirt
- 1 biking shorts
- 2 mini bike pumps (also useful for pumping up soccer ball lol)
- 1 bike helmet
- 2 pairs bike gloves
- Bag of misc supplies
- white lightning chain oil
- 1 spare light attachment
- odometer parts
- spare hex screwdriver combo
- 1 spare tire tube
Electronics
Misc-HouseItems
Aquatic -- 12
- 2 Rashguards (blue) -- DIUT?
- 1 Warm rashbuard (blue) insulated --- DIUT?
- 1 boardshort
- 1 noseplug lol
- 1 swim suit (red)
- a jammer (blue) listed under Atheletic itmes "Swim Bag")
- 2 pairs of goggles (1 in swim bag one in aquatic container)
- 1 pair of flippers (by the door across from shoes) ---- DIUT?
- 1 mask and snorkel (soundsl ike where's waldo! LOL!) --- -DIUT?
- 1 bag of surfwax and wax scraper
- 1 surfboard ding repair kit
Browser
clean out firefox bookmarks
- set criteira for what stays and what's junk
- set a max number of folders (10? and 10 max mini research projects?
- identify the main cores of the system:
- mini research projects (stand up comedy, language is a big one good, dogs, herb picking, etc)
- reads, ar_read, watch, ar_watch, lat crap
- In this day and age, over 50% of my reading (hell over 90%) of my reading is from the internet so structuring interesting reads (like psychology, or herbs, is important!)
The Core of Your Capturing System -- 4 Soft-Copy Text Files
~ /DESKTOP/@INBOX/
~/DESKTOP/@IDEAS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@TASKS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@YEARIN.TXT
The Other Stuff
~/DESKTOP/@BLOGS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@PROJECTS.txt
~/DESKTOP/REF (ALIAS WITH ORIGINAL IN
~/REFERENCE)
*~/DESKTOP/MS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/SENDTOPAPER/
~/WORKSPACE1
~/WORKSPACE2
~/WORKSPACE3_BU
~/REFERENCE
All that is obsolete. Inbox is a journal text file and a folder I call _ibx. In the inbox there's seperate subfolders based on filetype. I have those aliased to my sidebar, so then I have _ibx_docs, _ibx_jpeg, _ibx_mp3 for any type of media (photos scanned in, pdfs on important information, etc) all that goes into subfolders of inbox so when I want to process my inbox 1/3 of it is already done. It's very simple to sort all the mp3 podcasts or soudn files you've accumulated into yoru bu/ent/am folder hierarchy or the bu/my/am
accordingly if youv'e already corralled all the mp3s (same goes for the docs and jpegs)!
@Projects no longer exists. All of this "@" shit actually no longer exists either. You're never "@" project "@ inbox" that's utterly absurd nomenclature. Projects and project planning ALL happens in your temp_Things file which is online accessible to all laptop, phone, and desktop. I WASTED hundreds of hours fiddling with fancy shmancy top of the line cutting edge Things, Omnifocus, iGTD, all the top of hte line gtd apps and they will WASTE your time and make things overcomplex. You just need that one simple text file when stuff gets down on it, you strikeout format it and put it into "Complete" section.
Here's the sofcopy files. NOTICE they're designed for being backed up; with this hierarchy backing up is extremely easy to do. EXTREMELY easy. All the aliases link to the system-distributed files and there's little storage of things scattered around which makes you stuck and difficult to back up. This is very clear:
Full
/bu
/bu/__Today'sDate
/bu/_ibx
/bu/ent
/bu/gdocs_bu
/bu/gdocs_bu/2008_Resolution_Accomplisher_.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/2009galvanizelog.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/acting_audition_notes.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Belief_Audits.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/career_end_of_day_outlook.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/comedy_material.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/comedy.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/dream_compilation.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/forgiveness_gratitude_list.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/it.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/limiting_beliefs_2009_03_09.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/log_auditionlog_comedysets!.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/log_peoplemet.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/mind_aggreements.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/mindagreements_polished_self_reliance_principl.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/mm_fnotes.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Movie_Reviews_addtoHD.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/my_can_of_worms.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/my_lists.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Nightshroud's Level 70 Hunter Gear Choice Calculator.xls
/bu/gdocs_bu/passwords.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/Quotations_Alphabetized_.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/temp_Things.rtf
/bu/gdocs_bu/VYL_Words2_BritishCockneyPhrases_SalesPhrases.rtf
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/_jtk_iphoto
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Address Book 2009-04-04.abbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iCal 2009-04-04.icbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Cultured Code
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iChats
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Events
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Projects
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iWeb
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Photo Booth
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Scanner Output
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iTunes Library
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/jtk_typeit4me.typeit4me
/bu/my
/bu/my/am
/bu/my/docs
/bu/my/vm
/bu/my:vm:mov:video recordings
/bu/myApplications
Partial
/bu
/bu/_ibx
/bu/ent
/bu/gdocs_bu
I have 24 docs that are backed up on harddrive b/c MainCopy is gdocs. This works INCREDIBLY well because I can edit those docs from phone, laptop, or desktop, pay no charges (it's free) deal with no superfluous cumbersome different app architecture (They're the good old text docs) but they're all online and live and accessible. VERY smooth, high tech and intelligent.
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/_jtk_iphoto
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Address Book 2009-04-04.abbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iCal 2009-04-04.icbu
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Cultured Code
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iChats
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Events
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iMovie 08 Projects
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iWeb
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Photo Booth
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/Scanner Output
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/iTunes Library
/bu/indiv_files_folders_distributedaroundsystemfiles/jtk_typeit4me.typeit4me
/bu/my
/bu/my:vm:mov:video recordings
/bu/myApplications
So you can see the 2009 file hierarchy is perfectly designed for easy smooth backups and CONSOLIDATED files.
MyApplications
- /bu/myApplications/Adium.app
- /bu/myApplications/Cyberduck.app
- /bu/myApplications/Fetch Art.app
- /bu/myApplications/Firefox.app
- /bu/myApplications/iMovie HD.app
- /bu/myApplications/iMovie.app
- /bu/myApplications/iTunes.app
- /bu/myApplications/iWeb.app
- /bu/myApplications/Keynote.app
- /bu/myApplications/Maclit.app
- /bu/myApplications/NameChanger.app
- /bu/myApplications/NeoOffice.app
- /bu/myApplications/Numbers.app
- /bu/myApplications/Pages.app
- /bu/myApplications/Path Finder.app
- /bu/myApplications/Quicksilver.app
- /bu/myApplications/RealPlayer.app
- /bu/myApplications/Skype.app
- /bu/myApplications/TextWrangler.app
- /bu/myApplications/Ventrilo.app
- /bu/myApplications/VLC.app
- /bu/myApplications/Yahoo! Messenger.app
- /bu/myApplications/World of Warcraft frommacbook
NameChanger is a lifesaver. I frequently encounter bulk files maybe created all on the same day or some other similarity. I just throw them into the AMAZING program NameChanger and can set a naming pattern, prepend, append, remove letters and the like. Huge timesaver.
The programs are for film editting (iMovie HD/ 08), Web design (Textwrangler/iWeb), and authoring (Pages, Firefox, Text Edit). Cool beans!
Here's the most complex of those files, the bu/my/docs/ref folder which, despite it's complexity, is MUCH less complex than previous versions and much simpler, more accessible, smoother, more Efficient, and with a far stronger and more stable and reliable structure:
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009_accounting.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009runlog1997-2008_master.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/all_polished_final_writings_audio_film
/bu/my/docs/ref/awards
/bu/my/docs/ref/bu
/bu/my/docs/ref/convos and correspondence
/bu/my/docs/ref/cooking_recipes
/bu/my/docs/ref/CREDS
/bu/my/docs/ref/Jobs and Job Attempts and School Admissions
/bu/my/docs/ref/Journals
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2008andprior
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2009
/bu/my/docs/ref/OLD_reference_organization_personalorganizationmethodONLY_historyonly_dangerousonlyforexaminingpastorganizationalmethods
/bu/my/docs/ref/personal_brainstorming_ideas_articles
/bu/my/docs/ref/PFS Supplemental PFS
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2005andprior
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2006
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2007
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2008
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2009
/bu/my/docs/ref/PROJECTS_CURRENT
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_terminated
/bu/my/docs/ref/school
/bu/my/docs/ref/writing - creative:nonfiction:misc
/bu/my/docs/ref/writing - poetry
/bu/my/docs/ref/zDONE!
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009IN.rtfd
/bu/my/docs/ref/_bu_checklist.txt
/bu/my/docs/ref/_movie reviews_o-z.rtf
/bu/my/docs/ref/_movie_reviews_a-g.rtf
/bu/my/docs/ref/_movie_reviews_h-m.rtf
/bu/my/docs/ref/_passwords.rtf
You can see the MASSIVE decrease in standalone .rt files!! Where'd they all go? Online gdocs accessibility from ANY computer or iphone!!! This is the dream (totally online) setup I've always wanted and dreamed of! This is fantastic. All the files in my/docs/ref now are primarily all just for personal self-history examination, which is essential for clarity and self illumination. "You must be the change you want to see in the world" writes Ghandi. So for me, having access to
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009_accounting.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/_2009runlog1997-2008_master.numbers
/bu/my/docs/ref/all_polished_final_writings_audio_film
/bu/my/docs/ref/awards
/bu/my/docs/ref/convos and correspondence
/bu/my/docs/ref/Jobs and Job Attempts and School Admissions
/bu/my/docs/ref/Journals
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2008andprior
/bu/my/docs/ref/notes_2009
/OLD_reference_organization_personalorganizationmethodONLY_historyonly_dangerousonlyforexaminingpastorganizationalmethods
/bu/my/docs/ref/personal_brainstorming_ideas_articles
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2006
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2007
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2008
/bu/my/docs/ref/projects_2009
With special focus to
/bu/my/docs/ref/convos and correspondence
and
/bu/my/docs/ref/Journals
I can zoom back in time and re-examine ANY and every Event, thought I had for the past 8 years till 2001! I've kept journals and incredibly scientifically detailed and organized calendars and runlogs. Some journals for each year totally over 100,000 words!! They're extremely detailed! This cultivates success for me when I "do my homework" and create synopses of my emotional patterns, triggers, what was going on at this time, why xyz event preceded abc, or how this lead to that, or what caused me to feel anger, joy, rage, as a result of RandomEventa. ALL that miraculous story of your life and emotional patterns and clarities you can go back and access to learn from to track and scrutinize and take inventory of how you reached a peak state and how to maintain good emotional clarity, freedom, happiness, and success and what to avoid and what to bring into your life. People continually cycle into the same patterned traps because they don't journal and review their emotional lives on a regular basis. I'd say the average person has the scope of 1-2 weeks. They can recall and reflect back 1-2 weeks into their past; anything longer than that gets blurred and obscured and softens into "way too long ago to care"! But those myopic people SHOULD care. Because the event that happens every maybe 4 months or that same problem state that pops up every 6 months or whatever your obstacle is will be impossible to overcome without journaling. Journaling illuminates your past and gets your out of the "Dark Ages". The Dark Ages was the age in greece where there was little writing; we have no historical evidence of what went on for the 350 years from 1100 to 750 bc in Greece! Taht sounds outrageous right?! Like totally outrageous, historians know everything about Greece right? Wrong, 350 years of core history completely blacked out non-existent. Well, guess what most of this disorganized, unclear, myopic people DO live their lives in the dark! 90% of the world's people are dark, shambling, fools who failed to extract any meaning from their life! I am saying my method and system of journaling and reviewing your life to NOT be in the dark ages and to have a clarity about your own personal history, IS a superior way of living! You can't make changes without aweareness. You can't have changes unless you journal and review emotions and reactions and patterns and phases and stages of your life. I chose to enter this more lucid, more energetic, infinitely oh INFINITELY more impassioned and enthusiastic and simultaneously INCREDIBLY more peaceful and lucid part of my life to become a lifecoach in 2000 and I've kept at it; constantly improving my life; clarifying myself and trying to do the same for others. Improving thyself is the key here. These disgusting people who drag their brainless zombie corpses around with that 1-2-maximum scope of their life are CLUELESS and in my opinion highly DANGEROUS because they fail and refrain from choosing to engage the possibility of inculcating tremendously aligned clarity in their life. Basically, those people who don't journal, who remain perpetually in their own myopic "dark ages" or downward spirallers -- and their are TONS of those obfuscated people. So bottom-line: be the change you want to see in the world, get exercise, journal, review your life and patterns, and constantly upgrade the quality of your life. Because I journal and stay organized and massively aware of the belongings I have I'm always living from the most recent upgrade, the most advanced system while 90% of the world is dragging their lost, confused, miserable Dark Ages lives through 1-2 week scopeless life. The ability to look back on the personal history canvas of your life and see yoru experiences as a source of entertainment, intrigue, emotional understanding, and to see elements of causality is a galvanizing, and clarifying experience!
The only people I envision myself connecting with having achieved such a massively high level of clarity are other life coaches or mathematicians. But I didn't get to a high-level of math, but either of those embody the white-light sense of clarity that I embrace that is so unfamiliar to 90% of these Dark Ages people that cluelessly roam the earth not too far removed from their neanderthal and cro magnon ancestors. So I encourage people to use their mind, journal, cultivate a scope and an organization that gives you tremendous understanding, fulfillment and success in your life, as I have done and how great people have done as well!
then Bu/my and bu/ent are roughly organized identical to the POP Suite 2008 version, excet bu/my/docs/ref is MUCH more un controll with projects_2005andprio projects_2006, projects_2007, projects_2008, projects_2009 and alias to ibx's current projects_current that's for all the "scraps" that go into projects and files. If a "gem" if a very finished product came out of those scraps, the scraps say in the respective "projects_year" folder and the output goes into "all_finished_polished_complete_docs_audio_film" which is basically the essence of all computer work distilled and CONSOLIDATED (most important) into one folder containging three foldres (docs, audio, film) creations which can be easily backed up and is MODULAR.
Modularity is the essence of the POP Suite 2009 and it's HIGHLY flexible, smooth, and operates from a degree of sophisticated that completely transcends complex cumbersome UNNECESSARY apps!
The "distributedaroundsystemfiles" folders captures the actual files or alias of files that you'll have to gather but it's very few and very simple. The only ones are iMovie 08 (original stuck in users/Movies/) and a few users/username/Library/Application Support/"program name" files such as Cultured Code (old) and iWeb. It's import to capture these because if you forgot to gather your iWeb data you'd lose all your easily-editable iWeb sites, so this ensures that doesn't happen by collecting all the files that are stuck in folders other than root/bu.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 2:07 PM I no longer use iPhoto for album organization. I label the photos with such a meticulous system that adding the extra app overcomplicates it. With my photo labelling system, you have profound organization just within the finder. Remember, the Finder is an AMAZING app, too. Pathfinder is great because they so much aren't apps. We're eliminating excessive apps.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 9:00 PM quicken is obsolete, no need for extensive receipt processing.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 8:58 PM. Expander program still useful, typeIt4Me for the win. Much better than textexpander, and implementing 3-4 generic email responses would be massive time-saver, but ultimately difficult to do. Date and other simple expanders are grea though.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 8:58 PM write room is obsolete. no longer necessary. Textedit is fine, but most all docs are online google docs now so accessible to all iphone, laptop, and desktop simul.
Gmail straight in webmail is perfectly fine. It's the same thing if it's imapped, if you access it in Mail.app. I have a sprawling 33 folder byzantine email network of files that I may whittle down.
edit April 6, 2009 -- 2:05 PM
However, quicksilver has been recently very buggy and I've found it's complicated my life more than simplify it. So far now, quicksilver is out. You end up spending too much time using quicksilver instead of access things you need. It has great potential because it's not so much an "app" (we don't want organizational apps) as a service, but it's almost too app-like.
Other than that, that's it for the updates, about 80% has been deemed superfluous; almost all current or important files are accessible by any computer or phone the POP Suitet version 2009 is MUCH more improved!
How to Work "Outside Lists".
Now, all my computer, film editting, writing, email, etc (in office projects and todos) get thrown on the universally accessible "temp_Things" gdocs. But for lists that I need to access when running errands or at the grocery store or talking with people "Outside" I use Zenbe lists. It's an AMAZING and simple iPhone mini app that syncs up with the web page. So whenever I update something on my zenbe grocery lists (like a pepper grinder broke so throw on "pepper grinder" under "Grocery"-Misc on the desktop and then when I'm out and about with my phone I just pop open zenbe go to grocery if I'm in the grocery store and then see pepper grinder and milk and any of the other things I meant to pick up. Cool!! I have three lists on the Zenbe:
Agenda -- For conversations things to say to people when/if I call them (these also sometimes go under Notes on their Apple Address Book conatact)
Grocery -- all things I'll find in a grocery store
MS-ToDo -- this is all the weird items to pick up or do. Examples of somethings that have been on my MS-ToDo list is:
Vacuum repair pickup (pick up vacuum from repair store)
Walgreens -- mini eyeglasses screw (pickup a mini screw for eye glasses from walgrens)
Walgreens -- HP #27 est total $20 (pick up printer cartridge)
- You waste money on junk you won't use nor need
- You generate CLUTTER!!
So Zenbe lists is killer and prevents clutter, ensures prudent spending, and is a GREAT the ultimate outside organization method so items become like quests!! So fun!! Like a computer game! Which I love for it's precision. What kind of dumbass would play a dumbass computer game where you blindly wander out into a city and the goal is to avoid getting lured into advertising traps without knowing what you're looking for? Stupid! Lists make the computer game of getting thigns fun and precise and you know the "objective of each quest" and can check it off and you feel a sense of accomplishment having acquired a "quest item". Sounds dorky and nerdy, but I don't care, it works for me and is awesome.
In summary my Productivity and Organizational Progress 2009 system is structured and implemented and utilized with :
*= Universally accessible (via desktop, phone, laptop wherever!) italics
- *3 Outside Zenbe Lists -- Agenda, Grocery, MS-ToDo
- *20-30 Universally accessible MainCopy update documents
- *2001-2007 Journals for LifeScribing
- bu/my files
- bu/ent files
- Clothes on shelves
- work-office-homespace extremely clean (weekly vacuums and bleaching all countertops and floors)
- With the exception of the one computer utility draw (all spare pins, paperclips, etc) and a some kitchen drawers (a potato drawer, an onion-garlic drawer, a cooking utilities drawer, a utility drawer) all items are out of drawers.
- Bathroom -- one drawe rfor qtips, condoms, misc items
- one drawer for vitamins and spare bottles (extra shampoo, extra tooth brushes, extra toothpaste)
- Closets --Both closet doors completely removed. one closet is suitcases, spare boxes, and unused books (in a box organized) and hanging clothes. Gotta have your belongings OUT, so you don't lose track of them and generate clutter and so you USE your stuff, if it's not utility remember, gotta sell it or keep it as memorability, and if not those, it must be chucked.
- The third closet is hanging clothes, long-sleeved sweaters, and long-legged pants, with the other half being almost completely empty except for a "To use" section of WF (like a broken glasses to be fixed) and balls -- soccer ball and juggling ball and basketball when I get one
Open Loops (This means things to check where new incoming information, todos or alerts could arrive (or just junk to discard mostly hopefully, or structured all todo proejctS!)
- Softcopy
- Gmail -- inbox, _lat, action, _nois, _yout, _faceb any "unread"basically (empty spam)
- Facebook email, wall, notifications
- Myspace Email
- Zenbe Lists -- Agenda, MS-Todo, Grocery
- temp_Things -- the MAIN consolidator for any non-outside todos and projects ranging from inputting data, craigslist posts, questions to ask, documents to organize/refine (quotations for example), websites to update, iMovie Film edits to adjust and refine and make, letters/correspondence projects, things to research, notes to take
- Reads Folder -- For all current reads
- Math -- for all downloaded math files. cool!
- Firefox Reads -- any webpage I didn't have time to read at the specific moment, but wanted to possibly read later
- Firefox Watch -- same as "reads" but something that I wanted to watch eventually but not at that specific moment. cool as!
- Hardcopy
- SnailMailBox
- W/F closet shelf - Parts of projects that can't be filed (like the broken glasses case etc.)
- Fridge door (sometimes reminders of things already in temp_Things)
- Paper inbox (sometimes where unprocessed snailbox items go or things picked up during outside time -- hopefully minimal stuff)
5.01.2009
Wanna Read a Person Like a Book? Two Words: State Callibration
State Calibration
Body language can never lie; words and statements, however, can. Learning to calibrate increases your ability to know what a person is feeling. This becomes extremely potent when trying to eliminate confusion in communication and also to avoid getting deluded with words.
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming, State Calibration is just "indicators" of a person's state. When the red light is on on the oven, it mean it's heating up. When you've calibrated a person, you can know that a specific person a brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched means they're perplexed. Therefore the "brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched" state is like the red light on the oven; both the red oven light and the furrowed brow, squint, and hunch serve as indicators for what's going on "inside".
How do you calibrate a state? When you see a person having a unique body posture, or movement, you ask them what they feel, and if they respond, you'll know that that specific external body language, posture, breathing, and the like corresponds to their state! ANY time you see them with "brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched, ask them what they're feeling. If they respond, you've just successfully calibrated their state! Now whenever you see that external body languae, you will understand that for that person it calibrates to "perplexed".
A green light on the oven could mean, "cleaning mode", just as someone who's in a state where their breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling, and you ask them what they feel they'll say "happy" you've calibrated that "breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling" to mean happy for THEM. So to that specific person, just as the green light means "cleaning mode", "breathing steady, chest out, and smiling" means "feeling happy". Now, "breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling" does not mean happy for every person; just that specific person. To continue the analogy to now an absurd level of metaphor (LOL!) everyone's "oven" is built different with different indicator lights. The oven lights are just a metaphor for "external indicator" that calibrates to an "internal state".
So why is this useful? State Callibration has millions of applications, but we can focus on two: dissolving confusion and persuasion. Having calibrated a state is obviously clarifying because it decreases confusion from ALL of these external states and configurations of body posture, breathing cadence, brow, voice tone, etc, because now you know, after calibrating, those are indicators of internal states. If you ask them what they're feeling (so you don't fall into the trap of mind reading) and they answer with a response of their internal state, you have just calibrated their external sensory indicators to their internal state! Congrats!! Successful calibration!
Now let's examine the persuasive benefits of State Calibration. Let's say you've calibrated a state when you notice a person has "dilated pupils, slumped shoulders, and tapping feet". What state does that calibrate to? Well you ask them and they respond, "Interested. I feel interested right now." Excellent! Now you know that whenever that person displays that "dilated pupils, slumped shoulders, and tapping feet" external behavior, then you know they're interested. Why would knowing their internal state be so persuasively valuable? Let's say you're offering this person a sale and he suddenly pops into his "interested state" but SAYS "The price is too high; I don't have my heart set on the product." If you hadn't calibrated, you might've sold the product to him for a lower price. However, the calibration master would demand the sale as is or even increase the price! Why? Because the person who has calibrated already knows that this person is clearly interested.
Additionally, you can know when you've sucessfully put someone into a state. What if you've calibrated a woman to "aroused" or a prospective client to "attentive and eager". You know when your communication is successful because you have those calibration "lights" that flick on revealign to you that your communication is effective! All the best communicators and the most persuasive people utilize state calibration because everyone needs "checks and indicators" for if what they're communicating is working or not! You need feedback for what and how you communicate and all the lights start flashing and you can learn to read a person "like an oven" ;) with effective state callibration!
Body language can never lie; words and statements, however, can. Learning to calibrate increases your ability to know what a person is feeling. This becomes extremely potent when trying to eliminate confusion in communication and also to avoid getting deluded with words.
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming, State Calibration is just "indicators" of a person's state. When the red light is on on the oven, it mean it's heating up. When you've calibrated a person, you can know that a specific person a brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched means they're perplexed. Therefore the "brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched" state is like the red light on the oven; both the red oven light and the furrowed brow, squint, and hunch serve as indicators for what's going on "inside".
How do you calibrate a state? When you see a person having a unique body posture, or movement, you ask them what they feel, and if they respond, you'll know that that specific external body language, posture, breathing, and the like corresponds to their state! ANY time you see them with "brow furrowed, right eye squinted and hunched, ask them what they're feeling. If they respond, you've just successfully calibrated their state! Now whenever you see that external body languae, you will understand that for that person it calibrates to "perplexed".
A green light on the oven could mean, "cleaning mode", just as someone who's in a state where their breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling, and you ask them what they feel they'll say "happy" you've calibrated that "breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling" to mean happy for THEM. So to that specific person, just as the green light means "cleaning mode", "breathing steady, chest out, and smiling" means "feeling happy". Now, "breathing is steady, chest out, and smiling" does not mean happy for every person; just that specific person. To continue the analogy to now an absurd level of metaphor (LOL!) everyone's "oven" is built different with different indicator lights. The oven lights are just a metaphor for "external indicator" that calibrates to an "internal state".
So why is this useful? State Callibration has millions of applications, but we can focus on two: dissolving confusion and persuasion. Having calibrated a state is obviously clarifying because it decreases confusion from ALL of these external states and configurations of body posture, breathing cadence, brow, voice tone, etc, because now you know, after calibrating, those are indicators of internal states. If you ask them what they're feeling (so you don't fall into the trap of mind reading) and they answer with a response of their internal state, you have just calibrated their external sensory indicators to their internal state! Congrats!! Successful calibration!
Now let's examine the persuasive benefits of State Calibration. Let's say you've calibrated a state when you notice a person has "dilated pupils, slumped shoulders, and tapping feet". What state does that calibrate to? Well you ask them and they respond, "Interested. I feel interested right now." Excellent! Now you know that whenever that person displays that "dilated pupils, slumped shoulders, and tapping feet" external behavior, then you know they're interested. Why would knowing their internal state be so persuasively valuable? Let's say you're offering this person a sale and he suddenly pops into his "interested state" but SAYS "The price is too high; I don't have my heart set on the product." If you hadn't calibrated, you might've sold the product to him for a lower price. However, the calibration master would demand the sale as is or even increase the price! Why? Because the person who has calibrated already knows that this person is clearly interested.
Additionally, you can know when you've sucessfully put someone into a state. What if you've calibrated a woman to "aroused" or a prospective client to "attentive and eager". You know when your communication is successful because you have those calibration "lights" that flick on revealign to you that your communication is effective! All the best communicators and the most persuasive people utilize state calibration because everyone needs "checks and indicators" for if what they're communicating is working or not! You need feedback for what and how you communicate and all the lights start flashing and you can learn to read a person "like an oven" ;) with effective state callibration!
10.14.2008
Tuesday News Blip: Apple Innovations, Stocks Skyrocket, and More D
Technology: Apple's innovation cease to amaze. The cutting edge rumor is that they intend to release a special laptop known as "the brick". Doing its name justice, "the brick" is supposedly carved out of a solid "brick" of titanium, making it seamless and screwless! The price for such water-blasting crafted item sounds like it would be extraordinary. While it may not be 100% indesctructible, the durability of Apple's new laptop technology will be a practically unprecedented release sturdy portability. Here are some cool factoids about it:
Macenstein had the best prediction of its bizarre codename:
"it is likely that it is simply a name for an upcoming product (or group of products) that Apple thinks will be sexy enough to pull a huge marketshare away from Microsoft. After all, how do you break “Windows”? You throw a brick through them!"
iPhone Savior predicts it will be some kind of new mac mini:
"a re-design of the Mac Mini super-sized to reveal a Mac Mini Pro of sorts."
Whatever this new innovation will be, it officeally releases (if on schedule) today. So it will be exciting to find out.
Bottom-line: Apple's iBrick's creating a sensational quality hype.
Economy: We've heard a lot of people griping (others outright wailing) about the economic slump, specifically of the stock market. Well, good news for all. Pessimists complained that the stock market was as bad as it was during the Great Depression. Maybe, but I'm an optimist and now I recognize is as flourishing as it was during the Decade of the Glorious (but of course after the Great Depression and without the distorted Keynesian economic blunders that caused the drop nearly 6 dozen years ago). And evidence of our recently flourishing economy lies in the crisp numbers of the stock market: stocks skyrocketed 11% yesterday, which is the biggest jump since 1933. So clearly, optimism will always prevail over of the pessimists.
The cause of this? Not so reassuring. Many believe this will hurt more then help the economy, but the Bush Administration shifted into a "$250 billion of the $700 billion bailout program recently passed by Congress to purchase stock in U.S. banks, providing the banks with desperately needed money" and the FDIC will temporarily provide insurance loans for the banks as well. Why would the Bush administration do such a maneuver when he's practically no longer in office? Possibly a somewhat desperate attempt to boost the economy, or malevolent ploy to screw with the economy before it shifts into more adept hands. hehe. Probably the former.
Apple stock shot up a whopping 13.26 points yesterday, too, so apparently "the iBrick" (see above) made an impression on shareholders.
Bottom-line: Stocks sky-rocket because banks rework a bailout plan.
Health: New breakthroughs in nutritional science have shown recent significance of Vitamin D in building bones and preventing cancer. Preventing cancer, after all, is simply about creating balance in the body. Scientists don't understand the direct cause of cancer so they create all these assumptions of measures to take to indirectly prevent it. Undoubtedly taking more of a balance of Vitamins will create body balance and it's that physiological equilibrium that ultimately prevents any kind of deterioration in the body (cancer included). So in another few months scientists will have a "big breakthrough" stating that we need to be taking more Vitamin A! And then more Zinc! etc. Framing these as real breakthroughs would be impractical; they do serve a good purpose though; old-fashioned reminders to take in healthy Vitamins. People are more apt to change their habits (in this case "vitamin consumption") if it's labeled as a "new breakthrough". In any case, you can get more D in smelly fish like mackarel, tuna, and sardines, supplements, or our sun.
Bottom-line: Double your intake of Vitamin D.
9.09.2008
POP Suite Part 5: Email Organization
Welcome back to the Productivity and Organizational Progress (POP) Suite. Today we're talking about Email Organization.
Here's my two cents on email productivity.
THE source for clarity on [Gmail] IMAP bugginess.
When add the [Gmail] Pretext to my Gmail account only certain gmail folders pop up:
All mail
Deleted messages
Spam
Starred
and One other folder
When I remove that, my massively annoying byzantine infrstructure of google labels pops up. What the hell is going on?
Well, any "prefix you use" [Gmail] will be the only folders that Mac Mail loads. So if you have 7 folders called [ABC]/Folder1 [ABC]/Folder2, etc. Mac Mail will only load those seven folders.
Google is so infuriatingly buggy, I can't even begin to describe how much its IMAP features suck.
So many 3rd-party programs have done that. Even open office (neooffice is slow as fracking hell). So I've made an ultimatum with myself. I only use Apple software. Period! I'll likely switch to mobile me within a few months because that looks so smooth and inecredible.
I'm talking EVERYTHING mac. Sure, I'll use quicken, and one or two other third parties, but everything else: apple. Why not? It's complete, it works great, its's designed for yoru ocmputer by the company that designed hte hardware, too. It's smoother to keep the kinds of software congruent and do you actually "need' all of those crap, hack third-party programs? Definitely not. Most certainly not. They're all impulse buys. Anything that you can do with apple software is all that you need. They have a built in xcode sdk and script editor for applescript for crying out loud! They give you the tools and the freedom to create your own apps! Signing up for non-apple email, apps, upgrades, etc. before was just something I had an aversion to, (Being a devout apple fan), now signing up for or using 3rd party programs has ceased being an aversion and has simply become a massive source of pain and sheer frustration. I hate non-apple apps. I frankly hate tehnology right now I ahve spent so much time debugging and trying to get things to work, but if I can take a few small doses of technology, I'll only settle for Apple.
I just got fed up reading reviews on Macword because what use is a review from a really awesome program that I can't afford in the first place?!!! Untill I can actually afford this software, reading about it seems kind of boring.
I'm seriously at the point where I'm so sick of these little installations from xyz software that wreak disgusting, foul, putrid discombobulated havoc and disgusting clutterfests on my life. One of those, most undoubtedly is google. I hate google. Their IMAP configurations wiht mail.app are so sickenling buggy, it's basically like setting up and debugging your own email server in the beginning ages of the internet. It's causes me so much painful frustration for hundreds and hundreds of hours of my life. I didn't even realize that google mail was the cause of it. I had a couple gmail accounts and I finally "settled" in one
Email Folders
We've got @Later, @Noisy, @Archive, @Action, and @Respondto. Now honestly those are a bit redundant. I like the A, B, C method of prioritizing all those folders, meaning
C
Noisy
Laters
B
Respondto
A
Action
Because A, B, and C reflect the amount of mental energy you should put towards a response. If you don't want to right a long response, drop the message in C! C messages should be limited to 5 lines maximum for each response. NO MORE! Stickign to that methodology will give you so much freedom in life because instead of seeing dozens of emails where some might involve actions or long or short responses, if you have collected 10 emails in "C" just dash out responses to those and it should take you 10 minutes, tops!
Rules about rules!
Key word to the wise regarding Google Filters or Mail.app Rules. Use them sparingly and ONLY if you have absolute 100% assurance that the rule will get highly utilized. think of the filters/rules as large conduits -- the main "plumbing" if you will, if your email. On my gmail account at one time I had over 30 filters -- Thirty! That just creates (trust me. I know from experience) a fragile, and convoluted email routing system. I think rules and filters should max out around 10, with a few strange exceptions. Good reliable filters that i always use are routing my Facbook and Myspace emails into @LATER/C and @LATER/Myspace, respectively. I get a lot of those updates Consistently -- the consistency is the key parameter for making a rule --and this way they're all consolidated in a seperate folder that I peruse leisurely, "@Later". Consistency is key. At one point, I set up all messages from certain friends to be automatically labelled as "friend". That's cool. Except that when you do that with 10-20 email address and then those people write irregularly, you've got 10-20 extra filters/rules clogging your "email plumbing" which just adds ot confusion, instead of subtracts it. Bottom-line: Rules/Filters should have a high threshold of criteria before they're applied:
1. Regularity -- You must Consistently Receive certain type of email (like Social-networking updates)
2. Consolidation -- Would prefer to have this messages redirected out of the inbox in a seperate folder
3. Decreases Confusion & Clutter -- Adding said filter/rule decreases confusion, instead of adds to it.
With the "Auto-labelling-as-friend" filter, I'd have a friend email me every month or so and "miss" the email because it popped up in "Freinds" instead of inbox. All emails that are irregular (meaning that it's up to the recepient, instead of some auto-responding program like Facebook notifications) should be unfiltered and go to your inbox for you to process directly. Here's an example using all three criteria: Filtering newsletters rerouted to @LATER or @LATER/Newsletters fits reflects "regularity" because you'll recieve those like clockwork weekly or monthly or whatever the scheduled frequency was; "Consolidation" fits because why would you want to read a 4-page newsletter in the midst of processing your main email. You want those in the "@LATER" folder, consolidated and out of the way to optionally read after you've handled stuff that could potentially "blow up". Finally you can check of "Decreases confusion and clutter" because seeing a swelling "Inbox" can cause alarm but if all of those are "Newsletters" you'll just see a swelling "@LATER/NEwsletters" which decreases confusion and panic!
Another example: Bank and Financial NOtices. Any important alerts that you want to receive immediately should, obviously not be filtered, but your weekly or monthly bank statement that sends via email, as long as it can't possibly contain something that could "blow up" or an action coudl be routed to @Later or @Later/Finances, for your Liesure perusal of your financial emails.
On the Nature Of @LATER Emails: Stopping the Dam
It's important to note that all emails directed to @LATER should be emails that could potentially go unread for months or years and nothing "would be missed". Anything important or tied to an action should never be filtered. This is why you don't filter friend's emails because they could have an action buried in there (the rare exception is the loving aunt who only always sends just "Checking in" emails). Don't Assign a rule to something you need to see in your inbox! So given that everything auto-routing to @Later or its sub-folders is just "Leisure reading", the question arises "If I don't Need to read that stuff, why do I even subscribe to it?" Answers will vary, but it's immensely valuable to just plug the leak and simply unsubscribe to junky newsletters or updates you rarely read in the first place. Redirecting All newsletters and automated notifications to @LATER is half the solution. The next solution is eliminating via unsubscribing the junk @LATErs (i.e. the junky newsletters or notifications that you dont' care about in the first place). This is just stopping the dam intstead of redirecting the fluidity of your flow to another folder. If what accumulates in @LATer is primarily "sewage" in other words, eliminate the sewage from the source and stop just "redirecting it around" for goodness sake!
So to conclude we've talked about the "Rules for Rules" or the Three criteria of Regularity, Consolidation, and Decreasing Confusing for assinging a rule and we've talked about just eliminating and being SELECTIVE about the @LATER emails you recieve in the first place.
Those to excellent solutions is your calling card to the delightful and enlightening experience of lightning fast inbox-zero anti-clutter email.
Here's the down-low summary on how to work email with the most simplistic methods possibly (i'm drawing from merlinn mann, David allen, some macworld gurus and other productivity experts and my own experience).
I've detailed the horros of the overly-byzantine system above.
Possible Emails -- Email_IDEAS
Responses
This folder should contain REsponses that you foresee as plausible. When I email. I typically already know what a person will say in response so This way I have the responding part covered. Alternatively, which is the best to do, this should be in Drafts and labeled a different color indicating that it's a "canned response" to a pre-written email. When you know how people think, you already know the type of response you expect to get, so just write your response to that future response then so you don't have ot worry about thinking about in the future.
Edit GMail Filters -- remove most
Ensure I'm aware of what emails are skipping inbox.
AFter some consistency has been established with these folders add in mail-acton and mailtags features ONLY if those programs are non-trial
READ about Mail-acton
Read about Mail-Tags
Get Mail-acton to work
Get a license for it for free or buy it before fully using it
Learn how it works and create some useful rules
Set up mailtags
Elminate all archiving folders after setting up mailtags
Find Mail Aggregator for myspace and facebook accounts
8.22.2008
POP Suite Part 4: Electronic Organization and "Brain Trust" Part 2
If there's one thing I have to say about electronic organization, it's this: close open loops FAST! I've surfed the net many a time and accumulated 8 open windows, and over 30 tabs in less than an hour. That's a lot to sort through. Just develop the habit of executing lightning-fast decisions to quickly archive, capture, delete, discard, dismiss, are do things that catch your interest. In fact, the general rule of thumb should be "nothing should catch your interest for too long!"
Okay, I speak a lot about soft-copy containers. Do that, that's great. I believe you should start extremely low-level so you develop patterns and experience how a structured GTD program could expedite stuff you already do. If you just jump into a program, you'll likely never learn good core GTD practices. However, after working with .txt files for awhile, the program I recommend jumping into is "Things". It's exceptional and amazing; possessing the fluidity of omnifocus but without omnifocus's cluttered, superfluous "junk" options. You'll use just about every feature in the program. The hotkeys for tags and the unstructured fluid concept of tags makes adding tasks seamless and fun. Additionally the fact that each task as a max of only 4 highly useable components (name, tags, notes, due date) makes this app intuitive and simple. No need to go into an in-depth explanation of how it works. A video demo has already been done.
A solid GTD must be simple, intuitive, and not add to clutter in your life! MANY GTD apps actually increase clutter because of the multiple annoying, superfluous, patheticall useles check boxes and extra options for each tasks (Omnifocus does the extra clutter method perfect, so don't use that). Things has the speed and extensibility to get a LOT organized quickly but it still has all the geeky awesome GTD features to shift around tasks automatically and structure them via tags. If you've used mailtags, you'll feel at home with Things, but it's far better than Mailtags. It's definitely an exceptional program where you aren't locked into "contexts" but have the freedom to tag based on context or whatever you choose. While omnifocus is rigid and annoying, Things offers dynamic flexibility with tags. I tried Actiontastic, Omnifocus, and others, and this definitely takes the entire cake. Nothing is better than Devonthink for file structuring and truly limitless database organization of todos, but nothing is better than things for Task management. Together you'll have the most potent gtd system possible. But Actiontastic is great, simple, and intuitive (and free) as well.
But starting off low-tech is best! It may be tedious, but you'll discover patterns and trends of how you structure them enabling you to fully customize a GTD app later on so it works for you instead of you working for it. One example is "watcings", "listenings", and "readings". No GTD app has those categories (yet, I may try to craft one!) and I wouldn't have had awareness that I like to structure things that way without that knowledge gained from doing low-tech GTD. You learn very useful knick-knacks of your own organizational sysytem very quickly from doing low-tech first.
SOFT-COPY CONTAINERS
Note: You'll notice all my references are to mac software. I don't even bother to describe organizational techniques for non-mac software because frankly, if you aren't using a mac already for organization, you'll be so far behind the game, any number of organizational tips couldn't possibly help you. If you want to get and stay organized, get a mac!
First off, one thing I repeatedly see with people is them saving everything. Merlin has a brilliant metaphor on this: "people save every peanut shell they use" after eating the peanut. Utterly absurd. This postmodern approach slaughters the previous modernist approach of just universally saving everything. Categorizing and saving everything like some ancient librarian is so appalling. It's not funny, it's an appaling waste of time and poor efficiency!
With Smart folders that auto-archive and sort everythign for you, put time into scrips or smart folders if you want folders, instead of acting like some ridiculous advocate for the Dewey decimal system!
The Core of Your Capturing System -- 4 Soft-Copy Text Files
~ /DESKTOP/@INBOX/
~/DESKTOP/@IDEAS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@TASKS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@YEARIN.TXT
The Other Stuff
~/DESKTOP/@BLOGS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@PROJECTS.txt
~/DESKTOP/REF (ALIAS WITH ORIGINAL IN
~/REFERENCE)
*~/DESKTOP/MS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/SENDTOPAPER/
~/WORKSPACE1
~/WORKSPACE2
~/WORKSPACE3_BU
~/REFERENCE
XOR
~/DESKTOP/B_READ/
~/DESKTOP/B_WATCH/
~/DESKTOP/B_LISTEN/
~/DESKTOP/B_ACQUIRE/
~/DESKTOP/MEDIA/
~/DESKTOP/MEDIA/A
~/DESKTOP/MEDIA/B
~/DESKTOP/MEDIA/C
~/DESKTOP/MEDIA/ZACQUIRE
The logic behind this:
1. Always use .txt files. Why? Because you can manipulate those and do all kinds of fun stuff with quicksilver such as prepend and append ideas on the fly to them without even opening the file! How do you do that? Launch QS. Queue up the file, hit tab, queue up append text to, hit tab, start typing the text you want to add, hit return. Voila!
2. On the prepending letters and characters to maintain desktop consistency. I use
@
before all files I want to show up ALWAYS on the right hand side of hte desktop. Organize by name and you have the instant consistantly reliable system. "B_" I prepend for files and folders I always want after the "
@
" main files. You can substitue those for whatever variable you please, but the purpose, again, is to maintain consistecy on the desktop so the files "appear" frozen in place and are always accessible when you need them. Think of your desktop workflow like an engine, you can't have random "debris" floating around on the desktop or files mixed around or else the components with crank, clash, and you'll get confused. I can't stress how important it is to maintain maximum consistency on the desktop. Nothing should be stored on it except the above files. In fact, I'd recommend going as far as changing the permissions to the desktop so only root could change or move files on it! (Use chown and chgrp in terminal to do this). That desktop needs to have pristine consistency to it! Another key reminder: ALWAYS remember to ensure programs like Limewire or Safari don't download files to your desktop which destroys desktop consistency. Another huge reason why i'm bing such a massive stickler about desktop consitency is you'll write a lot of scripts that access those files and if they move or change their name, the the scripts will hit an error-bump, and not run.
~/DESKTOP/@PROJECTS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@IDEAS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@TASKS.TXT
~/DESKTOP/@YEARIN.TXT
.txt and .rtf
A decidingly big factor. Because a GREAT system is to use quicksilver's "append to file" action so that you can just call aIDEAS or aTASKS and append a bit of text. And then at the end of the day, simply go through and sort all the "todos" or "ideas" you appended!!! Problems with this: Quicksilver doesn't correctly append text to .rtf files and if the file is open it doesn't append text. If there's ways around that, that would be great!
One thing that's still extremely fuzzy is projects and project support. On this area one thing that shines is Omnifocus. The ability to siphon out available (meaning if a task requires Step 1 THEN and only then STep 2, Step 2 would not show up as an avaialble actionable) has it's value. But again, that's trumped by the lack of compatibility of the application. What if I want to update a task and put that on my iPhone instantly? You can 't do that with productivity apps, but you can with these simple text file methods.
So projects and project support. You could collect all projects on a master project's list and then underneath that list, capture the steps and planning to such a project in other places. But before you know all the necessary future steps to a project, you've got do some form of planning, it could just be a quick mental visualizing or a color-coded mind map, but anytime you envision future steps, that prescient planning has to get captured somewhere. The problem with capturing project notes in with Tasks.txt is that the Tasks.txt has to be sacred, only containing tasks that you WILL do. The vitality of keeping that list sanctified creates massive clarity alone. You don't want to clutter that list with non-actionable planning and brainstorming. So all the planning for a task should be listed under the project name under the context and that that project name should just be listed on a Projects.txt.
Treat Projects.txt like you treat Tasks.txt, with sanctified revere. Don't throw projects on that list that you know are not projects. You could optionally create a seperate MProjects context on the
@ Ideas list, but then doing two types of searches (projects and
@Contexts) would stymie the flow of idea to incoming, to ideas.txt to tasks.txt to getting it done. The flow of ideas is left to right and basically if you've moved something from INcoming notes to Ideas.txt and it's survived both of those two filters, it's probably safe to add it to projects.txt or tasks.txt respectively. I got that idea from organizing my kitchen. I had all of this stock bulk food (10 pounds of sugar, plates I never used unless guests came over, extra pasta, etc.) that I only needed to access when what I was eating ran out. So I consolidated all my "storage food" in one area. And only have 1-3 meals at most and 1-2 frequently accessed food items (like cereal) accessible in my "kitchen workspace". Do the same thing with your tasks. Projects and tasks that are unclear or muddied stay in Incoming notes. If they take more form, add them to Ideas.txt and if they become absolutely crisp add them to your tasks component where they will get done, just like anything in my "active space" component of the kitchen "gets eaten"! This way of siphoning the amount of work (or food) so that you only observe bite-sized chunks of it makes you feel less overwhelmed, more lucid, and simply more productive in getting them accomplished.
So you say, "sure I have 5 items on my task.txt list" and it feels good to remove those, and have a clean list, but then I'll just drag over more tasks from ideas.txt. Exactly! But in dragging those over, you can mull over which ones are top priority so that you by actually clearing off you "tasks.txt" list you've done the most relevant tasks. This removes the need for complex prioritzation systems and flagging. Those are idiotic. You're in a gtd app and you spend an hour deciding if your a project on your projets list is low or very low importance? That's unnecessary. And who really always does their highest priority task first and works there way down? All priorities do is provide scope of hte responsibilities and urgency inherent with each task or project. Dragging the highly urgent or necessary tasks from ideast.txt to tasks.txt does just that. This siphoning process of migrating small chunks of high-priority tasks into tasks.txt works great because then whenever you're in "do mode" you just glance at that one file to see all the top-priority, most relevant, most urgent tasks. The problem with prioritization flagging is when you're in "do mode" you still see all these low priority tasks muddled in with higher priority ones and your productivity stalls. The transferring to tasks.txt works because of its simplicity, modularity, and encapsulation of the tasks you want to focus on.
Having such high-threshold filtering protocols for your tasks or projects ensures that 1)you've thoroughly scrutinized all details of a task or project before committing to its inherent actionables and intermediary steps and 2)that you don't clutter your projects and tasks files with junk or things that would lead you astray. Just stamping an idea on a the tasks list should be considered blasphemy in productivity. Ideas go into incoming notes, and then ideas.txt. Unless something has absolute 100% certainty of being accomplished do you add to your projects.txt or tasks.txt. Sticking to that sophisticated level of filtering makes projects.txt and tasks.txt encompass all of your commitments. That's huge. If those files ever get muddied with things you "might want to do" or things that "might be cool" or things that "I'm ruminating about", your crisp, clean two document list of "commitments" will crumble. I don't want to launch off into too much of a philosophical rant here (okay, maybe a part of me does), but commitment embodies a huge concept including obligations, responsibilities, punctuality, and performance. One you "commit" to something -- all those factors -- what am I obligated to do? What responsibilities will I have and others have (waiting fors)? How will I complete said commitment on time and how can most efficiently completely accomplish said commitment -- pop up on the horizon. If you don't commit to something (if it doesn't pop up on your projects or tasks.txt list) all of those commitment factors remain dormant and irrelevant. Additionally, just think of how much more efficiently and how much more of a quality completion you'll have when you only have say 3-5 commitment projects and 5-10 commitment tasks! You'll do them with more focus and completion because you'll understand and absorb them as "commitments", embracing all the inherent responsibility, punctuality, obligatory, and performance factors intertwined with a commitment.
After having countless lists of tasks and todos marred and blemished by quasi-tasks or those "hhmmm...maybe..." projects and the amount of mental clutter that creates, I can't begin to describe the productivity increase and mental liberation of having a well-editted, clear, clean container for all projects and tasks.
First step is to Make a catalog of all the Waiting-Fors
Kinds of Waiting Fors
Yahoo! Answers
Forum Subscriptions and Questions
Specific Email Action-Related Waiting Fors
Important (non-ACtion-Related) emails that you just want or expect A response from
WF
With emails you're waiting on, forums you've posted to, or updates you want, the web, email, and computer work alone creates a huge demand for "waiting fors". This is in addition to, of course, the typical waiting fors of post mail, phone calls, and other means of communication.
Waiting Fors, again, have their own "context" and this is communication. ANY Waiting for you EVER encounter will always occur within a browser, a phone device, a mailbox (electronic or physical), or in person, but that's it. Phone Device Waiting fors go in WF.txt (or in your phone Favorites), but
Bookmarks
In regards to web surfing, there should be two distinct "piles" of sites that you "keep", "archive", "bookmark" or "store and reference" in anyway: frequently-loaded, unfrequently-loaded. For me, personally, when I'm surfing and am time crunched I can collect 10-20 articles, tidbits, items that I'll want to read and checkout for amusement or work when I have time. However, after I read those, will I want to refer to them again? About 90% of the articles I read I won't ever reread. Therefore, it makes sense to store that "one-time read only" collection it's own pile. What definese "pile" for web browsing? This could be anything from bookmark folder in safari or a folder on the desktop, but choose one so you don't have readings scattered all over your browser AND desktop. Optionally, you can prioritze those collected "one-read only" bookmarks in A,B,C priorities (c=skim, b=skim+, a=read thoroughly).
Next the freqeuntly-accessed. These links are ones that you'll frequently refer to. I'd recommend categorizing them into categories based on project or kind. Something like:
Forums
Finances
WebDevelopment
VeryCool (for readings that made the demanding "cut list" of something you might read again)
VeryFunny (same as above buy amusing)
Chess
All of those should be in the Folder FA (Frequently Accessed)
And then you have an UFA (unfrequently accessed) as a dump folder for any bookmarks you'll want to peruse. That's your "inbox" for websites. That's what's so unique about web surfing, you need an "inbox" for any site you want to process! It's true! It's important to develop a method for organizationally processing sites of interest with thoroughness.
Finally, the "everyday links". Simply put those on your bookmark toolbar. For me, they include social-networking sites (facebook), financial bank link, a few forums I frequently visit, and the like.
RSS
With notifiers you could potentially have newsflashes of articles posted up within 5 minutes of current news flashing accross your screen nonstop. While that might be a VERY cool expeirement to see the rapid communication of news, articles, and technology, set 1 or 2 modes for yourself of RSS notifications. 1 Should be for only priority notes or emergencies, 1 could be for all inbox, and then 3 could be for just any update of all feeds you have (which would be nuts)
Downloads
This encompasses a larger category than you'd think. When you think about it. You download files from emails, safari, limewire, and itunes (audio and video purchases as well as free podcast subscriptions). That covers a LOT of inflow of "stuff" and you have to keep track of not only what's currently getting downloaded, what has finished downloading, but additionally items you need to acquire and still have to find the right links to start downloading them. Clearly, downloads presents a large component of computer-based productivity. There exist numerous programs that download and track download files for you, but, again, like other GTD apps, those have modularity limitations. All downloads should be directed to
~ /DESKTOP/INBOX/ or
~/DOWNLOADS. Although it's best to store downloads in inbox for consoidating sake. That can get tricky if, for exampl,e you're downloading 7 huge files that take days and then you all of a sudden have 7 things "stuck" in your inbox. Therefore I'd store all downloads in
~/downlaods. And, although this may be difficult, write a script to automatically transfer finished downloads to your
~/DESKTOP/INBOX/ folder or just manually dump finished downloads in your INBOX/ folder.
Oh and let me assure you. It's almost certain my gtd management system will get tweaked (in the next month, year, or day!). Right now I'm loving the
"Text files+Devonthink+Things" Combo.
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