What's the next action

Summerbreak? I guess...

One of the nice parts of having a weblog is you can look back on your own writing, reflect, check your current behaviour and make some conclusion out of it. The last couple of weeks I just didn’t feel like writing at all. My daughter Tess is taking a lot of (nice and warm) attention, work is booming and on the side I am also involved in some weblog-related projects in the Netherlands. So my agenda is solid booked every week. I tried to cramp in some thinking- and writing-time and I found out this time was always spent on something else. I was thinking to myself that I had this feeling before and after some searching I found an article from June last year which describes the exact feelings I am feeling again. So maybe this is some recurring moment in my life? An annual writingbreak which I need to take, to re-fuel, to get back in line, to find out what the purpose is of this blog, my vision of the GTD-world I am playing a part in. Time for some reflection again?
Whatever it exactly is, I am taking a break again. My feeling says it will be a month, maybe longer. I do think I will post some quick notes somewhere along the line but no big ideas, articles or friday 5ives. It’s summertime I guess…

23 05 07 - 08:58 - Permanent link - five comments

The Friday 5ives: 5 webdistractions

Every friday I present to you The Friday 5ives. Around one central theme I give five tips. tweaks, moments, pointers, anything. Really short but I hope really helpfull. The past Friday 5ives can be found on this tag-page. and lo and behold it is fixed! My dearest webmaster helped me with it so the tags are now functioning again! Hurray!

This friday, I present to you the five biggest online distractions to get anything done

11 05 07 - 14:00 - Permanent link - three comments

Walk the Blogwalk in Amsterdam

I am invited to attend an invitation-only event called the BlogWalk. This is a concept which invites several bloggers from a field of expertise and have a workshop together on the use of social media in a particular area. This BlogWalk is centered around the theme of “Digital Bohemiens”

08 05 07 - 23:00 - Permanent link - No comments yet

iGoogle vs. Netvibes «

Web Worker Daily brings us an interesting showdown between Netvibes and iGoogle. Round 1 goes to Netvibes. As it should.

07 05 07 - 09:42 - Permanent link - one comment

The Friday 5ives: How to start using a tickler file

Every friday I present to you The Friday 5ives. Around one central theme I give five tips. tweaks, moments, pointers, anything. Really short but I hope really helpfull. The past Friday 5ives can be found on this tag-page. I am still experiencing some difficulties with the tags so they give some errors. It has gone to the @waiting-for list since I need my webmaster’s help with the htaccess file.

This friday, I present to you five ways to start with a tickler file.

04 05 07 - 14:00 - Permanent link - six comments

Get a Moleskine harddrive

This is for the übergeeks among us. If you need some more diskspace and you have a spare harddisk lying around (that should rule out all the non-geeks among us) than you can make a hip and trendy harddisk case yourself with a Moleskine. Check out these instructions. In a few steps you can have some sort of hybrid GTD harddisk yourself. You could use it as a reference-disk with all your data on it.

(Confession: I do have two harddisks lying around and yes, I have a spare Moleskine...hmmm....)

03 05 07 - 16:31 - Permanent link - No comments yet

Accomplice, is it any good?

On the dutch GTD evening I heard someone talking about Accomplice. As they say on their website:

This isn’t some trivial to-do list, and it isn’t an overweight project management suite. Accomplice has just the ingredients you really need to stay on top of your busy life, integrated into an intuitive and flexible system.It works online and offline, integrates with Outlook and other software you already use, and syncs with your PDA. Oh, by the way, it’s free.

I never heard of it. Is there anyone using this? Any thoughts?  Looks interesting enough to me...

03 05 07 - 09:00 - Permanent link - eight comments

AutoHotkey and Thinking Rock - The flow from thought to action.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am using Thinking Rock as my nervecenter when it comes to my projects, actions and lists. It is based around the core GTD principles and it makes you go through several steps to really think about your projects and your actions. But I wanted some extra functionality in TR. i found myself not using it quite as much as I wanted because it misses a good method of entry for my personal needs. I am not a programmer, but I found a nice way to use Autohotkey and TR together to make a great flow from my thoughts to actual Next Actions. In this article I will explain the steps I took to make it all work together.
Remember, I am not a programmer so the code is rather sketchy and based on another script. But for a version 1.0, it will do.

02 05 07 - 22:35 - Permanent link - six comments

Elegant solution for your cables

02 05 07 - 20:34 - Permanent link - two comments

Thinking Rock 2.0 released

I am a dedicated user of the Javabased application Thinking Rock for all my actions and projects. It is not perfect but it does the job pretty well. Sometimes I wonder if I need an online application or something more mobile, but when thinking some more about it (and sleeping over it) I find myself going back to simplicity all the time. TR is pretty simple in itself. I am using it for four months now and to be honest, I don't look in it every day. Because most of the stuff that comes my way I can do it the same day, within the hour or just put it on my calendar. Another element I am missing is the ability to quickly add new thoughts. Now I have to open the application and go to the first part of the flow. But I would like something like GyroQ for ThinkingRock, where I can just get a shortcut, type my stuff in a small inputbox and presto it's gone.

So I have been wondering about my use of TR. I decided to check out their website since they have been promising a new version for quite some time now. And what do you know! TR 2.0 is released for the Mac! I own a PC, but this must mean the Windows version is not far away any more. BrT wrote an excellent review on the new version and I must say, promising new features. One thing I especially look forward to is the modularity of TR. There is now a Module Manager for viewing, installing and uninstalling modules, and an Update Center wizard that allows you to automatically download and install new or updated modules. Interesting! Who will write a non-intrusive data-entry module in conjunction with GyroQ or Autohotkey?

Amyway, I look forward to the new release of ThinkingRock, because the gamma version for the Mac also runs on Linux. Come on, where's the Windows version? Or should I really switch to Ubuntu or OS X?

Update: I have been looking with my eyes closed, because there is a Windows release on this page! It is gamma so I guess that's greek for "pretty unstable, make a backup and hope for the best"

02 05 07 - 16:22 - Permanent link - six comments