Curious Creature

Maybe the title is exaggerating things just a bit but the idea is floating out there that the Golden Era of lifehacks is in the past and we are left with nothing more than productivity porn. And who is out front in saying this? None other than the productivity porn king himself Merlin Mann!

On September 10th of this year Merlin wrote in a post titled “43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work”:

Friends, I’m done with “productivity” as a personal fetish or hobby. There are countless sites that are all too happy to vend stroke material for your joyless addiction to puns about procrastination and systems for generating more taxonomically satisfying meta-work. But, presently, you won’t find so much of that here.

Except inasmuch as it can help move aside barriers to finishing the projects that you claim matter to you, “productivity” is often a sprawling ghetto of well-marketed nonsense for people who really just need a ritalin and a hug. So, for myself, random tips and lists that aren’t anchored to solving a real-world problem for a smart but flawed adult with a mind are dead to me. Pour a forty on ‘em.

The first time I read this I laughed. After all Merlin Mann pioneered productivity porn. To hear him complaining about how many sites are now out there peddling the stuff of his making was laughable. At the same time the guy has a point. In that article he describes, quite correctly, the problems with the productivity blogosphere today. Too much noise and not enough signal and I found myself agreeing with him to the point that I cut all of it out of my life.

Well, that and a big chunk of other time-wasting material. I trimmed about 2/3rd of the subscriptions I had going in FeedDemon/NetNewWire. I’ve all but given up political blogs which have been my other, massive, black hole of time. I’ve got a lot to do and not enough time to do it all. The cognitive dissonance being created by all of that reading without any real purpose behind it was becoming deafening so no more.

And honestly the best part of his post was the discussion of “conversation” and “community” :

Stupid, venal, ignorant, self-linking comments from people who couldn’t be troubled to actually read the article. Angry forum posts full of personal attacks, giant avatars of Manga characters, and 4-vertical-inch signatures about which Golden Girl you are. Nonsense tagging, meta-commenting, ass-kissing, trolling, and…oooo!…video responses….neato! Please. It’s nuts and it’s pointless and it’s really cynical on the part of almost every publisher that allows that crap to go on.

Right on. My blog hasn’t hit the popularity curve the same way 43 Folders has Not yet anyhow but this is my blog. I’ll say what I want, when I want to say it. If you have something to say to me email me but I got sick of tools like this on my own site. If you like what I have to say please keep reading. If you don’t keep reading or leave. The decision is yours but I’m not going to justify myself to anyone else let alone turds pretending to be people like I mentioned above.

Thanks for the whining Merlin. I feel a bit lighter now myself

I’m pretty scatter-brained these days.  I think years and years of “multi-tasking” hasn’t done a whole lot for my powers of concentration.  Today I decided while eating lunch to only eat lunch…live in the moment as it were.  No books.  No computer.  No radio.  Nothing.  Just the simple act of eating.

I suppose in some ways that is similar to meditation and it was really damn hard.   My mind kept flitting all over the place.  I had to restrain myself from moving over to the computer to read something or send a friend an instant message.  I’ve been slowly weaning myself from various sources of information that have been nothing but time sinks.  Today was a quick plunge into the cold waters of single-tasking and boy…definitely not a simple thing.

I’m really frustrated by an ongoing issue with iCalendar feeds coming from my lists at Remember the Milk being consumed improperly by Google Calendar.  And the thing that is most frustrating?  They don’t seem to give a damn that the problem may very well be on their end.

Have a look at the help forum posting here.  The conversation gets real interesting when user wernst starts to do some digging into why the feeds aren’t working.  What he uncovers is that the RTM iCalendar feeds contain an excessive amount of timezone information.   He even sets up a new account, removes everything from the lists so that there are no to-dos and no events, and then grabs the feed.  That feed also contains excessive amounts of timezone information even though it has no events associated with it.   Emily from RTM insists its all about the timezones:

(for anyone curious, those lines describe the timezone; extremely important for ensuring your tasks display at the correct time!)

That’s all well and good but why is the timezone being described, in detail back to the year 1918, for a feed that has no events?  As wernst points out the feeds coming from AirSet, which can parse the RTM feeds, and which he then forwards to Google Calendar, don’t have all of that timezone information and, *gasp*, Google Calendar reads them properly.

So it very well might be an issue on Google’s end but I think it’s pretty clear that RTM is generating feeds, that while valid, don’t work properly everywhere.   I could probably form some valid XML that not all parsers can deal with.  That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t fix the XML to make it easier to parse.  RTMs position is that since Google is grabbing the feeds regularly the issue is out of their hands.   Google may very well be getting the feeds in a timely manner.  That doesn’t mean they’re parsing them properly.

To the folks at RTM:  your customer service in this instance sucks.  I can’t be much more blunt than that.  You had a paying customer do a lot of work for you and you’re passing it off like you can’t possibly have anything to do with the problem since Google manages to at least grab the feeds OK.  BOOO!!!!

I love your application but you guys need some work on the customer service front.  Sheesh.  Google is the 800lb gorilla here.  You’d do well to work with them to figure out what the hell is happening for the many users of both your service and theirs.  Just insisting that the calendar feeds are valid and then closing the posting certainly isn’t going to fix anything.

I’ve been mucking around with adding my Remember the Milk lists as iCal event feeds to my Google Calendar account.  The idea of having tasks with due dates show up like “local” GCal events is great but it doesn’t work as I’d hoped.

Apparently I’m not the only one noticing this either based on this post on the GCal Google group.  That post notes that it takes hours for the feed to refresh and that there is no way to manually refresh it (you can in with a  30boxes.com calendar but that one leaves a lot to be desired).  Quite frankly it’s ridiculous that it takes hours.  At that point I can’t be sure that anything I entered actually shows up in GCal.   It would appear this behavior just isn’t an RTM issue as I see the same behavior with a feed from iWantSandy.com.

RTM does have two other options available, one for GCal, and if you’re using Firefox, one for GMail.  The GMail Firefox plugin is quite nice but I don’t want my tasks there…I want them in my calendar.  The option for GCal itself is OK but I’m picky and don’t want to have to click that checkmark to see what I have for the day.

I suppose that GCal is like so many other pieces of software, it gets you most of the way there but then dumps you off about a mile away from your intended destination.  This is a real disappointment. I know GCal is free but adding a manual refresh link for the external feeds can’t be that difficult.  The Google Group link above notes that “they’re looking into it”.  I hope it happens sometime soon.

Not surprisingly this works flawlessly on iCal on the Mac.  I can even see tasks with no due date set in the To-Do list part of iCal.   But I can’t use my Mac at work anymore where I really need to see these lists

What do you do when you can no longer use your computer platform of choice at work even when you’re more productive with it and are used to the tools available for it which are generally superior to the offerings (if they exist) on other platforms?  You go back to web applications.

I had been using a combination of GMail, Remember the Milk, and Google Calendar for my GTD/personal organization needs.  This was prior to getting a Mac.   At that time I started using Apple Mail and iCal both of which I have grown to love.   I then ended up getting an iPhone for my mobile needs and life was wonderful.  About 3 weeks ago the axe was dropped on me and my Mac usage at work so it’s back to the drawing board.

I have to say I’m still pretty livid about the corporate computer policies at work that seem to keep springing out of nowhere.   Not being able to use personal equipment on the corporate network is just the latest policy to fly in out of left field.  But all that aside where does that leave me?

I guess I move mail back to GMail which I never really abandoned.  I just set up Apple Mail to retrieve my email from the IMAP interface of GMail.    I actually also still used Google Calendar in the respect that I bought and installed Spanning Sync to sync my iCal calendars with Goolge Calendar.  For tasks lists I really hadn’t found a replacement for Remember the Milk but then again i wasn’t using it much anyhow.  My list-keeping fell off and I just scheduled things directly in the calendar either on specific days and times or just on specific days as all-day events.

I do really need to get back in to keeping task lists though but I’m less than thrilled with having to pay $25 for RTM Pro to get the iPhone interface.  I’d be more inclined at this point to give ToodleDo a try again since at $14.95 a year you get the iPhone interface and quite a bit more.  I like RTM but the $25 is hard to swallow simply for the iPhone CSS and HTML they send out.

At any rate I’m back to square one because of a corporate policy that doesn’t take into account an employee’s productivity.   Maybe things won’t be so bad since I had woven in my gmail/gcal use with the client apps on the Mac.  Once again though it all comes down to the list-keeping and task lists and I’m not sure what I’m going to do there.

The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen.

Yeah…(10+2)*5. I0 minutes of work, 2 minutes of break repeated for 5 cycles.  This is Merlin Mann’s system to beat procrastination which he first wrote about back in 2005.  I had read about this ages ago on 43 Folders (the article is pretty old already) but never tried it.  Today I started.

I’ve had feats of concentration so heroic there should be epic stories (you know…like the Odyssey) written about them.  Those are few and far between though Normally I have a real problem getting things going.  I can procrastinate with the best of them and I’ve been that way my whole life.  I’m not sure what it is but it seems that I have two problems: being able to break tasks down into manageable pieces and, these days,  being too attracted to the many distractions that is the internet.  Overall it hasn’t hurt my effectiveness because I get things done on time.  I just don’t like how I get there so it was time to give anything a shot that might help.  That is where (10+2)*5 comes in.

I was reading the other day about an application for Windows called Instant Boss that was designed specifically to time the dashes.  It actually isn’t limited to (10+2)*5, you can set the values to whatever you want.  The default is (10+2)*5 and that’s what I’ve started with.  So far it is working great.

One of the things all of these dashes seem to do (at least according to the authors) is get you to the point of working to where you start to skip the breaks.  This was true for me even on this first day of trying it.  The 10 minutes go by, you get the signal from the application to take a break, but you are in the middle of something and don’t want to stop so you hit the “skip break” button and go on for another 10 minutes.   This whole thing is fantastic because I’m moving towards a goal, sometimes in 10 minute chunks, sometimes longer, with what seems like little effort.   I suppose the knowledge that after 10 minutes you are free to let your mind wander for a bit is the key.

There is also another dash from Jeff Covey called The Progressive Dash which also sounds fascinating but again leads to the same thing as the other dashes:

By the end of that time, I wish I could continue and get more done. Pretty soon, I’m wanting to get back to it and finish it instead of procrastinating about it.

Exactly how the (10+2)*5 thing worked for me.  Amazing in it’s simplicity.  Limitless in its power for Good. 

I read a comment in a forum (think it was in the RTM forums but can’t find it again) that there really was no difference between Lists and saved searches (AKA: Smart Lists).  I have to take exception to that because there is a huge difference:  you can’t move items to a Smart List.   One of the ideas of GTD is getting your Inbox to empty.   In RTM you can’t do that if you are simply relying on tags. 

The Inbox

There is one work-around which is creating a Smart List Inbox which you can set to only have those items that haven’t been tagged yet.  If you’re using Smart Lists and tags as your way of organizing things you’d be tagging everything with a context when you process your inbox.   You would set up your Inbox Smart List to only show those items that haven’t been tagged yet.  I’ve been experimenting with this and it seems to work well since you can set that new Inbox as the default tab when you log in.

The biggest issue here is that you can’t get rid of the RTM-provided Inbox.  It would certainly be nice if there were an option to hide it.

Project Lists

I’ve also set up two Smart Lists for projects. One shows work-related projects and the other shows personal projects.  At work all of my projects are tagged with a bug ticket so I can use that in the project’s tag ie: p-alpha-456.  I also set up the main project task with a priority level of 1.  I then set up my Smart List for work like ‘tagContains: p-alpha AND priority:1′.  This insures that the Smart List only shows the high-level projects I’m currently working on.  

I do the same thing for personal projects.  The Smart List is set up along the lines of: ‘tagContains: p- NOT tagContains:p-alpha AND priority:1′.  Again this shows me the current high-level personal projects.

Contexts

My contexts are also set up as Smart Lists with a simple ‘tag: <context name>’.  Not much else to say here since every task will eventually get tagged with a context and show up on the appropriate Smart List.

Conclusion

So far this system is working well in the all of 3 days or so I’ve been trying it I’m sure it will get tweaker further but things seem to be flowing nicely.

Today I discovered that the fine folks behind Remember the Milk created an extension for Firefox that integrates the RTM task list into GMail. Quite simply this is fan-freaking-tastic. I was already using the Google Calendar “plugin” which works well but the GMail integration really is awesome since it is far more integrated into the GMail UI than is the GCal option.

As far as GTD goes though now I have a complete online environment for mail, tasks, and calendar. In fact I’m so excited by this I just decided to start getting my work email via GMail as well. It seems really silly to keep work stuff in one spot and personal stuff in another. I know that David Allen doesn’t recommend doing this and it just feels wrong. There should be no reason to have to hit multiple sources for what is essentially the same information.

Just one note about the GMail extension: please read the warning note near the bottom of the page I linked to above. If you feel squeamish about stuff like that then head for the exits and don’t install the extension.

Way back in October of last year I wrote part two of a small series of articles about using various online applications to follow David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology of time management.  At the end of the second part I said I would cover using Remember the Milk (hereafter referred to as RTM) and Toodledo for the list-keeping part of the methodology.   Here is that long overdue follow-up.

What took so long?

Glad you asked :)  A host of things came into play the most important being that I totally fell off the GTD wagon.   About the same time I posted the last article I started looking for a new job and I’ve been really busy every since.  I’m just starting to once again pick up the pieces of my GTD practice such as it was.

I also hit some snags in just how to use RTM as a list keeper.  But before I talk about that let me talk briefly about Toodledo.

So long Toodles

First off let me say that Toodledo is a fantastic task and list keeper.  It has a ton of functionality, offers good Google Calendar integration, and has a very nice UI that is very configurable.  Why did I stop using it then? 

1. The version that I found essential, the Pro version, isn’t free.  It’s only $14.95 a year but pretty much all of what I need is in RTM which, at the moment anyhow, is completely free.
2. You can only have one note per task.  RTM allows you to have as many as you want.  I use the notes a lot and I like being able to keep different notes per idea. 
3. History of completed tasks in the free version only goes back 1 week!  I find this totally ridiculous and its a show-stopper.  I like to go back and refer to things often and the 1 week limit is just kills this application for me.

All that being said, if these aren’t issues for you then by all means give Toodledo (especially Pro) a look.  It really is a nice application.

The cow says Moo…

Isn’t that a great logo?  How can anyone resist such a lovable cow?  Doesn’t it make you want to use RTM? :)  Well, RTM is free so go try it.  I’ve done so and I’ve been pretty happy so far.  But I’ve been having problems and have been searching out a solution.   Before I get to that let me tell you how I was using the application for GTD previously.

Contexts

I was using the List feature of RTM for my contexts.  I have only a few that matter like @home, @work, @computer, etc.  I have five total so I thought that having those contexts displayed as tabs would be beneficial and it was.   The contexts worked just fine.   I would create tasks under the right context and move on. 

Lists

I, shockingly enough, also used the list feature to hold my other lists so that the main lists, such as Someday/Maybe, To Buy, etc. also showed up as tabs.   Items would be added to those lists easily enough.  They were actually RTM tasks but in the scheme of things that really was irrelevant because it just looked like a long list of things I wanted to buy, things I wanted to do someday, etc.   Again this worked fine.  The real issue for me was projects.

Projects

Projects was a tab (an RTM list in other words).  Each project (remember, anything more than 1 step is a project) had a place holder task on the project list.  Now I kept running into the problem of how was I going to add tasks to those projects?  The way I had the system laid out the only option was to use the Notes feature which I did by adding the subtasks for a given project in the Notes.  This did not work at all.  There is no way to make items inside a note into a task so therefore there was no easy way for me to move things into the appropriate context when I needed to.  This actually is the reason I originally took a look at Toodledo.

Also, using a list per project also doesn’t work.  Remember that anything requiring more than one step is a project?  At any given time you might have 30 or more projects happening.  That is a lot of tabs cluttering up the screen.

Solutions

A couple of days ago I just couldn’t take it anymore and went looking to find out how other people are using RTM for GTD and I ran across this article.

I thought that most of the ideas there, both in the article itself and the comments, were very good.   By using tags for my contexts I can create smart lists that are based off of searches on those tags.  That way I still get a tab for my contexts.  What about projects though?  More in a second.

What I found interesting was that people were doing the same thing I was doing before with having an RTM list/tab serve as the placeholder for their contexts and the more I think about it the more I think this is probably still the best way to go.   I still have the issue with projects though.  What is the solution?

The solution seems to be to just tag items with a project tag such as p-create-website or something along those lines.  That lets me search easily enough for what I need and it doesn’t clutter up the screen.  It just doesn’t feel satisfying though.   What I’d really like is a sub-task feature.  That would let me create a Projects list/tab like had done originally and then add tasks for each major project.  Then I could add the project steps in as sub-tasks.

Gripes

One thing that really bothers me about the RTM tagging system (and they are not alone by any means) is the stupid way you separate tags.  Instead of making tags separated by commas you use spaces which means no tags like “p-create website” without using quotes.  And when you do use quotes for spaces the final tag just removes all the spaces. Boo!!!  A small thing maybe but annoying.  At least WordPress gets the tag thingright

Second gripe is add subtasks :)  They would be really useful.

Last thing that really irks me about RTM is the funky way the UI works sometimes.  I don’t like the fact that in the default single select mode you can check the boxes of multiple items yet only have one item be affected by edits (yes I know about multiple edit mode).   That breaking a common usage pattern that most people are familiar with.  It would seem the check boxes only apply to the  actions available in the actions dropdown that appears above the task list.   Given the way they’ve engineered the UI I’m not sure how else you’d approach it but it feels wrong to me.

Final Thoughts

Even with my gripes I still think RTM is a fantastic application.  Does it have every feature I want?  No.  Does it do things the way I’d want all the time?  No.  But it still works well in my system and it’s not causing me any major pain or agony.  And you certainly can’t beat the price