Bringing order to chaos and clarity to confusion

Category Productivity

Mind Mapping With XMind

I’ve been dabbling in mind mapping programs again.  In the past year several new mind mapping tools have appeared.  XMind recently caught my fancy.  XMind is eclipse based and is more polished and professional looking compared to Freemind.  I’ve been… Continue Reading →

Stop Firefox From Stealing Focus

When Ubuntu 10.4 was released I used it as my primary desktop for a week before alternating between it and Fedora.  The polish and finish of the desktop experience is subtle in some places and  noticeable in others–with the exception of the… Continue Reading →

Respecting Time and Attention

I love the beauty and rebound affect of sharing information.  I posted about Merlin Mann’s talk at Rutgers and James remind me that I had given him the idea of keeping separate question lists for different people a long time… Continue Reading →

Time and Attention

In a previous post I talked about using time.  It is a topic I think about a lot because it often feels in short supply.  I know a good part of this is my own doing.  I value a lot of things… Continue Reading →

Time, Netflix, Drifting and Coffee

Cable TV is a waste of money to me. I don’t have time for it and other things are more important. I can’t bring myself to pay $70+ dollars a month for content I wouldn’t would watch very much and… Continue Reading →

Not To Do List

Here is something I landed on a few months ago.  I can’t remember where I first heard the idea. Every day I start with a list of things I need to do.  I’ve also started a list of things I… Continue Reading →

Good Daily Rituals

I love this quote from Peter Berman’s post titled An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day, Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to… Continue Reading →

2010 First Quarter Goals Check-up

The first quarter of 2010 has come to an end and it is time to check in and see how I’m doing on my 2010 goals. 1.  Weigh 170 lbs by December 31, 2010 This was an arbitrary number based… Continue Reading →

Five Resonations

Leaping Again and Again Until We Get it Right by Colleen Wainwright–The best path out of our gridlock is to “Leap Again” even if it is a leap into failure.  I love Colleen’s writing style and poetry. Attention as a… Continue Reading →

The Future of Work

I am on-again, off-again subscriber to Time Magazine.  I use it as a way to spend (waste) less time surfing the web for news and stay informed–except when I decide not to. The on-again off-again nature of my subscription is… Continue Reading →

Knowing and Doing Part II

I appreciated Kevin Fenzi’s post on Knowing Vs. Doing and it pushed me to clarify the thinking behind my original post. Kevin has a great point that there can be a lot of enjoyment from “knowing” and acquiring knowledge to… Continue Reading →

Getting Outside of the Box

In the Fedora Project we exchange a lot of ideas on mailing lists and IRC.  Some of our conversations go around in circles no matter what year it is.  One reason for the lack of progress is fear of failure. … Continue Reading →

Is Doing More Important Than Knowing?

In Tim Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Work Week, he talks about skipping the news circuit–that doing so will add more hours to your day and ultimately doesn’t matter.  He isn’t advocating being uninformed.  He’s advocating using time intentionally for things… Continue Reading →

Or You Could Post to a Mailing List

What issues are you passionate about in the Fedora Project?  What are you doing to move these things forward besides talking about them on the Fedora mailing lists? Seth Godin’s excellent post about procrastination and email reminded me of Fedora… Continue Reading →

Protecting Files and Directories With encfs

Sparks had an interesting post about Thunderbird email security. This reminded me of another technique I like which is to run Thunderbird and Firefox from an encrypted directory.  In addition to encrypting the data, Thunderbird and Firefox won’t start without… Continue Reading →

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