Category Productivity

Time Machine really is an amazing application.  I had no idea it could be this easy to backup my entire system and restore it.  A friend of mine told me it was easy, but I had not idea it was… Continue Reading →

I love the story from Peter Bregman’s post Coping With Email Overload and how he dealt with an entire week’s worth of email in three hours and yet normally he spends an entire week doing email.  It is such an illusive… Continue Reading →

Here’s some great advice from Charlie Gilkey’s post called Leave the Canoe Behind. What got you here won’t (necessarily) get you there. In some ways it parallels my post, How Old Are Your Tapes? and yet I think Gilkey reaches… Continue Reading →

In today’s world with so many ways to get information, is there any kind of return on investment to the companies creating and distributing phone books? Some people were sad earlier this year when the Encyclopedia Britannica went out of print.  I… Continue Reading →

How often do we lose out on the present moment by trying to preserve it for later?  I think we often lose twice–we miss out on the present moment by trying to preserve it, and then the quality of what… Continue Reading →

Pie charts are a horrible way to convey information, particularly when other formats are much more effective. Stephen Few has a compelling article explaining why this is true.  I also recommend his books. If you need a little convincing before… Continue Reading →

Dave Gray wrote a long post (since removed from the internet) called Wrangling complexity: the service-oriented company.  I confess I got lost in some of the details of it, though I found a few good thoughts like this one, Most businesses… Continue Reading →

I had mixed feelings about the public reactions to the passing of Steve Jobs. I think it is interesting how we often have a tendency to emphasize one aspect over another. It’s natural, but I think it is even more… Continue Reading →

I’ve been asking myself, and you might be asking yourself too, “Where is John’s blog going and what is it really about?” I break one of the golden rules of good blogging which is that your blog should focus on… Continue Reading →

The other day I was musing about fear and ambiguity (uncertainty) and a few days later I was browsing Jonathan Fields’ blog and saw that he had written a book on just this topic.  Lucky for me it wasn’t checked out… Continue Reading →