Archive for June, 2008

Twitter is one of the best tools for letting the world know what you’re doing at the moment and Wordpress is one of the most flexible and free blogging systems today. Combining the two you can create one of the most powerful organization systems, all this for free!

Preparations

You will need three things to get going with this system. First of all, you need to sign up for a Twitter account which will take you the best of 3 minutes. If you already have a username I recommend creating another one for this specific task. Since you are using this to organize and manage yourself, you might be sharing some stuff you don’t want to.

Second of all you will need a domain and an installed Wordpress blog. For those of you who already have one of these this is a simple step (since no work needs to be done), but for those of you who don’t this could take some time. If you don’t already have hosting please consider Bluehost, I use it for all my domains and if you sign up using my link I get some money which goes a long way for supporting Hack Your Day and my other sites. You will also need to install Wordpress, take a look at their site, they have excellent documentation. If you need help there, my new service, Blogtastique will install the blog and set up the plugin (see next paragraph) for you for free.

Last, but not least, you will need the Twitter Tools plugin by Alex King. This is the tool that will do the grunt of the work, capable of creating tweets from your posts or posts from your tweets, and adding all sorts of functionality on top.

The productivity method

The idea I had which sets the basis for this method is that I wanted a way to keep track of myself, of what I do, what I waste time on and so on, and also a way to easily browse, create statistics and so on. The first part was a given once I started to use Twitter. I can very simply write down what I’m doing, spending no more than 5 seconds on it between tasks. The second part proved a bit of a challenge. Twitter has a history, but nothing really powerful that can give you advanced filter functionality and so on. However, Alex King’s plugin and Wordpress give you excellent ways to manage yourself and get useful information from your day.

The workflow

The workflow defines what you do and how you do it, so please view this as my take, my method, feel free to deviate, explore and share. Basically, when you work, all you need to do is send a quick tweet about what you are doing. “doing marketing presentation”, “writing gHacks post”, etc are good examples, and as you will see the method works best if you document each and every action you do. You can use the Twitter website, but it may be more productive if you use a desktop tool, such as Twhirl, which is a handy Adobe Air application for quick desktop twittering.

You can stop there if you wish, but there is a lot more you can do. Right now you can’t add tags and categories, so what I do is go through all my posts the next day and give them tags, categories and additional notes if I have any more thoughts. Since I opted for the daily summary, I can quickly go through where I need to add tags, delete and so on.

Presentation

That’s basically all there is to the workflow, the other parts of this method just deal with the data presentation. I found a great Twitter-like theme named Bluebird for the blog and I have modified it to show data I need, take a look at my personal organizer. It will only be public for a few days, so hurry!

The great thing about this method is that not only does it give you a great way to present your daily log, but it also enables you to create a customized start page just for you. You can use Wordpress pages like you would on Netvibes and you can use the sidebar for quick links to your favorite site.

Of course your main concern will be presenting your actual tweets. Since the tweet is partially contained in the title and fully in the body, I have removed the titles, and I now only show the tweets, and the dates. There are endless options to modify the look and data volume you show, all you need is a little practice with Wordpress.

Further uses

There are numerous way you can use this method for personal organization. You can organize tasks as well as your activity log, because you can always go and edit the posts later on to add stuff, mark them as done, and so on.

You can also create an email log, so you won’t have to find individual emails you’ve answered for example. Just type “answered John’s email”, or simply “answered email” and you’ll find the answer without actually having to remember more than that.

If you play a lot of darts, poker, pool, or anything else competitive, you can log your progress and then search through it quickly and easily. You can also display results for March, or any other time period.

If you send a lot of Twitters or SMS messages where character count is limited there are some services out there to help you gain some precious characters. When sharing URL’s it is not uncommon to have some so long that your message barely fits. An average URL is at least 50-100 characters long, but two services, TinyURL and Snurl help you shorten these to 25 and 23 characters respectively.

TinyURL

TinyURL has been around for quite a while, and quite frankly it shows. Despite the lack of features and a mediocre site design it does its job well. Enter any URL into the field, click “Make TinyURL” and you will receive a 25 character URL which now functions in exactly the same way as the original. You can then use this in your Twitter or SMS messages to save space, you’ll have enough room to comment on it.

Snurl

Snurl is a service I recently found, which offers the same basic functionality as TinyURL, but has a host of added features for the power user. For the casual user the process is the same, enter any URL, click “Snip it” and use the 23 character new URL. Also, both services automatically copy the link to your clipboard so you can go ahead and paste right away.

If you want a load of advanced features you can sign up and change settings like the prefix (snurl.com, snipr.com, snipurl.com), change auto clipboard settings, add a private code to make some snips private and so on.

The most powerful features is the snip manager where you can see all your snips listed. You can copy, modify and email each snip, but what’s realyl cool is that you can also bookmark it to services like del.icio.us. It also shows clicks and unique clicks for that snip, which is a handy tool for bloggers and website owners. You can sort by name or clicks and so on, giving you a powerful reporting and tracking tool.

Other uses for a short URL

In reality, short URL-s are a great way to share links anyway. Even in emails or documents where you have plenty of space you can use Snurl and TinyURL because a small URL blends in better with the text and won’t cause any weird line breaks (or rather lack thereof).

Creating a database of links can also be easier using this method, since all you need to do is refer to a link with the unique number the prefix. You can then add description rows, but all you really need is the number at the end.

There are a number of cool (and some not so nice) uses for these URL shortening services. If you need the power and productivity of extra services I would go for Snurl which is, but if you’ve been using TinyURL for a while and don’t need the bells and whistles there’s really no need to switch.

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What I have been doing for all my notes since I was about 16 years old was adding little bits of data on each page that would allow me to easily find what I’m looking for. I started simply with page numbers, something I’m betting many of us do, but there are so many other ways you can find anything in your Moleskine, here are a few tips.

Positioning your metadata

The most important thing when placing your metadata in your Moleskine is to go inwards. Put the most relevant or most important bit of data on the outermost part, since this is easiest to access. You can then work systematically inwards, placing the less important bits of data as you go.

Another way to go is to put all your data on the outer edge, which would be the right side for most. You can move along the side vertically instead of horizontally, so by just folding up a bit of each page you can see all relevant info. For me it’s hard to write consistently this way, and it would look horrible for me, so I take the horizontal approach, but whichever way you choose id fine.

Use information relevant to you

Just because all of us always put in page numbers and titles at the top, this doesn’t mean you have to too. You may have a book of thoughts where page numbers don’t really mean anything. In this case you may want to add tags, categories, dates, etc, so your data becomes better organized.

Having as much info as possible is good, but you shouldn’t go overboard and cram everything there is onto the top of your page. Choose a set of data that you need, but one that fits well on the page, adding to your experience instead of bogging it down with data not really needed.

Using tags and categories

Tags and categories can be used with Moleskine notebooks, not just blogs and web pages. In the same way you categorize a post, you can do so with an entry in your Moleskine. Once you’ve used one for a while you will get a rough estimate on your methods. You may spend 50% of the notebook on thoughts, 30% on tasks and 20% on misc. When you go out and buy your next notebook you can pre-label a number of pages with categories you will use.

Color coding is also a way of categorizing and tagging entries. Instead of having to label your Moleskine entries, just use some colored markers or highlighters to indicate them. You can create a page which contains the rules for categorizing, using just 3 markers, which you can keep in the Moleskine, you can color code at least 12 categories easily using horizontal and vertical lines, simple colors, the possibilities are endless.

Further customization

As I just said, the possibilities really are endless. You can cut off the corners of some pages to indicate they are no longer in use, you can cut away corners in different ways to indicate different categories.

You can fold them in, attach post it notes, even rip them out. The point it that there is no set rule for marking and organizing your Moleskine, it is yours to develop and tailor to your own specific taste. If you have your own cool ways of organization and productivity with your Moleskine please let us know!

We all get excited by some fine ideas from time to time, only to find that a day, a week, a month later the idea seems a bit stale. However, you can still make these stale ideas work for you effectively by refining them, and using the already spend input for something productive.

I believe that when you have a good idea you should sleep on it, but if you still find it great the next day, go for it. Sure, it might turn stale after a week, but if you don’t give it a go, you will miss out on a potentially great idea which could make a lot of money for you, you never know.

After a month you might find you don’t think the idea is great anymore, you might find better ideas, who knows, but don’t think your efforts have been in vain! You can turn a bad idea into a great one with some thought, some added ideas and a hint of work.

You could, for example, integrate it with a different project. You might have started a blog in a specific genre and failed with it, just take those posts and integrate them into another blog. Perhaps they won’t bring you more money, but they will add to your content.

At the very least you are sure to have learned a great deal from your failed idea, be sure to build upon these failures. I had a lot of these when I was organizing my pictures. I started in one particular way, spend about 4 hours on them, only to find that the method I developed was utterly useless. However, the way I tagged was quite cool so I kept that, and built on that to get a different system. That system also failed, and in the end I scratched the tagging, but I was able to find a file structure/category combination which worked very well and used that.

Overall, all your ideas have potential in them. If not the potential for success, then the potential to take other ideas to the next level. Be sure to refine everything you do, take the best of each project, idea and inject these into other existing projects. Take a look at why some of your ideas are bad and try to identify these aspects in other areas of your life, perhaps extracting them if necessary.

Most of us have found ways of monitoring our social services and emails all the time. Weather you set Outlook to look for new mail every minute, install an email notification program, have a Twitter client or have an RSS fee reader open at all times, you are constantly monitoring everything, and the time will come (or has already come) when something interrupts you every minute.

Even if you just glance at a popup, read the title of a feed or spend a few seconds replying to a Tweet, you are loosing focus and loosing productivity. You don’t just loose the 20 seconds spent away from your task, but also the first few seconds or minutes when you resume working will not be at peak efficiency, therefore you loose some more there too.

If you feel like I just described your work routine, perhaps it’s time to stop monitoring everything constantly. I don’t mean you should view your email once every day, but you can set some sensible guidelines. How about going through all the services you use every 90 minutes? If you email a lot you can work for 90 minutes and then go through your feeds, emails and other services in 30 minutes, creating nice and rounded two hour cycles in the day. This will help you keep your focus and remove some inefficiency from your life.

Everyone is most productive when they have time to spend focused on one task and one task only, if you have the luxury, stop trying to be in 5 places and once and dedicate 30 minutes of every two hours to following up on everything, the world can do without you for 90 minutes at a time.

If you like to organize your information, how about giving a timeline a try? I don’t think many of us use this for personal productivity, although it’s a great way to showcase information, and even share it if you want to. I haven’t actually done this myself, but after getting to know Timetoast, I might just get into this myself.

Why use timelines?

In short, timelines can put information into context (using a visual representation of time), therefore give you added information and increase your productivity. You can use it to show data that is in very close relation to time very effectively, giving you a visual aid when glancing over your data.

In addition, it is also a fun way of sharing information, you can document long trips, relationships, important stops in your life, historical data for students and so on and so forth.

Using Timetoast

Timetoast is a cinch to use, when you sign up you can start creating timelines right away. All it takes is clicking on the add event button, setting the date, adding and optional image and giving it a title and an optional longer description.

Your data will automatically be shown on the timeline in an easy to digest fashion, allowing you to edit and modify everything later. When viewing the timeline you can click on the events to bring up the longer description and a larger version of the photo attached.

Using Timetoast for productivity

To use Timetoast for productivity it is best if you can combine data from multiple sources into one timeline. A great example is blog statistical data for example. Every day you can visit Alexa, Google Analytics, Feedburner, Technorati and various other sites and record the rating they give you. You can enter them into the timeline and you will have a database of easily readable data from multiple sources.

You can modify this a bit and set a % change where you record the data. For example, you only add an event for Google Analytics when your visitor count increases by 10%. This is useful for recording and visualizing your growth patterns, if there’s a longer time between some of your increases, you may want to find the problem. This becomes increasingly complex and informative once you add all the other data.

Timetoast shortcomings

Timetoast was founded in 2007, so it is still relatively new and will probably undergo changes, but I will nevertheless share some things I missed in there. Timetoast would be a great way for me to share all my posts with my readers. Since I post to about 5 other sites, I could enter each post and put the timeline on my site. However, Timetoast can only narrow down to a day base, not an hourly or minute based timeframe, therefore I could only list posts for a day. I’d much rather have detail down to the minute, which would allow me much more control over everything I input.

Formating is another big issue for me. In my example I explained adding website statistics to the timeline. It would be great if you could format the even boxes, change there color, font etc because this would allow me to highlight some important points in my statistics. I could indicate in red when I first went under 100,000 in Alexa, and so on. You could also record data every day instead after every 10% increase and indicate every 10% increase with red, giving you full, but still clear data.

Point and click event adding would be nice using a double click for example, but this is just a minor point, adding an event with the add event button is still pretty easy.

All in all Timetoast is a great application if you’d like to create some simple timelines, if you have any ideas for using them with advanced productivity please let us know in the comments!