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How To Kill Time Productively On Your Phone Writer Joel Johnson says that when he’s fallen into a rut of doing nothing, forgiving himself (and others) is the best way to move through it. Instead of trying to browbeat myself back to productivity–You’re so far behind that you must do double the work!–I just let go. [...]I know. It’s not a good tactic for wresting yourself out of a doldrum and sailing around the Cape of Todo. But whatever! It’s okay to go off course sometimes. We are imperfect. And loathing yourself or bemoaning your lack of work ethic isn’t actually doing anything, either.
We all have those self-loathing days when everything feels crappy and nothing’s getting done, and that’s the most crucial time to let ourselves off the hook. How do you pick yourself up out of the quicksand of productivity paralysis? Tell us in the comments.
The Economy of the Heart [43 Folders]The Simple Dollar personal finance blog posts a helpful primer for those thinking about getting started with stocks, or even just mutual funds and other market investments. Getting debt under control and keeping a reserve fund is the first priority, of course, but once you’re comfortable in your financial skin, Trent recommends performing a risk inventory on yourself before even looking at a stock chart: Spend some time thinking about this. Would you not worry if you woke up and found out that you had lost 5% of your investment if you knew in the long run it would build up in value? How about 20%? If you had $10,000 in stocks, and then over a very bearish month, $2,000 of that vanished, how would you honestly react? Would you take your money out?
Sage advice, and the rest of the post should be familiar to those who have met with financial counsellors before. For more beginners’ guidance, check out Moolanamy’s 35 common sense rules for investing.
Six Steps for a Beginning Stock Investor [The Simple Dollar]Last week I detailed how to jailbreak your iPhone to the 1.1.3 firmware using Windows- or Mac-based applications and walking through a fairly long process. If that process was a bit too daunting for you, the Jailbreak Dev Team has released a one-click solution that you simply install through Installer.app. To use it, you need to have a jailbroken 1.1.2 iPhone (here’s how to do that), then it’s simply a matter of tapping the install package and waiting about 20 minutes for the entire process to complete. Before installing, make sure you’ve set your Auto-Lock feature to Never, are connected to a Wi-Fi network (it downloads a 200MB image), and you’ve got at least 300MB of free space on your iPhone. Finally, check to make sure you’ve got the latest version of Installer.app before proceeding.
Reprogramming your personal workflow with a productivity system is a lot like programming computer software: given a stream of incoming information and tasks, you set up holding spaces and logical rules for turning it all into action. Like software that automates activities, good productivity systems take the thinking out of what to do with incoming data, and make it a no-brainer to turn those bits into an accomplishment. While I’m at best a novice student of Unix philosophy and its rules for designing great software, several tenets are worth thinking about when you’re designing your productivity system. Many of the rules that apply to writing great code also apply to writing down tasks and projects that you’ll actually carry out instead of put off. Let’s look at a few of the basic rules of Unix philosophy and how they apply to your personal productivity system. Photo by naotakem.
Finally got around to dusting off the Better GReader Firefox extension this weekend and jazzed it up with three new skins and features. My favourite skin is the beautiful Mac OS X skin, but the handy Reader Minimized skin and the updated Optimized options are useful, too. There are also two new Preview Item scripts in the mix, which loads a post’s originating web page in a frame right inside Reader. You can now also bypass that annoying “iGoogle or Reader?” prompt page with the Auto Add to Reader feature. Go grab the download at Better GReader’s homepage, or if you have it installed already, just update from Firefox’s Add-ons dialog box.
Trick out Google Reader with Better GReader [Lifehacker Code]Reader Mike just got a “yes” from his girlfriend in reply to The Big Question, and now he’s looking ahead to The Big Event. Being a regular reader, a frugal guy, and an “addictive planner,” he writes seeking help: Do you have any suggestions for software (I use Windows, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile platforms) that I can use to keep track of vendors, quotes, and other sundry details?
Having tied the knot less than a year ago, I found some success using Google Docs for multi-user planning, but also spent a lot of time explaining its features to everybody—and ended up losing a few invitations to accidental deletions.
So I turn to our wise readers and ask: What software or organizational tools would you/did you use to plan a wedding, covering as many aspects as possible? How would you keep on top of your tasks, decisions, and deadlines? Give Mike an early gift of advice in the comments.
There’s still no getting around the fact that text-to-speech conversion doesn’t sound quite, well, human. VozMe, a free text-to-speech web app, sounds better than you’d expect for a free web service, and is pretty convenient to use. Simply paste text into a web form from any source, hit the “Create MP3″ button, and you can then listen through a Flash-based player or download an MP3 for later listening. VozMe can also be embedded in web sites or used through an iGoogle gadget, and while you still won’t mistake VozMe for a friendly voice, it gets the job done with decent pronunciation, and without any two-program hacks.
VozMe [via Red Ferret Journal]Windows only: Free clipboard utility Clipdiary doesn’t have all the bells and whistles (like cross-computer syncing) of managers like Ditto, but for simply keeping a list of all your Ctrl+C action, it’s a handy, lightweight application to keep in your taskbar. Clipdiary tracks the images, rich text, and even pictures placed in the Windows clipboard, tells you where they came from, and can easily “attach” and “detach” itself from monitoring for privacy concerns. By default, Clipdiary tracks up to the 3000 last items you’ve copied, so you’ll likely want to change that in the options dialogue. For those handy with databases, Clipdiary keeps its records in an SQL file, possibly offering some cross-platform productivity potentials. Clipdiary is a free download for Windows systems only. For more clipboard ninja training, take a look through our Top 10 clipboard tricks.
Clipdiary [via gHacks]Two years ago, you learned some DIY home improvement tips from real estate agent Cynthia Kern.
Windows/Mac/Linux: For those who have migrated their day-to-day documents to Google Docs, or those just looking for a good reason to do so, gDocs Sidebar might be the time-saving, access-enabling tool you’re looking for. The free extension for Firefox adds a full-featured sidebar view of your uploaded documents, allowing you to search them, sort by document type, date or author, and narrow your view to specific folders (although sub-folders aren’t supported yet). Better still, those who despaired to see last week’s release of a drag-and-drop uploader released only for Windows get the same functionality in gDocs. My only complaint at this point is with its keyboard shortcut, which I had to re-assign from Ctrl-Shift+G to prevent the “Find” dialogue from popping up with. All in all, however, it’s a Google Docs fan’s best friend and time-saver. gDocs Sidebar is a free download and works wherever Firefox does.
gDocs Bar [via Google Operating System]
