Lose Your Shirt In The Crash?

If you're a programmer, no problem.  If your partner is a programmer, no problem.  It just so happens that well-known software personality Andy Brice moonlights as a fashion consultant and has created a range of t-shirts for programmers. Seriously - for coders, this is the haute of haute-couture.

The real win is that it's entirely for charity - all proceeds are split between two amazing groups who help with sight and prosthetics for underprivileged. If you're looking to get into the real Christmas spirit early, take a look at Andy's t-shirts for programmers page!

Start Your Own Business

If you have been wanting to start your own business, do something about it today.  Anything - just a plan, a few ideas, maybe write some code, a web page or a document about sales.  Maybe, maybe buy a book - I say maybe because it's too easy to read about someone else's life instead of building your own, to pretend that reading is action instead of a preparation for action.

If you're not sure which of three ideas to follow up on, put your toe into the water of each, until the answer is obvious.

If you don't have the time, spend 20 minutes on it on Sunday evening.

Why?  Well, because until you have a stake in the ground around which you build your dream, you can't benefit from serendipity.  People won't mail you with their ideas or business proposals, you won't have a chance meeting with a like-minded person who you can collaborate with.  Until you're at a particular point in space and time, the ideas that come up only when you're there...won't.

You know how time seems to move faster as you get older?  Today the time is moving slower than it will.  Excellent time to start something.

How I increased my productivity in under a minute

I find the links toolbar in Firefox very useful.  I add all my commonly-used links, grouped into folders.  E.g. under "Tools" I have "application" sites like online banking.  Under "News" I have Google Reader and a few news sites I like to keep up with.  Under "Discuss" I have a few forums.  That's not the trick, though - here's the trick:

 

A few days ago I moved all forum and news-type sites to a new folder...

..."Waste Time".

 

Seriously, it works.  Now instead of unconsciously opening a news site when I'm thinking about something and blowing half an hour (that I can't afford), I'm very aware of what that folder represents!  I'm treating sites in that folder far more gingerly.  Every time I wander over to get a dose of news I see "Waste Time" and I slink back to doing some work!

Just seen on the David Allen Forums

When you just know that their intent isn't quite GTD-related :)

Do you procrastinate? Want to know why?

Just in case you weren't aware of the link between procrastination and somebody swallowing random stuff from your medicine cabinet, there's an article over at the GTD Times, the new "semi-official" GTD blog, that will reveal all!

There's also some useful reading over at www.procrastinus.com, including a definition with synonyms (shillyshally? that's a synonym?), some really interesting research on why we procrastinate and various treatments.

"Of note, most procrastinators have a wide streak of impulsiveness in them and likely are looking for the "quick fix." Unfortunately, the more powerful the remedy for procrastination, the longer it takes to work."

So my advice is:

1. Get a cup of coffee.
2. Read www.procrastinus.com.
3. Close your RSS reader!

Naturally, Tudumo can help as well. I'm not sure how it'll stop you swallowing random medicines but let's start with the easy stuff!

On supporting online GTD and to-do list applications

Today I received a comment on my previous post asking if Tudumo should support  Remember The Milk (RTM) - partly as a solution to multi-instance syncing.  I thought I'd answer it here so you're more aware of my roadmap.

On the face of it, it could help the business case for Tudumo and be pretty useful for the many people who already use RTM.  RTM is one of the most successful web task applications, so it wouldn't be a bad choice, if I were supporting only one app.

However, I get similar queries every so often - for Remember The Milk, BaseCamp, Google Calendar, even a project management system that a user sells!  For the record, there are also calls for Palm support, Windows Mobile support, Outlook, Mac, iPhone, Lotus Notes - you get the idea.  Even if I were only supporting one app it would mean differences in data between Tudumo and the target website and likely some limitation in what the API will let me do.  All of that doesn't feel right to me.

<vapourware alert>

I'd prefer to have a default Tudumo online service that has a focus on syncing between Tudumo instances and which can be a gateway to all the online service providers.  This reduces the amount of code I need to shove into Tudumo to maintain every possible sync target.  It also increases the quality of the sync between Tudumo instances because the peg and the hole are both round.

</vapourware alert>

Google App Engine excites me because it should be able to handle high-load sync with ease and should never cost me very much to keep running.  That ties in nicely with my wish of providing the sync service for free and having run as well as possible.  While my current server could likely handle it fine, with Google I don't have to think about "what happens if".

I could add other reasons but the vapour level is really getting to my head...

Vote for Tudumo!

I received an email from a really supportive user (http://www.howtogeek.com) who pointed me at a page on Lifehacker - a vote for the best GTD app.  So if you have a minute, take a look:

http://lifehacker.com/377609/best-gtd-application

In other (geeky) news, I also got one of only 10 000 Google App Engine invites so will be thinking hard about how to use infinite online power for Tudumo.  Need more time, time...