Archive

The latest installment of my IdeaLab mashup - short ideas from the IdeaMatt My Big-Arse Text File to stimulate thinking, lead to discussion, and prevent Alzheimer's.

With over 200 articles offering analysis and ideas on productivity, I'd thought I'd turn it around and ask you for a little help. As you know I made a major career shift just over a year ago to help people improve their productivity. I did this because the ideas involved made such a big improvement in my life, and led to an "I can't believe people don't know about this!" epiphany.

In my continuing interview series with top people in productivity I'd like to share highlights from a recent conversation with Mind Performance Hacks author Ron Hale-Evans. I'm a big fan of Ron's book, having mentioned it in How To Use The "I'm Not Going To ____" Mind Hack and An Idea (and Question) Dump From The Big-arse Text File. It's loaded with great tips, including (paraphrased):

I won't quote you a zillion statistics on the problem information overload causes. I'm sure it's one of the items on the Galactic Scorecard that the Federation of Sentient Species uses to evaluate progress. You know, rate on a scale of 1-5 the following:

• Plays well with others (didn't annihilate selves with nuclear bombs)
• Picks up after self (didn't dirty the nest with pollution or global warming)
• Is careful with lunch money (didn't squander finite oil supply)
• Learns well (managed to create an effective planetary data network)
• ...

A continuation of the strange mashup known as the IdeaLab - odditites from the patented IdeaMatt My Big-Arse Text File.

I apologize for the delayed posting these last two weeks. This was due to a vacation, and consulting momentum continuing to pick up. So this week an abbreviated post: Recent honors for this blog, plus some tips for my Macintosh readers, including a mini "GTD in iCal" tutorial.

First, a big thanks to Dustin Wax for including me on his 50+ Personal Productivity Blogs You've Never Heard of Before (and about a dozen you probably have). In addition to the usual suspects, there are some previously undiscovered gems. I'm in great company.

An interview with Scott Ginsberg, author of "Hello, My Name is Scott"

Starting week I'm extending my interview series with the top experts in the field by sharing productivity insights and stories from people who are influential and successful, i.e, highly productive. I'll start with highlights from my recent coversation with Scott Ginsberg (site, blog).

I found out about Scott via his book Hello, My Name is Scott, which takes an happy accident (leaving his nametag on after an event) and extends it to a unique perspective of the world, one of my absolute favorite topics. (It's why I got into productivity consulting in the first place.)

In What Are The Laws Of Work? I made a humble stab at defining the first principles that might inform designing a productivity method from scratch. The discussion was stimulating and led to more thinking, in particuarl how might we structure our environments for success, hopefully tying in Fritz's work in Path of Least Resistance.

A continuation of the ever-enlightening IdeaLab series from the patented IdeaMatt My Big-Arse Text File.

Just a heads up: The site is experiencing some issues as part of changing its design. Especially troublesome is a problem entering comments: The text is (using programming nomenclature) "squished." You can still type or use an external editor, but it's unreadable, at least on my machine. Sorry about that!

--matt