Got a over priced Mac and need help staying focus on your work?
Yup, that’s right. Productivity’s number one enemy is distraction. The enemy is sly and cunning. It is a master of disguise and sneaks up on you when you least expect it — in the form of an email, an IM message or beeps and alerts from other applications. To deal with distraction, I’ve come up with not one, not two but three applications. These apps will only allow you to work on one app at a time and hide the rest. Out of sight, out of mind.
You know what you need to do. You know why you need to do it. You even know what steps you must take to get it done. But there’s one small problem: you can’t seem to get moving. It’s a common problem. Maybe it’s chronic procrastination or maybe you’re just so overwhelmed that you feel paralyzed.
I have been using Evernote as one of my capture tools recently. I set it up with 3 and only 3 Notebooks. Simple. My default is INBOX. This is where all my incoming notes, emails, photos etc go. This is my collection bucket and is completely unprocessed. I get this INBOX to zero daily most of the time.
Mac OS X only: Back in January Skype released a beta version of the popular VoIP application that added screen sharing tools, integration with Wi-Fi access service Boingo, better audio and video, and several other improvements.
How us home bound info workers can be better slackers…
But we do all need mental breaks to recharge. I can’t just not take breaks because taking them is too much work. So to cope with this challenge I’ve developed a system of being able to partially dial back my level of work activity. This gives me some of the mental feeling of taking time off without the break itself causing a stressful workload.
What is productivity in the light of our post modern reality????
There has been rising concerns that “productivity is dead” and that people are moving on to new things. The conditions have changed that created the initial excitement around “productivity.” Most people are now comfortable with the internet, their computers, and the associated “knowledge work” that they no longer need ways to help them cope. In that sense, “productivity” is no longer needed.
Many, many months ago, it looked like an official solution for syncing BlackBerry devices with the Mac (including media and iTunes playlists) was right around the corner. Now, almost a year later, RIM is finally making it official. But don’t get too excited. You still have to wait until September before the new software will be available for download.
One of the ways to force your brain into REM sleep and skip the other phases is to make it feel exhausted. If you’ve gone 24 hours without sleep, you might notice that you drift away into dreams straight from being awake. This because your body goes instantly into REM sleep as a protection mechanism. The way to hack yourself into entering REM sleep without being exhausted is to trick your body into thinking you’re going to get a tiny amount of sleep. You can train it to enter REM for short periods of time throughout the day in 20-minute naps rather than in one lump at night. This is how polyphasic sleep works.
My Macbook Pro went on the nut today and I had to call Apple Tech support to get it out of it’s depression. But thankfully I had a fairly recent backup on Time Machine and it was a piece of cake getting my system restored back to normal.
The moral of the story is thou shall have your system backed up and all your application serial numbers stored on the cloud.
What I used to get back up and running…
Xmarks -backs up and syncs all your bookmarks and passwords.
Time Machine-OS X system restore tool that actually works.
Evernote-stored all my application serial numbers here.
So I work from my home office for a local University. My job requires that I use a email client that supports Exchange Server which my OS of choice does not support at the moment.
So I finally gave up trying to get Apple Mail to work with Outlook Web Access and just installed Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro using Bootcamp. At first it seemed like the perfect solution, I could install all the junk I needed for work on the Bootcamp partition and still enjoy the simple elegances of OS X.
But what I noticed is that after I installed Windows 7 I started installing a bunch of games to you know, help me unwind after work. I mean everybody needs a little a playtime after sweating over a burning hot keyboard all night… right? But what happened is that after making all these grandiose plans for world domination during my weekly review I was spending hours playing Topspin and Tiger Woods.
What was suppose to be a little fun turned into a big time leak.
So I deleted the Bootcamp partition and installed Entourage and guess what? I’m getting a lot more stuff done.
You can have the best plans in the world but if your not willing to get rid of the time leaks it may take you longer than necessary to actualize them.
Mr. Rhone reveals how he’s able to share his iCal calender with his wife…
The solution is a product called BusySync. It installs as a pane in System Preferences and seamlessly allows you to do real iCal calendar sharing between multiple Macs – with read write and password control. It is a fantastic solution and works so well you wonder why Apple has not implemented this feature in iCal themselves. It could not have been simpler to set up and make the switch. Here is what I did: With the Backpack calendars subscribed in iCal on one of the Macs, I exported each calendar individually. To me, this is the simplest way to get the data out of Backpack. I then deleted those calendar subscriptions from iCal. Next, I imported the calendars I had exported back into iCal, being careful to make sure it imported each one into its own new calendar. I then installed BusySync and followed the instructions for sharing the calendars. Finally, I went to the other Macs, installed BusySync there, and followed the instructions for subscribing to the calendars.
According to the developer, “xPad is a single solution replacement for Stickies, NotePad, Scrapbook and TextEdit.” Although the latter claim might be a stretch, given TextEdit’s advanced functionality in Tiger, xPad is indeed quite flexible. The latest version lets you create notes with full RTF support, paragraph formatting (including styles, tab stops, spacing, and lists), and character-level formatting. You can also perform non-contiguous selections—select some text in one part of a document, hold down the Command key, highlight text in another part of the document, and then perform actions on both selections.
