The choice of a personal path

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GTD one-liners: never have the same thought twice, unless you like that th
2007-03-09 03:46:02
I discovered a lot of one-liners in the GTD book of David Allen, as well as in a good number of blogs that are writing about this methodlogy. Starting to comment on this one-liners, and eventually make a series of posts out of it, seemed a good idea. And starting with my favourite one-liner: never have the same thought twice, unless you like that thought, seemed a wonderful idea. The thoughts are the roots of your reality. Unless you are working in an extremely hierarchically formal system - like the army, or George Orwell’s 1984 utopia, where you don’t have to think, you only have to do stuff thought by somebody else - you are doing only what you think of. Ever ything that comes to a real form, it was first in your mind. We are often underestimate the power of our thoughts. And the main cause for that is procrastination: the art of thinking the reality without doing it. Because of this very energy consuming habit - procrastination - in which we think a lot and do almost...
More About: Hat , Thought , Liners , Have

Do You Know Your Twisted Roots?
2007-03-09 03:46:02
I loved bonsai. Those little trees grown in trays, and surrounded by japanese signs, you know them… The strange forms they had, the beautiful images they created in my mind… Until I read how they are actually created: artificially. That’s right, there is a technique of doing this: you take a tree, put it in a twisted context, and it will grow with twisted roots. The result might be beautiful, but it’s not natural. It might touch your esthetic perceptions and give you some thrills, but it’s artificial. It might challenge your intelligence and make you think in unusual ways, but it will be based on false premises… Because the whole technique is about twisting roots. About modifying one’s natural path by drastically changing its surroundings. Of course, this post is not even remotely related to the bonsai creating art, as you may already imagined. It is about how we, humans, can be considered, and treated like, bonsai. Like little plants that ...
More About: Your , Roots , Know , Root

When and why I broke up with? gambling
2007-03-05 09:43:02
Time for another post in my series of “when and why I broke up with…”. It’s a series that generally deals with habit interruption, which I consider to be a cornerstone of personal development. There are several posts already in this series, and you can check out: when and why I broke up with… linux, or when and why I broke up with… smoking. Gambling is a very dangerous thing. I won’t call it an addiction, because I really don’t know if it’s an addiction. But it can be a very destructive habit. Well, I wasn’t a big gambler. But still big enough to ask myself from time to time: will I ever quit? Back in my student times, I was quite a party-boy, and an easy to go fellow. I started to work from my first year as a student and soon become financially independent. I worked for the newly opened FM radios in Bucharest, in the 90’s. I did it for about 6-7 years, going from newbie, or trainee, to DJ, and having my own daily sh...
More About: With , When , Bling

7 tips to help you procrastinate in a more productive way
2007-03-04 21:42:02
Well, I’ve been in a quite oximoronic mood lately. I had a lot of work to do, and I managed to do it far better and faster than usual. I even worked more than initial planned. The job was programming related, and it was a project that I have for several months. It had a quite hectic path so far, and only in the last few weeks it started to shape as I wanted it to. And, after the last few days, I realized that what I planned was in fact easier than I thought. It happens for everybody, I agree, but this time, was something more obvious than other times. Maybe I have a bigger work capacity? Maybe I was underworked all this time and I just start to realise that? Maybe. But that means that, until now, I constantly had a false perspective about my own work capacities. This whole situation made me think about my procrastionation habits. Do I have them? Of course, like everybody else. Do I cultivate them? Well, that’s another question. I think I stopped cultivating my procrastin...
More About: Tips , Product , Help , Tina , More

Wordpress 2.1.1 was qualified as dangerous!
2007-03-03 21:42:02
After a security breach. It looks like sombody just broke into wordpress development cycle and posted malicious code on the 2.1.1. From the wordpress blog: Longer explanation: This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in Word Press . The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened. As long as you upgrade to the new 2.1.2 version you should be on the stable side of the moon. More on that on the official wordpress blog.
More About: Wordpress , Anger , Danger

Actiontastic 0.9.2 beta is out
2007-02-28 09:39:01
As I already posted yesterday, Action tastic hit with the latest version tagged “beta”, namely 0.9.2. According to the release announcement, this would be the last one before the first oficial 1.0 version. That 1.0 version will have, if the developer knows what he says, a very interesting sync feature with Actionatr, the online sibling of Actiontastic, and we will have to wait no more than several weeks to see that happening. Back to the 0.9.2 release, there is a very interesting feature - although a little complicated, but still interesting - related to the email processing. Packed with the release there is a small script called toICalInbox, which you can place everywhere on your system. Then you enter a rule in your Mail.app, in which you basically route all the messages that have “todo:” in the subject to this script. The routed message will then be forwarded by the script in the iCal @inbox calendar, from where Actiontastic will be able to pick it up on th...
More About: Beta

GTD galore
2007-02-28 09:39:01
Couldn’t help myself to write this little post, once my feed-reader showed me a little GTD galore on the blogosphere today. I’ll try to be short, as this is only a shoot-and-run post. The Kaboomerang people are carefully preparing and slowly unveiling parts of their development. Following the same winning strategy of involving users in their product development, they had two very interesting posts in the last two days. First of all, they are refactoring the “inbox processor” by including some new functionality, while at the same time are asking for name hints for this component. My humble proposal is still “stuffer” as per my comment in the post. And second, there are some very interesting Quicksilver goodies that are cooking in the oven. And then, like in a well planned scenario, OmniPlan is making the first - let’s call it official, but it still isn’t - announcement for the first beta version fo the over-hyped software OmniFocus (the...
More About: Galore

We have a new face!
2007-02-26 21:38:01
I just thought it was time for a change, so I changed the theme! Quite obvious for anybody who reads me through a browser, and not via a RSS feed. The theme is a heavy customisation of the pragmatic theme , and it’s a quite interesting approach. I like the clean presentation, although the underlying code of the theme is not so clean… I changed though over 50% of the code so far, and I am really looking forward for your comments on that. As you already saw, I said goodby - for now - to interstitials, as they are not behaving any better than the regular ads, and the text was somehow cluttered because of that. Also, I am in the process of redesigning the Archive page, so it might take a while until it will be back again. I kept the 3-columns design, as I still think that the quantity of the content and the general objectives of the blog are better served with this type of structure. Feel free to comment and let me know how do you find my new blog face. Thanks .
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The Power of Verbs
2007-02-26 21:38:01
Getting things done is not an easy task. Or maybe I should say is not an easy life path. Making clear goals, organizing and planning them, and then actually doing them, that’s tough. Pretty tough. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that will agree on that. Of course, we can alaways implement new methodologies, like GTD, or constantly improve our personal skills. But that will not spare us from the actual effort of actually doing. It’s a constant struggle, with constantly growing rewards. Every little step that move me forward on this path, it’s a special one. It’s a milestone on my road towards the choice of a personal path, it’s another overcomed crossroad. Today I’d like to talk about one of these little steps. One of the most important, yet subtle, thing that I discovered while GTD-ing, was the power of verbs. After each weekly or daily review I end up with what I can call a list. A list of to do’s, in the general acceptio...
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Actiontastic goes online with Actionatr
2007-02-26 21:38:01
The author of the mac-based GTD productivity application Action tastic has decided to make an online sister (or borther) for his app, and announced today the launch of Actionatr. From what I saw on the brief announcement, I understand that Actionatr will flawlessly sync with Actiontastic. As far as I know this is the only offline/online pair of GTD applications that was made public. You cannot really see anything on Actionatr website but you can submit your email to be announced when things will become a little more visible than now. If Actionatr will keep the mean, lean and clean approach of Actiontastic, services like Nozbe or other newcomers will have serious work to do…
More About: With , Online , Line , Goes

I did want to be Mac OS!
2007-02-26 21:38:01
But no! I am HP-UX, according to the guys at BBspot. I did another one of their tests several days ago, and I just think these guys won’t stop! I do take my liberty of not taking seriously even a single letter from this test, while I did enjoyed answering the questions. The bottom line is that I spent around one and a half minute on thir site and I had fun! I promise not to take the “Which File Extension Are You?” and “Which Nigerian Spammer Are You?” tests never ever . Take the test for yourself: Which OS are You?
More About: Mac , Want , Mac os

Project management with a mind map
2007-02-26 21:38:01
I often found out that, regardless of the value of an idea, the actual organization of the steps that could make a real thing out of the idea, is crucial. Sometimes is more important than the idea itself. Bringing it to life is far more harder than thinking at it. And that’s one of the reasons methodologies like GTD exist, of course… And I realized that in my series of posts about mind mapping usage, the only map that was more important than the meeting map was a project management map. As I already said, it’s very important to correctly shape your project from the very beginning, before any actual ressources assignment. So, knowing the GTD methodology for project planning, and using my tool of choice for mind mapping, MindManager, I started to put together a mind map. As you can see in the image below (click on it to enlarge), it’s a rather simple map, with only 5 related topics, one floating topic, and only three main relationships. But of course, this is ...
More About: Project Management , Management , Men , Project , With

Linus Torvalds doesn?t like my English
2007-02-26 21:38:01
First of all, it happened several days ago. I dind’t react instantly, instead, I really took my time to think on it: what am I doing here? Is this wise to respond? Is this worth it? Really worth it? The answer was: well, it might not pay even the time spent to write this post, but it might be a lot of fun Let’s take it one at a time: several days ago I submitted to StumbleUpon one of my posts, about mind mapping. Incidentally, it happened to be one of my highest rated posts at that time. Once submitted, I had the surprise to be really hit by stumblers. Apparently, the post was well received, and it generated some traffic too. The surprise come when I saw who dind’t liked it: it was a guy with the nickname Uru, with a photo almost identical with one of the guys I admire the most: Linus Torvalds. The guy was somehow interested in the post, but the comment was ironic: something like “the mind map (described in my post) didn’t helped with your English ...
More About: Like

Ajax - flushing the web 2.0
2007-02-26 21:38:01
Just watching a Discovery documentary on a Sunday afternoon, and stumbled upon an incredible story: the flush toilet history. Believe it or not, the first flush toilet in history, invented by a guy called John Harrington, was called… well, how many of you will guess… come on, come on, don’t by shy… YES: the Ajax . Apparently, at that time - around 1500, 1596, to be more precise - the toilets were called “jackes”, so the inventor wanted to keep the initial semantic: “a jackes”, but rebranded a little his invention, so he called it “Ajax”. Much like, you, know: Vista for Mac OS. Rebranding. And I couldn’t help to try a little blogging exercise, based on the meaning and functionalities of the old and the new AJAX object. So, here we go, first with the similarities: The initial AJAX and the modern AJAX shares the same flowing perspective over things. You know, they help a lot with the flow. Make things smoother. The init...
More About: Web 2 , Flush , The Web , Lush

Blogging with a mind map
2007-02-26 21:38:01
I am into mind mapping, that’s true. I use it for only several months now but the boost in my creativity was huge. I come to the level where I am mapping almost any important activity. The result is fantastic. It helps me stay focused on doing, as well as letting me enough room to actually improve what I’m doing. Let’s say I want to kick-start a project in my company, just a little completion or add-on to one of my sites. The first thing I do is to fire my mind mapping application of choice (and that would be now Mind Manager), quickly draw some topics, save the map, and take a break. I review the map after a certain interval. Some times it can be several minutes, sometimes it can be several days. But I am always sure that I will find in my mind map all the thoughts related to that project. It’s only after carefully crafting my mind map that I go to the next level, of actually organizing and planning it, assigning resources, establishing deadlines, etc. And ...
More About: Blogging , Blog , With , Blogg

Is Your Blog Readable?
2007-02-26 21:38:01
But of course, you may answer. This is the reason I built this blog, so people can read it. Well, it’s not always and entirely like this. Writing in a readable way is somehow difficult. Don’t think at talent or gift right now, because it’s not about that. Although it might be possible to mimic the genius after a reasonnable amount of time, I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about a simple, yet pretty powerful way to read your blog with the mind of the others, in order to see if your posts are “readable” enough by your visitors. I just stumbled (litteraly stumbled, by using StumbleUpon) upon this site. Before you click, I must say that this isn’t really a site, it’s just a page. It’s a page that analyze the readbility of any text you chose. And how it does that? Well, that’s sooo complicated. It’s a linguistic and scientific stuff that is applied to your text, but, fortunately for us, the result is easy to...
More About: Blog , Your , Read , Fakta , Doof

Mind Mapping Meister
2007-02-26 21:38:01
No, it’s not a new Hollywood million dollars budget movie, it’s about mindmeister.com, a new online mind mapping service. I was one of the lucky fellows who got an invitation - and it seems I was also among the first 1000 mindmeister users too. So, what is it, actually? Well, it’s a web-based, collaborative platform for better organizing, brainstorming and sharing your ides. Or, in fewer and more reliable words: it’s an online mind mapping service. It took me only one minute to start working with it. Seemed very easy to work with and very clean. You can start by creating a new map, and then branching it like in any other mind mapping application. One of my oldest projects - since I was a teenager that really liked Hemmigway - was to write a novel. Suddenly, once in the mindmeister site, all that come again into my mind. Look at the result: Of course, I am joking, I just want you to show how easy and quick this is. One feature I wasn’t able to test was...
More About: Mind , Mind mapping , Ping , Mapping

When you need to empty your RAM - simptoms
2007-01-10 22:36:00
GTD is a methodology, but in order to apply it, you must treat it like a martial art. It requires a gret deal of will and discipline to actually empty your RAM constantly. In the beginning is alwasy nice and even fun to do it. You put all your little pieces of thoughts on your ...
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iPhone and GTD
2007-01-10 01:35:00
Probably the most expected gadget ever, the iPhone was finally announced. Following a media pressure that was almost suffocating the presentation at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, the iPhone is now for real. It will ship in US in June, and it seems there is a need for arrangements with other phone operators in ...
More About: Iphone

Review: ThinkingRock version 1.2.3
2007-01-08 01:41:00
Although GTD is merely a process that can be shaped with any tools, most of the people tend to use software applications for that. The main evengelism of GTD emerged in the tech zone also, so we can consider that this software-based trend has a reasonable explanation. I don’t make any difference from the crowd in ...
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Who?s your parasite?
2007-01-02 23:29:00
Don Miguel Ruiz had an interesting comparison for the way our mind really works: it’s like we have inside our mind a parasite. An actual being that is fed by our fearfull thoughts, by our low self-confidence, by our endless guilt for not meeting a perfection standard that we didn’t even invent or agreed upon… ...

Maintaining enthousiasm
2006-12-21 23:17:00
Ever felt like you can actually move the mountains with one hand? Or that you could swim to the other shore of the Ocean only by pushing your legs? Or even that you could finish 20 financial reports instead of your regular ratio of 2 per day? Then, my friend, you’ve been at that time ...
More About: Productivity

GTD software race - close run
2006-12-18 21:42:00
There are a few good software providers that are also close followers of the GTD methodology out there. There are some good - although pre-release, or alpha - GTD software made by those people. The nicest thing is that every release of these software pieces come in the same wave. Once one launches a new version, days ...
More About: Software , Race , Close

Emptying the RAM
2006-12-18 10:38:00
I spent the week-end without internet and even without opening my new shiny MacBook Pro. And it was wonderful. Not in the sense that I was runing away from problems, but in the way that I actually rested knowing that all the stuff I want to do is organized. Somehow. Somewhere accessible. In a form ...

Tools I use
2006-12-14 23:57:00
I want to jot down some stuff about the tools I use to get things done. This would be very sketchy at the beginning, and I’ll try to add more as I go along… As I already said, I was a Linux guy for about 10 years and I just turned to Mac several months ago. ...
More About: Programming , Tools , Productivity

Blog alive. Why?
2006-12-13 21:03:00
I managed to start this blog. Today, December 13-th, 2006. Finally. I already have my Romanian blog at dragos.roua.ro, and that place should be enough for my daily - or maybe weekly ? - thoughts, impressions, opinions or comments about everything that comes through my minds. But, apparently, it isn’t. I needed this blog in order ...
More About: Blog , Alive