Then send them over to this really smart post by Sarah McIntyre: i want to make cartoons & comics but i have no idea where to start!. It’s packed with great advice and plenty of links for anyone who would love to do this but is stuck on how to start.
Superb. (Image is a link to her post.)
If “read more” is one of your New Year Resolutions, then Austin Kleon has 33 short pieces of advice on how to read more and read better that you should review, here: 33 thoughts on reading.
I am trying to adopt most of these. I have adopted many of them and the result has been much more reading by me for the last few years. I think the more of these you adopt, the more reading you will get done.
If you’ve made resolutions and plan to stick to them, that’s good. What may help you stick with them is this article: A Master Plan for Taking Back Control of Your Life – 99U. Essentially it is a list of general guidelines that can help you on your way as you tackle things like….resolutions. You will find it useful in other ways too.
I think it’s worth a read. I’d also recommend Tony Schwartz in general: I’ve read a number of other pieces by him on the 99U and on other sites and I have found them to be valuable.
Happy New Year!
Last year, I was discouraged: I was doing a lot with little to show for it. I would frequently be up until midnight doing chores and trying to stay on top of things and I was exhausted. Despite all that effort, I could not tell you what I had accomplished and I wasn’t getting any feedback telling me either. I decided I had to change that, and to change that, I did two major things: I started using a spreadsheet and I started using Workflowy. Let me explain how these two tools made a difference for me.
First, I started using a spreadsheet to track everything I did. Before I would write my todolists on a piece of paper, do it, then throw the list away. With the spreadsheet, I put all my todos in there. Initially it had two columns: a todo column and a status column. Each todo had an associated status: Pending (i.e., I hadn’t started the task), WIP (work in progress, meaning I had started the task but hadn’t completed it) or Complete. As I did each todo, I changed the status from Pending to WIP (Work in progress) to Complete. I would try to only tackle tasks that were in the spreadsheet. If I did something that wasn’t in there, I started adding it there. (That last thing of capturing all todos in the spreadsheet was important.)
Very soon, I could see from the spreadsheet that I was doing a lot. In fact, the todolist expanded greatly. So I added a new column: priority. Each todo has a priority: 1-4. Once or twice a week, I reviewed my todos to see if they had the right priority. Then I ignored anything that wasn’t a 1 until the next review period. Prioritization helped me to focus.
Despite that, I still had many many todos, and still too many todos with a number 1 priority. I added additional columns over the year and this helped me manage what I had to get done. Even when my todo list had over 500 items on it, I could quickly filter out all but the 3 or 4 items I needed to focus on for a day. I added a column to help me separate Work todos from Home (not work related) todos. Then I subcategorized the Todos: there are todos related to my kids, todos concerning Money, my Home, even Me!
Of all the colums in the todo list, I found this last column of subcategories to be the most important in terms of getting a sense of accomplishment. Here’s why. At the end of each month, I took the completed todos and sorted them by subcategory. I could see from this where I was (and wasn’t) spending my time. For example, I might see that I was spending a lot of my time dealing with House issues and not enough of my time with the Kids. Having this in front of me allowed me to better focus my time in the near future. (Note: you don’t have to wait until the end of the month to do this, and when I find I am really busy, I will do weekly or biweekly reviews to see how the month is shaping up).
At the end of the month, I create a new worksheet for the new month by making a copy of the existing todo list. That way, I can focus just on the todos for that month.
After a few months of this, it was easy to do. You might think it is a lot of effort, but with the spreadsheet I have, I found it easy to add to and sort the todos. Most days I spend less than a few minutes reviewing it.
Occasionally I do things that aren’t on the list. It doesn’t matter much: most todos end up in there. The main thing is I get to see that I am getting things done and I can see where my effort is going.
That’s the spreadsheet. At first, it was all I wanted. I could see what I was getting done each month, and that felt great. I was getting a sense of accomplishment every month. But it wasn’t enough. The problem with just using the spreadsheet was that it is very granular. I could see I was doing a lot of tasks, but was that good or bad? Also, sometimes a bunch of smaller tasks add up to a bigger task that should be highlighted, but the spreadsheet couldn’t do that for me. I needed a different approach. I needed a different tool. After thinking about this, I started using Workflowy (workflowy.com).
At the start of the month, I create a list of major activities I want to accomplish that month. (Workflowy is really great if you like lists: that’s why I picked it.) Then I make sure my todos for that month are in line with those major activities. At the end of the month, I roll up the tasks that I did and put them in workflowy according to the major activities. Additionally, I might look and see I accomplished a number of things in the month that I didn’t expect to at the start of the month. I will add them to Workflowy, too, creating a new major activity to describe them.
What I liked about this is that month after month I could now see I was accomplishing a lot. I wasn’t just doing just a lot of little things: I was getting bigger things done. I could also see what I wasn’t accomplishing (e.g. running) and then correct that (or at least accept it in light of the other things I was accomplishing).
The other thing I realized is that if you have a lot on your plate, then it is difficult to make a lot of achievements in one month, but over many months, you start to see you have accomplished a lot. You miss that as your review your day to day activities because you are juggling a lot. Even looking back over a month, you think: wow, I barely made a dent in things. But as you look back over 3 or 6 months, you can say: wow, I made big improvements in 3 or 6 or even a dozen areas.
There are lots of improvements that can be made on this system, depending on who you are. You may have the advantage of being able to focus in one or two areas. If so, you could use a simpler approach. If you have many major responsibilities and you want to make improvements in your own life, this approach may work for you. It works for me.
A template of my spreadsheet is here. It’s an XLS file.
As for the list I have each month in workflowy, I start with a template like this:
In Month X I plan to achieve the following
If you have read to this point: thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to do this. If you try this approach and it gives you some benefit, please let me know. Good luck! Accomplish great things!
I find myself on my smartphone too much. It’s too easy to fall into that trap, and afterwards I wish I did something else instead. Did something useful. Or made something beautiful. Austin Kleon feels the same way, based on this post of his: Read a book instead. He made a screen lock for his phone to remind him to read a book and get off his phone.
I decided I wanted something similar. In my case, I found a photo I liked and used the Over app on my iPhone to create this:
I then saved it as my LockScreen. Now when I pick up the phone to start doing something mindless, the phone reminds me to do something better.
You can do the same thing yourself. You don’t even need an app or drawing skills. Write a reminder on a piece of paper and then take a photo of it with your phone and save it as your Lock Screen. It could be just the nudge you need.
Thanks for reading this. I hope you found it useful. If you did, then time spent doing it instead of playing with stuff on my phone was worthwhile.
On it’s own, this is a great piece:
Old Masters at the Top of Their Game – NYTimes.com. The woman above? 99. She sold her first painting at 89. She is now a world renowned artist. And there’s more great profiles of people in it. You should read it, and not just if you are older. I recommend it for any age. How you read it at 20 will be different than how you read it at 40 or 60. For me, I was struck by how many of those interviewed say that nothing surprises them. As I get older, I find this true too, though I am still surprised. The flip side of this is that anxiety and concern about many things in life decreases. You know how to handle things, and you spend less time worrying about the things you ought not to worry about.
Another thing I thought interesting is that they don’t necessarily think of themselves as old. This is something I also found true as I age. I know when I talk to the 20 year olds in my office they must look at me and think: man, he’s old. 🙂 But other than superficial things, I don’t find my thinking or my view on the world has diminished from when I was younger. I have more experience now, and I had more natural energy then, but I don’t think: wow I no longer get this IT stuff now that I am older.
I highly encourage you to read the article. Then check out Austin Kleon’s blog because I found it there a lot with many other good things.
Chances are, if you talk to five different people at work, you will find five tools or techniques they use to be productive that you hadn’t even heard of.
Rather than do your own polling, you can also check out this article: Most Popular Apps Employees Use At Work – Business Insider.
Remember, these are just for work, and yes, Facebook still shows up there. And this is just the cloud / distributed services. (Also, I am wondering Evernote didn’t show up there.)
I would be surprised if you read it and didn’t adopt at least one of the items on the list by the end of your work day. Good luck.
I’ve made this Sweet and Spicy Asian Pork Shoulder Recipe from Real Simple a number of times and it has come out great everymtime. Besides the wonderful flavours, it doesn’t use too much liquid. I find many slow cooker recipes do, and that spoils the dish for me.
You may want to trim the fat before you make this recipe. Or make it the day before, cool of the liquid, and then skim the fat off the wonderful sauce that results in slow cooking the pork. Also, it calls for a lot of sugar, but it is not too much, if you ask me.
For a variation of the recipe, see this: Chinese Slow-Cooked Pork Shoulder from the Food Network. This has more liquid than I like, but some of you might prefer this.
If so, you know of all the …stuff…Word will add in there. I understand why Microsoft does it, but I would rather not have it. If you are in the same boat, I recommend you check out this site: Convert Word Documents to Clean HTML. It gives you the ability to take snippets of said HTML and clean it up for you.
It has it’s limits, but worth a look. Or to your tool box.
Then the Harbourfront Centre’s Learn to Skate program may be for you. It’s a lovely little place to skate, and you can rent everything you need. In no time you will be braving the crowds at Nathan Phillips Square and zipping around with the best of them.
If you are looking for New Year’s resolutions to make, learning to skate is a good one.
P.S. It is usually cooler down there than the rest of the city. Dress warmly.
Here’s three links if you are feeling stressed out and you want some guidance to help turn it around:
Uber seems in a hurry to demonstrate as many ways as possible on how to be a toxic company, from exploitng drivers to degrading women to ripping off passengers, and more. Mike Loukides lists at least eight here is this piece: Uber is breaking bad over at O’Reilly Radar.
The idea behind Uber is worthwhile. Try and support better companies that provide such services, like Lyft. And be on the lookout for more such companies that sense an opportunity and try and be a good business for their customers and their investors.
I wrote about Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century here and here. As I said, I strongly encourage you to read it and take notes.
If you want a great summary of the book, I highly recommend this post: Piketty Explained: Summary of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty.
It’s superb. Peter Shirley, the author, has written a 30 second summary and a 15 minute summary, and when you finish both, you will have a very fast but very thorough introduction to the book. I am going to come back to this from time to time as a refresher to what I read in the book (as well as flip through the book again). Did you read Piketty but skip sections? Then review Peter’s post to see what you missed.
More good reasons to pick up Piketty before 2014 ends.
(The chart on world growth rates is from a link to Peter Shirley’s blog post.)
…can be found at this link:
MySQL Tutorial – How to Install MySQL 5 (on Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu) and Get Started with SQL.
Even if you don’t know hardly anything about SQL or databases, you will find this helpful. It covers pretty much everything you need to know to get started, and it’s a great cheat sheet for people who have more experience but need to know a command format or get some other quick guidance.
Recommended.
P.S. It specifies Ubuntu, but if you are using other distros like CentOS you should still find it helpful.
If you plan to go out wine drinking this weekend — or any day next week — then head over to blog.to and see what they have to say on 5 restaurants with cheap wine in Toronto.
Of the restos on the list, I have known about Le Paradis for along time. Whenever I went, I’d remark how reasonable wine prices were here compared to other places. (The food and ambiance of the place is also not bad.) If the other places are comparable, then this is a very good list indeed.
If you get a message on you iPad saying “iCloud Backup This iPad hasn’t been backed up in 5 weeks”, then doing what that link says might help. Try it first.
If it doesn’t — and it didn’t for me — try this. I connected my iPad to my computer. I started iTunes. I did a backup to iCloud. I then did a restore from iCloud. The problem went away.
P.S. Thanks for reading this. If you have found it useful and you’d like to say thanks by buying me a coffee, you can do so here. Thanks! That’s awesome!
The team at cracked.com have a tested formula: take some good advice and practically bury it in humour to get a piece that has you laughing at first but thinking later. It is a very subversive way to get people thinking on a site you wouldn’t expect to be doing so.
I first started reading cracked.com for the laughs, but afterwards thought: hey, they have a really great piece of guidance there. Here are two pieces from many good ones on the site:
There are lots of sites on the Web giving advice (including this one). Cracked does it in a way that is better than most. Worth checking out.
If you plug your fitbit into your charging cable and then into your computer, lights should start pulsing. (See here for details.) If they don’t start pulsing, then your fitbit will not take the charge. How can you fix this?
Take a look at the three very small circles at the bottom of your fitbit. They should be a shiny copper colour if they are clean, and they need to be clean in order to take the charge. Ideally they should always stay clean, but it is easy for them to get dirty since they are so close to your skin.
To clean them, you need a very gentle abrasive to clean them. What worked for me was taking the end of a paper clip and very gently scraping the circle until I could see the shiny copper again. Then I plugged it back into the charging cable that was attached to my computer and the lights started pulsing.
Note! If you are the least bit concerned about breaking your fitbit by doing this, then do not do this. Instead, take it back to where you purchased it and see if they can help you. You are responsible for your own fitbit. That said, this worked for me and my fitbit worked fine afterwards.
Yesterday was about ifttt. Today it is all about another great tool I highly depend on: Evernote. Evernote has become my go to tool for capturing information. (Bonus: it works great with ifttt). There are many great ways of using Evernote. If you are using it or planning to, here are at 10 for starters: 10 Tips On How to Use Evernote To Its Fullest « The Solopreneur Life®.
Please share any other tips you have. I find the one key tip I have for users of Evernote is this: the more you use it, the better it gets.
Of all the things on the Internet, ifttt is one of my favorites. It could be yours too. Simply, it is a way to take two of your favorite things on the Internet and combine them into something even better.
First, to learn more about it, go here: How to Supercharge All Your Favorite Webapps with ifttt.
Second, once you read that, go to the site and browse the recipes. Or try and create your own: it isn’t hard.
I especially encourage it for anyone trying to update several forms of social media at the same time. You can link Facebook, Instagram, WordPress, Tumblr, Google, Blogger…you name it. With some practice, you will find recipes that help you keep all your social media in sync and working automatically.
I also encourage people who are interested in the Internet of Things. Or people who want to supercharge their phone. Or…well, just browse the recipes and you’ll likely see one that makes things easier for you.
I was going through my list of recipes I have been collecting, and rather than trickle them out, here are four worth trying this autumn and winter (all via Chatelaine.com):
P.S. I am a fan of recipes from Chatelaine: they are well tested, nutritious and healthy. The recipes aren’t boring, but they are easy to make and it is easy to find ingredients, even if you don’t live in a big city.
Ok, it’s not advice directly from the Master. However, the author of this piece, 10 Things Henri Cartier-Bresson Can Teach You About Street Photography, has distilled 10 lessons from Cartier-Bresson’s photography that easily applies to digital photography. Anyone looking to take better digital pictures can benefit from this lessons, especially the last one:
Always strive for more
I ask that because as you can see from these charts, in terms of impairment, there is not much difference from showing up for work tired and showing up for work drunk:
Weirdly, if you do show up tired from overwork, you may be praised: if you show up drunk, you may be fired.
Regardless, to do good work, you need to sleep. (I know, I should practice what I preach.)
Julia Kirby in HBR has more on this in this piece: Change the World and Get to Bed by 10:00. You’ll be convinced to go to bed earlier by the time you finish it.
Then read this: What you need to know about this year’s flu shot.
Get the shot.
Caramelized onions are a great thing to have: many basic dishes can be enhanced by adding these golden beauties. Sound good? If so, consider this: Why recipe writers lie and lie about how long they take to caramelize onions.
I recommend you read this before you try to make caramelized onions, otherwise you might wonder why the burned/undercooked ones you just whipped up don’t have the appeal you expected.
Stuck for a recipe to use them with? Consider this egg dish recipe from Martha Stewart: Caramelized Onion and Gorgonzola Quiche Recipe or this pasta recipe from: A CUP OF JO: Rigatoni with Caramelized Onions and Gorgonzola.
If you think LinkedIn is a waste of time and something no one uses, think again. For starters, check out this chart:
More and more companies and people are using LinkedIn.
You might counter: I have never heard of anyone getting a job on LinkedIn. To that I say that people are losing jobs to LinkedIn, in that HR and others are using LinkedIn as a screening process. Good use of LinkedIn might not get you a job, but poor use of LinkedIn might lose you a job.
I’d add that lots of recruiters use LinkedIn, more than you think. The better your profile, the better chance you have to get linked in with someone with a new and better job for you.
Lastly, LinkedIn is becoming a longer and better version of a resume. Just like you should have an up to date version of that, you should have an up to date version of your career highlights on LinkedIn.
For more on this topic, and to see where I got the chart, go to The Economist’s excellent tumblr
There’s been so much written and spoken about ebola in the recent hysteria concerning it that I hesitate to add to the noise. Instead, what I want to do is highlight another disease: the measles. I want to highlight this one because it is a disease that there is little hysteria associated with it. If anything, people sometimes think it is a right of passage, like acne or puberty.
Now look at this simulation: How quickly Ebola spreads compared to other diseases – Washington Post.
The measles may not be as deadly as ebola, but as a disease it spreads faster and is deadlier than anything else, save ebola and smallpox. Despite that, more and more there are people not immunizing against it. To me, that is stupid and irresponsible.
People who aren’t vaccinated or whose children are not vaccinated against the measles (and other diseases on that list with vaccines) should get vaccinated.
The overnight success idea is one that refuses to die, regardless of how much evidence there is that great things take along time to accomplish. If you needed a reminder of this, then consider this: In Praise of Slow Mastery: 10 Great Achievements That Took Time – 99U.
Even as things get faster, it remains true that to accomplish great things you need time. Here’s to you on the great things you are on your way to achieving.
You may not being going on a book tour, but if you are travelling for work, you can steal these ideas from Austin Kleon (Austin Kleon : 10 Things I Learned On Book Tour) and have a much better trip.
Ideas I stole on a recent trip:
His entire list is worthwhile. If you are travelling soon on business, you will benefit from reading him first.
P.S. Photo from a link to his blog. Go read his blog. Better still, buy his books.
While you can do interesting things with paint or wall paper to your walls, another idea is to use simple moulding to break up boring walls. The woman featured in this post, Charlotte’s Budget Beauty — House Call | Apartment Therapy, has it throughout her place, and I think it looks great.
Want more ideas on how to do that? Here you go 🙂 http://lmgtfy.com/?q=add+moulding+to+walls
Many clients ask about this, and there is often confusion over the private aspect of the network. Confused or not, a good place to get clarification is here: Private Network | SoftLayer Blog.
Here’s a representation of the networking layout (you can get a bigger version of it at the SoftLayer blog):
If you are fortunate, your parents are living and you have a good relationship with them. The dreaded day will come, though, when they die. It will be hard to deal with, no matter what advice you get, but this piece of advice will certainly help: Things I Wish I Had Known When My Mother Died :: YummyMummyClub.ca.
I would add: expect to deal with a lot of administrative tasks that will seem surreal at times. There is much more of it then you think. At best it will seem bizarre. At worst, it will be agony. Either way, it must get done, and if you don’t think you will be able to do it, consider who you would lean on to help you with it when the time comes.
(Thanks to Emma W for the pointer to this.)
Might be this: a two legged chair
My own feeling is that the simplest and best solution may be just alternating between sitting and standing when at all possible. However, if you think that the two legged chair is the thing for you, head over to Design Milk for more on this.
I give you this:
I really like this idea, but then I am an IT architect and we like to stand up and draw on walls (ok, whiteboards). A whiteboard would also work, but if you have kids, there may be times when you want to save anything they did. Or never mind kids: maybe your own doodle was keep sake worthy.
By the way, you can get such paper dispensers at IKEA. Most people mount them on a table, but clearly the wall is an option too.
And the Guardian has a list of them. If you are going to Paris, take a quick peek and take notes. Yes, many you may have heard of, as I had. One I hadn’t is pictured above and is relatively new:
Opened in 1993, six years before New York’s similar High Line project, La Promenade Plantee is a tree-lined walkway on an old elevated railway line in east Paris. The 4.5km trail is a wonderful way to explore the city, taking you up and down staircases, across viaducts, above the streets and offering the occasional chance to wave back at the lucky Parisians whose apartments overlook it. The walkway also runs over the Viaduc des Arts, a bridge in which the arches are now occupied by galleries.
• 12th arrondissemen, promenade-plantee.org
For more from the list, see 10 best free things to do in Paris | Travel | theguardian.com.
Bonus: here’s a piece from the Globe and Mail how to eat like a Parisian. Since you’ll be enjoying all these free things in Paris, you’ll have more money for food.
It’s likely not you. As this piece argues, Learnable Programming, there are limits to the approaches that online sites have which many can get by, but some cannot. If you are in the latter group, give this piece a read. Afterwards you might think: aha! That’s why I couldn’t get it!
With technology, if you don’t understand something, don’t assume the problem lies with you. It may, but most of the time, the problem lies with the technology.
If you are following this blog, yesterday you fixed up your (Windows) machine. You got a new todo list. Excellent. Now, perhaps, you need something inspiring for your desktop wallpaper.
If you agree, check out these wallpapers from Design Milk. There should be one to appeal to you, regardless of whether or not you are a designer.
By now you’ve had a chance to go over the things you need to do this week. Quite possibly it is looking overwhelming. Even though you are working hard, you don’t feel like you are accomplishing things. If so, try stepping back, take a minute, and read this: If you do this and only this, today will be a good day.
It really is a good way to approach your day. (And yes, it’s fine if you do more than one thing.)
First, take this list: 25 tricks to make working with Windows faster, better and more fun.
Second, apply as many as you can. Even if you aren’t technically savvy or comfortable with changing things, look through the long list and find some you are comfortable with and apply them.
Third, ask for help with the ones you can’t do (either because you aren’t comfortable or their are restrictions regarding what you can change on your computer).
There! Your computer is better and less sucky already. And a less sucky computer means a less sucky work week.
Good luck! Thank me later! 🙂 Also thank ITBusiness, which is where I found it.
Smart People I Know 