Rhoneisms

As promised, here is an update to how I am using Backpack these days for my GTD implementation (That I often refer to as my Org-fu). As I mentioned previously, the newly added feature of having multiple to-do lists on a page really helped me a great deal. It was the one feature that I wished it had from the start. Now that it does, it has really increased my productivity and allows me to do daily and weekly reviews much more efficiently.
Before, I had all of my context lists on separate pages. While this was OK for single action items within the context at hand, it was terrible for multistep items (i.e. projects) and for reviewing. Because I had things spread out over many different pages, it was very difficult to get that “big picture view” that the weekly review process is kind of supposed to be about. Furthermore, there are many projects I have that are outside of a context that need to be somewhere, for these I had a separate project page but, because of the inability to have multiple lists on a page, It was very formatting intensive to keep organized.
Now, with the new multiple to-do list feature in place, here is my current page structure:

• Today (Home) – This remains the same as before. Basically, the things I want to accomplish today.
• @Action – All of the single action items go here and are divided into multiple to-do lists according to context.
• @Errands – Why is this separate and not under “Action”? Because these can only be done in one “context” while out and about. Also, this is one list for now, undivided since several things could be handled in multiple places (i.e. “Buy Milk” could happen at the grocery store or at Target).
• @Project – Here they all are, each project gets it’s own to-do list. Since I am reviewing this several times a day, as well as tracking next actions in my Pocket Moleskine, there is no need to duplicate these on the “Action” list.
• @Someday – My someday/maybe items. Things I may want to do someday but are not top of mind right now. A single list for now.

Note that I use the @ sign simply to sort these pages above the others on in the list of pages on the sidebar. I have other pages for other non-Org-fu items. I have a page for gift ideas, one for planning my trip to Macworld, a personal wish list and our wedding registry that I make publicly available. Backpack is very useful like that.
There you have it. Down from 11 pages to just four. Less is more sometimes.
In addition, another new feature that has been added to Backpack is integration with Writeboard. Writeboard is another product by 37 Signals that allows one to write and share text and compare multiple versions of the document to see what has changed. While it is great for collaboration on a document I have been using it as a basic online text editor. It is great for doing things like the basic text of journal postings like this one.
More in keeping with the subject at hand, I have been using it for the vertical mapping I have been working on recently. During the review process it is nice to have these 20,000 ft. and higher maps in the same place as my projects (10,000 ft.) and Next Actions (Runway). This keeps me focused on always having things properly aligned.
If you have not checked out Backpack yet I strongly urge you to do so. It is a really great tool for personal organization. Many of the posts I have made about it are linked in this one so check them out as well for more info.

I know the postings have been somewhat irregular (and perhaps I am understating that a bit). Things have been really busy in my life. Some might argue that it borders on overwhelming. Here are but a few of the goings on in my life. This will also serve as an update to those I have not had the time to e-mail.
I am in the middle of a major project at work. You see, working in IT at a college means that while students and faculty are away on break, we have the opportunity to do major projects. I just happen to be leading one of those projects which involves me and a team of students performing minor upgrades to nearly 700 plus academic machines in about a month. As you can imagine, there is no time for anything else at work. Even catching up on work related e-mail or trying to find the time to fill out insurance renewal forms is something that must be done after hours. Therefore, this piled on top of my already quite full off-work times is taking it’s toll. Even now, I can only find the time late in the night (or was that early in the morning as it is well after midnight) to write this post. I am so burnt out. If it were not for the fact that I get the whole week after Christmas off, I don’t know what I would do.
This of course means that I have not had the time I need for much of anything else. I have not even really begun Christmas shopping. I have a few ideas of what I am going to get for Bethany, Maxim and Miles. Bethany is nice enough to provide a wish list. I will get some ideas from there but what about Maxim and Miles. I have no idea what I am going to get for them. I know it seems that this is something a parent should know but what does one buy teenagers these days? All of the things they want cost a fortune not to mention have poor capitalization (XBox, iPod nano… Who spells these things?). I absolutely need to find a few hours this weekend to just wander around a mall and try to find something they wont forget about moments after they open it and be ruined for life with the memory of the Christmas that their Dad just didn’t “get it”.
Also, my Powerbook decided to commit suicide and jump off of a two foot high table while turned on, thus rendering it’s hard drive kaput (that is the technical term – I looked it up). Even though I have been too busy to backup, I did learn my lesson from the last time around and am in a much better position to recover. All of my e-mail is IMAP now so it is not lost. Music that I have purchased was on the iPod. Furthermore, many of my key documents I had on my iDisk safely tucked away. I probably did loose some stuff of course, some recent photos and some recent documents (one of which took days to create) but all in all it is not as bad as the last time I lost a drive. Being without it is very hard though so I hope to get it back from the fine folks at The Foundation soon.
Better news is that Bethany and I may have finally settled on a date for the wedding. Actually, this makes the third time we have settled on one. The first time. The date we were looking at originally (Sept. 9th) was taken by our friend who introduced us. He got engaged two weeks after we did. We do take some of the blame because, even though we had picked that date we just did not have the time to officially announce it so it was fair game. Therefore, we chose another date – June 24th. After we set the date AND informed several key people (including the one I am about to mention), Bethany’s Father remembered that June 24th is the date of his 50th high school reunion. Since he is on the planning comittee and it has been in the works for several months now, he feels obligated to go and has asked if we could chose another date. Therefore, we have now chosen… Drumroll… June 17th. We will actually be getting married on the night of the 15th in a small, private, candlelit ceremony. June 17th will be the reception for about 300 of our closest friends.
The third floor at the St. Paul house is coming along very well. It is going to be a really great space and will work well for a temporary bedroom for Bethany and I. The sheet rock and taping is all done and hopefully it will be ready for us to paint the week after Christmas I have off (no rest for the weary). We will also try to get some of the work done on Maxim’s future bedroom during that time. All told, we are making great strides in reaching the point when we can all finally move over there.
I am also gearing up for my yearly trip to my Mecca – Macworld San Francisco. This is looking like it is gearing up to be one of the better ones. Rumors of Intel based Macs are flying faster than toasters and if that holds true it will certainly be the talk of the show. I can almost hear the collective bantering now of every Mac user in the exhibit hall badgering the software vendors about when their product will be ready to run on Intel. I suspect that none will get a satisfactory answer beyond “Soon”. I used to work the show floor for a software vendor, I know of what I speak. I am exited to see all of my friends out there. The Now Software folks, The ACN crew and even my friend Scottie will be out there for his first time. Of course, Bethany will be flying out as well on Wednesday night and we will spend the weekend with Val and do some wine tasting in Napa.
So, there is the personal stuff and why the posting has slowed to a crawl. I will try to post more soon. I do have several items on deck that I would like to post including:
• A followup on my return to Firefox.
• An update as to how I am using Backpack for Getting Things Done now that I can have multiple lists on a page. This also includes using Writeboard for some of the roughing out of my vertical mapping.
Of course, this will be better facilitated once I get my Powerbook back. Not saying it wont happen with out it. Just saying it will make it more likely.

Firefox is back in my life. Not like it ever really went away. It never left my Applications folder. I just stopped using it as my browser of choice. As I mentioned in a past post, I really liked using Firefox but there were too many Mac OS X specific things (Services support for instance) that Firefox lacked that I used on a regular enough basis to send me back to Safari.
Then, just the other day, Firefox 1.5 was released and I just had to give it a spin. Boy what a nice browser. It is unbelievably fast, especially when going backwards and forwards on visited pages. I have no idea what they did on the back end but it is by far the fastest browser I have ever used. Other new features such as drag and drop reordering of tabs has already been very useful. Then of course there are the nearly endless ways to customize it using third party themes and extensions (SessionSaver is a gift from the gods). It is this and so many more things that have made me realize how much I really missed Firefox. After all, I would easily qualify as a power user and this is a power users browser if there ever was one.
This leaves me with a tough choice because all of those things that I left it for in the first place are still missing. I use the services especially for spelling, text formatting and intra-application information routing that is key to my Journal postings you see here. But the speed and features and extensions and themes and…. Did I mention the speed? All of it is pulling me so strongly that I feel I owe it to myself to at least switch back for a little while and see if they outweigh the loss.

Well, this was the one feature that I prayed that Backpack would have one day and the gods at 37 Signals have finally answered. I already use Backpack quite a bit but this will improve my org-fu significantly…

You asked for it and we delivered (finally). You can now add multiple lists on a single page. When you add multiple lists to a page you are prompted to name the lists so you can keep them organized. If you only have one list you won’t be asked to name it. If you email list items to a page they will be added to the top list. And, as a bonus, you can even drag items between adjacent lists. If you have multiple lists on a page, clicking the “reorder” link on one list will also reveal the drag handles for the list above and below it as well.

Backpack: NEW FEATURE: Multiple lists on a page and more

Bethany sent along this great link to Zagat’s latest survey of customer satisfaction in the airline industry. Really funny stuff here. Choice quotes:

“Need air marshals to protect passengers from crew.”

“Cabin staff treats you like a stranger crashing a dinner party – only they don’t serve food.”

“Economy class is like the Bataan Death March with carry-on luggage.”

“I’ll start with the good: Web site easy to navigate. That’s the end of the good.”

That is just a few, there are many more equally funny. This is a must read.
I also find it somewhat sad that it has gotten so bad. When I was a kid, I used to fly all the time. My Grandmother flew a lot and very often took me on trips with her. I even would fly alone sometimes, under the care of the stewardesses (yes, that is what they were then). I remember everyone being so friendly. They always gave me the chance to see the cockpit and talk to the captain. I lived for the little tin wings he would pin on my lapel, which I had of course, because people still dressed up to travel. I remember the food being pretty good and served on real plates with real silverware which I would sometimes sneak in my pocket for an extra souvenir. I must have had a full set of silverware from every airline we flew for a while.
And the planes! Braniff painted each one of their 727 Whisperjets a different bright seventies color. I always tried to guess the color of the jet we would be flying on before we got to the terminal. Then, one day, I saw across the tarmac a Braniff that had been painted like a Mondrian. Oh my god! I have to ride that plane. I prayed for several trips afterwards that I would get to ride that plane. I never did but it has stuck with me for a long time. There were other airlines of course. Republic, Piedmont, Northwest Orient, Delta, we flew them too. Not quite Braniff, but still, it was always fun to fly.

Short version:
This past weekend (Saturday November 5th for those keeping score) I asked Bethany to marry me. She said yes. No date has been set but I will post about if here as soon as we have one (with all appropriate registry details and links of course).
Long version:
This past Saturday, Bethany and I had a couple of parties to go to in the evening. The first being a wedding reception and the second being a birthday party. We were at the wedding reception and we were talking about something (I can’t remember what) but the subject of proposals came up. Bethany reminded me, which she has done frequently for a while now as patience is not one of her stronger traits, that I had not yet asked her to marry me. I explained that, while that was true, I certainly would not do so at someone else’s wedding reception because that would be tacky and steal the spotlight away from the people we were there to celebrate. Bethany wholeheartedly agreed and the subject was dropped.
We left the reception party not too long after and continued to the birthday party. After arriving, while putting our coats on the bed in the bedroom as directed by the host, I casually mentioned to Bethany…
“While it would have been tacky for me to propose at the last party it would not be tacky here since this is not a wedding reception”
“You’re right.” she said “It would be O.K. to ask here.”
With this she turned to walk into the party. I then took the ring box out of my pocket and…
“Honey, wait. I am serious.”
She turned around and there I was holding the box, open now, with ring enclosed.
“Oh my god!” She exclaimed. She stood there, hands over mouth in a state of shock for several seconds.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, you have not actually asked me yet!” rule-bound Bethany said, half jokingly.
“Will you marry me? I have already spent every day of the last year telling you how I feel and how much you mean to me. I don’t know what more I can say.” I returned.
“Yes, of course I’ll marry you.”
So, there you have it. I am officially engaged to Bethany Gladhill, the smartest, sweetest most beautiful human being I have ever been blessed with having in my life. She is my best friend and the only person I have ever been with that I never tire of. She means the world to me and I can’t wait to spend every day of the rest of my life letting her know exactly that in every possible way.

In a post that I am sure was done with my very own Bethany in mind (who excels in the art of finding such treasure), Merlin Mann posts about a recent Mark Morford article on de-cluttering. As many know, I am a huge proponent of getting rid of stuff that I don’t need. I often say that my three best productivity tools are the trash can, the delete key and the word “No”. Here is a quote:

San Francisco’s culture of “urban recycling” is real and it’s very cool. Obviously, stuff left on the street gets picked up, but don’t delude yourself Sister Suburb: it’s not just hobos, methheads, and The Sand People snatching up your goodies. We all pick stuff up off the street.

Madeline and I know people whose whole (fancy overpriced) house was mostly furnished by “junk” from someone’s curb. And the beauty part is, when you tire of it, you just stick it on your own curb, and the music goes round. You lose your clutter, gain some space, and make some anonymous Citizen a little happier.

Mark Morford on de-cluttering (and the SF reuse culture) | 43 Folders

Flock, the new Web 2.0 flavored browser, is slowly improving. They have released an updated developer preview that makes improvements to the built in blogging as well as many other areas. I really do like the ideas being put forth here and am excited to see it released in final form. Not sure if it will tear me away from Safari but I might give it a full time go for a while once it is officially released. Some may remember my switch to Firefox, which lasted for a while until there were things about Safari that were crucial to my blogging that I missed. Flock just might be the one to change that as I really like the extendibility and customization of Firefox. Only time will tell.

There is a great two part article (links to Part 1 and Part 2) over at the DIY Planner blog about the history and keeping of a Commonplace book. Commonplace books were very popular among artists, writers, scholars, inventors and other creative types for centuries as a way of capturing snippets of important information, images, ideas and other stuff that one wanted to be able to permanently reference. Upon reading it I realized that I have been keeping a digital version of this for some time in a Notetaker notebook. Notetaker is an excellent resource for exactly this type of thing and I have discussed my usage of it previously. I was just not aware that the way in which I was using it was so functionally similar to a time tested and honored practice.
This has spurred me into putting a bit more thought into how I actually have my “Notetaker Commonplace” organized and how much more I could be using it for. It also has me thinking that I may eventually need to put together an “analog” one as well to capture all of those paper snippets that I would like to keep at fairly quick hand. I think about all of the little snippets that I have previously been at a loss on how or where to file and this would be a perfect solution.

In what seems to be my continuing coverage of 43 Folders (I would stop but Merlin just keeps posting greatness), I wanted to take the time to mention a great productivity method outlined there. It is called (10+2)*5 and it is a great way to get a whole bunch done while giving yourself little rewards along the way. It basically involves doing a task for 10 minutes, taking a two minute break and repeating that 5 times.
And to make the process even better, someone has designed a Konfabulator Widget timer-doohicky to help you keep your pace. I tried it out for a little while today and, while it still did not stop the 17,000 people who decided to interrupt my mojo, it did help me focus for the only 10 minute uninterrupted period I had today. I then, according to the rules, took a two minute break and did something non productive for that time… Some people call it lunch.