Look at this nerd.  hahahha nerd.

A while back I received an newspaper article in the mail from my father’s secretary.  It was an article about that remarkably non-dinosaurblog-esque speech Rupert Murdoch made a while back.  I thought it was cool that my dad sent it to me and I appreciated it.  What was weird about it was how it got to me and the process by which it was chosen to be sent to me.

My uncle saw the article and thought it was worth sending to me and the rest of the family.  So he had his secretary in Calgary fax the article to my dad’s secretary in Ottawa and then she snail mailed it to my siblings in LA Toronto Montreal and to me in Vancouver.  So we received the article like two weeks after it was published.

What they didn’t know was that I had already read the speech and the article in my RSS aggregator within hours of their publication on the interweebs.  So it was kind of novel receiving it so much later in snail mail format.  I guess I just thought it was funny that my dad and his brother were using such horse and buggy technology to share information with me when I had already read and digested the speech and the article way before they did.

Whats also funny is how my dad and his brother use their assistant as like human RSS aggregators.  They tell their assistants "hey my son is interested in computers, kiteboarding, etc.  So clip out articles on those subjects and send them in the mail."  It seems so quaint/so analog to think about how they share information with me given all the digital filters, alerts, and feedreaders I have setup to seek out the information that I’m interested in.

What’s even more antiquated is seeing my father receiving an international overnight FedEx of a burned CD with a couple audio tracks from one of his radio stations.  Like hello pops!?  What was the inkernets invented for?  Cough, sending ones and zeros around the world, cough, ftp, cough cough, email, cough, you could have had like three years of fat (with a PH) web hosting for the cost of that FedEx…

When you try to organize your life do you go all analog or all digital or both?

All the memes floating around on the weeb about Getting Things Done and Lifehacks for the last few months have been pretty interesting.  How many people are truly productive?  Do you procrastinate when you should be working?

In order to become more productive I looked at how people I know get stuff done.  I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that every person I know has their unique schteeze for organizing their lives.  Some people geekout and go all wifiubernerd whereas other people get all cave painting analog.  I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that the most efficient people I know use a hybrid system somewhere in the middle.

The most organized person I know is my girlfriend.  She never forgets a birthday or misses a deadline.  What makes her such an organizational ninja?  I believe it’s the simplicity her hybrid technique.  It’s flawless.

My girlfriend started using her modded Hipster PDA long before it was even called a Hipster PDA.  By modded I mean she simplified the HPDA and just uses a tiny stationary pad.  There’s no fancy settings and preferences like the HPDA or categories just old school chronological order.  Each page is a new day and has simple lists of tasks to be completed.  When they’re completed they are scratched off the list.  Elegant, simple, and efficient.

Another analog technique she uses is a simple paper folder system.  Her three folders include:

1. To Do Folder
2. Tasks in Progress Folder
3. Finished Folder

In terms of digital productivity shes half old school half new school.  She uses Outlook for her work email, calendars, and reminders which is totally old school but effective.  Her personal Gmail account houses all personal stuff from pictures from her family to every email I’ve ever sent her.

That’s all I could get her to tell me over messenger today because the conversation was "boring" and she needed to "get stuff done."  She’s so efficient, so productive, so street, so gang.  The combination of these systems makes her technique probably the most organized out of anyone I know.  Very office ninja.

Other people’s systems:

In an attempt to reconcile the analog and digital realm, my sister uses a super tech Franklin Covey calendar/planner/notebook thing.  It’s like a tricked out hipster PDA in a nice leather case.  Think Bentley HPDA.  This system is a hybrid because its a Franklin Covey planner with a WiFi enabled Palm Pilot as well.  Is it too complicated?  Does it have too many "settings and preferences"?

My dad uses just about the most analog system you can imagine to organize his life: another human.  His secretary prints out 8X10 calendars with one month per page and fills it all in.  She faxes it to him, he makes adjustments faxes them back and the process repeats.  Not the most efficient system you could think of but it does the job.  Also, hes cheating by using another person!

My Mom uses hard cover book style notebooks with blank pages.  She writes phone numbers and contacts in the back and writes notes chronologically front to back.  Clean and simple but easy to lose stuff.

What do I do?  I have no system.  My system is no system.  Hence this post…

I currently have 5 computers and I can tell you that having 5 computers is ridiculous.  All these machines have different information on them and its impossible to keep track of it all.  In order to try and remedy this I’ve started using wikis.  I’ve starting consolidating information in wiki form so that it’s not stored on any one computer.  It becomes accessible from any connected computer.  I also store files like serial numbers for software and the like in my Gmail which is also online.  In other words I’m trying to offload all this important info so that it can be securely accessible from anywhere.   

Another problem with having 5 computers (some mac some PC) is that my contacts are spread out all over the place.  My phone tries to sync via Bluetooth to my address book on my mac but that never works.  One of the few things that are starting to getting organized are my bookmarks thanks to Del.icio.us.  But the rest of this stuff is a mess and I’m going to remedy that.

For paper notes I use a leather Romano Cavalini & Co notebook that I ganked from my brother.  It’s seriously lacking in metadata and rss feeds ;)  It’s also too big and too expensive.  So, I’m obviously in serious need of better analog tools as well.  Should I create a custom HPDA or keep my notebook style?

Some people I know try to go all digital which is problematic because it’s too structured, too difficult to input,
too expensive and too fragile.  You can create a todo list in iCal but what if
you spill coffee on your mac?  What if the syncing of your contacts
goes wrong and the data gets corrupted?  Pieces of paper can’t get
virus’ or be corrupted.  You can also get a stack of three by fives for
like 2 bucks…  Then again, with paper you can’t have your friends/colleagues collaborating on
your next action list like you can with a wiki.

I guess the point is let the machines do what their good at, storage
and retrieval.  Use pens and paper for what they’re good at, free
flowing/non linear thought and quick jotting.  This sounds obvious but I think people (including me) often choose the wrong productivity tools and end up becoming less productive as a result.

43 Folders and Getting Things Done got me thinking about all this stuff.

Useful Productivity Tools:

Digital:

• Gmail
• PowerBook
• OmniGraffle
• JotSpot
• iCal
• iSync
• TiddlyWiki: All Your Tasks Are Belong To You

Analog:

• Hipster PDA
• Organizing the Hipter PDA
• Hipster PDA In Use
• Trick out the Hipster PDA
• More on Hipster PDA
• Pics of the Hipster PDA in use
• Globe and Mail on HPDA (bugmenot it)
• Moleskin Hacks
• More stationary fetishism photos

Other:

• Lifehacks
• Del.icio.us/tag/lifehacks
• MeFi Thread on this stuff
• 43 Folders Wiki