My favorite mobile workplace – Lovely Bakery

Lovely Bakery is located, quite nicely, at the end of my street.
They serve some of the best baked goods I have ever had the pleasure of eating!

Learn more at
http://www.lovelybakeshop.com/ourstory/
http://www.lovelybakeshop.com/gallery/

My New 5 mile ride in Chicago

I rode this today and it turned out to be a good loop

Humboldt Park has a lot of ponds, gardens, and trees. I’m looking forward to riding it in the mornings

They have a pool too, so it would be great to ride there, swim, and ride home

GTD Basics – Getting Started

“I’m thinking I could use some help getting more organized and efficient.  Going the David Allen route, what would you suggest to get started?”

To begin with, read the article that I wrote for Starvos:
http://dougvanslembrouck.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/my-gtd-method/

This will be a good start.

The TWO MAIN parts of GTD involve having the right SUPPLIES and a daily SYSTEM

Supplies:
Go get yourself a couple boxes of plain, manila folders.
Or, steal them from the office

I prefer the three tab, because I can see the tabs when they are stacked in the folder rack on my desk
http://tinyurl.com/ljq863

This size works the best for transferring in your brief case.

You will also need a few legal pads. I prefer the squared versions.

STEP ONE: COLLECT

For EVERY thing you have in your life: House, Work, Personal, Hobbies…EVERYTHING, place these in one big pile called STUFF
This can be papers, posters, photos, drawings, emails, voice messages, everything that clutters your desk.

STEP TWO : PROCESS

Using this flow chart, process the stuff:

STEP THREE : MAINTAIN

Every day, you will have new things pile up in your STUFF.
Process these items (I do this in the morning) as described in the flowchart:

IS IT ACTIONABLE?
YES: DO IT, DELEGATE IT, DEFER IT

NO: DELETE IT, REFERENCE IT

This will allow you to THEN focus on your projects:

Everything in your life (projects) should have a FOLDER.
The FIRST PAGE of that folder should have a list of NEXT ACTIONS for that process

Using this system for ALL projects and tasks (Home, Work, Personal), I have reached MIND LIKE WATER and do not stress out about deadlines.
The biggest advantage of this is I TRUST the system.

Once you understand the basic system, here are a couple books to read:

(I recommend the audio versions)

http://tinyurl.com/n25nwu
http://tinyurl.com/m3xc86

Who is Don Draper?

After finishing season 2 of Mad Men, it occurred to me that what makes Don Draper’s character so powerful is the mystery behind his name and his identity (or lack thereof).

So, borrowing from my favorite book, I came up with this idea:

If I made these on Cafepress, would you buy them?

Plex Systems updated homepage

I recently updated plex.com to feature our Twitter activity, as well as the #1 Rated ERP Solution results.

My GTD Method

A friend on FaceBook asked me recently to describe my GTD methods and how my day-to day activity for project management works. Using this system for ALL projects and tasks (Home, Work, Personal), I have reached MIND LIKE WATER and do not stress out about deadlines. The biggest advantage of this is I TRUST the system. I’ve plucked several techniques from Tim Ferris, 43Folders and David Allen and created the following system:

1. Each day is planned a week in advance, each Sunday evening (with a cocktail), on a top-bound, legal sized notebook. ONLY the tasks I need to complete that day are on that page. Each day has a repeating ACTION LIST item, to handle anything that comes in as Email ( see #4) One day per page:
2. All projects are stored in plain folders, one project per folder. As each project is completed, the folder is moved to the bottom drawer of my desk. This is the DONE file. Each project folder has a NEXT ACTIONS sheet on top of all other project notes and documents in the folder
3. The NEXT ACTIONS sheet shows the next action for each project, and they are checked off as they are completed. This allows you to walk away, get interupted, etc, and come right back to where you left off.
4. INBOX ZERO I operate under a VERY STRICT Inbox Zero policy. Rules in both Outlook(work) and Gmail(personal) prevent 90% of my mail from even reaching my Inbox. System messages, family FW FW FW messages, and messages that do not require action flow into BULK and are flushed once a month. SPAM is handled by our Barracuda(work) and Gmail black lists(personal). When a message hits the Inbox (now down to only about a hundred a day), it is immediately filed into THREE folders: ACTION – I will handle this when I can. Usually, I schedule 2 hours in the morning, or right before bed, to handle this list. Currently, my ACTIONS list takes between 2-3 hours to complete. Each day in my notebook REFERENCE – Requires NO immediate action and is just reference. DELETED – Thats it. Just delete it.

Other Tools I Use:
	I record all meeting notes with a Sony IC mp3 recorder
All Sketchnotes for meetings and workshops are stored in my Moleskin

Why I love my job…

Spent most of the day playing with Google Earth, plotting company data up against world data.

Trail Run – 07/15/09

My latest trail run at Bloomer today:
I forgot to turn on the  Heart Zones setting (below), so I’ll have to track that next time

Peak heart rate: 175 bpm, Average heart rate: 140 bpm
Time: 30 minutes
kCal: 367
hr limit: 115 – 153
Time above: 6′27
Time inside: 24′30 
Distance:
 

Map:

Zone 1 (60-70%): fitness zone; improves basic fitness and is good for weight
control.

Zone 2 (70-80%): aerobic zone; improves aerobic fitness and is good for
endurance training.

Zone 3 (80-90%): threshold zone; improves aerobic and anaerobic capacity and
is good for improving peak performance.

A Chicago Desktop

Since we are moving to Chicago at the end of this month, and I will be traversing around town with my MacBook, I thought it would handy to have a tight dashboard that shows me where the heck I am and how to get where I’m going.

Using Camouflage and DateLine, and by cropping the transit map found here, I created this:

I’m also using iStat menus to keep track of time, temp, and bandwidth.

Larger Image HERE

First Look: Steampunk Gadgets Go Wild in Warehouse 13

• By Hugh Hart via Wired Full Article Here

Named after inventor Philo Farnsworth, the Farnsworth communicator is supposedly hacker-proof.