You’re going to finish that report.  You’re going to book that restaurant early.  You’re going to clear out the mountain of papers under the hall table.

You’re going to conquer the world.

If you can just get organized and actually take action.

If you can just get organized, you could get everything done in the time that you have today.

Recently I came across this great piece of software.  It’s a cross between a task manager, timer, and project manager.  I used it for a few days, and I can honestly report that it gave me laser focus, and supercharged my productivity.

This tool is based on the concept of time boxing – in other words, blocking off a specific amount of time in which to complete a task.

It’s called The Action Machine.  I love the fact that it runs on both Windows and Mac, and has a dashboard that tells it like it is at a glance.

My only complaint is that it’s a touch resource heavy on Mac (or at least it was on Leopard – seems to run fine with Lion).

If you, like me, feel that GTD stops short of actually getting it done, while doing a great job of figuring what needs to get done, this is the missing piece in the puzzle.

Click here to find out more about the Action Machine.

T

Time Management

Time management.  The very phrase gives us the illusion that we can actually manage time.  As if it’s a resource we can stop, start and modify at will.

You and I know that we have absolutely no control whatsoever on time.

The twenty four hours in a day pass exactly the same regardless of whether you are a gardener, a toddler, a supermodel or a CEO.

Think of time as a river that’s flowing – right past you.  You can choose what to equip yourself with to take advantage of it before it rushes on.

Some of us grab a barrel and, in a concentrated effort of will and power, fill it to the brim in one awesome shot.

Others will use a regular-sized pail, and make frequent trips back to shore.

Yet others will use an expresso cup and make a thousand trips back and forth, exhausting themselves in the process and have very little to show for all the frenzied activity.

The barrel group are the focused types who know what they want, and go after it with everything they’ve got.  They don’t get distracted by scenery or take baby steps.  They just go for gold.  These are guys that finish projects on time and people refer to as being “hyper organized”.  They’re not. They just make different decisions on how to invest their time.

The middle group is probably where most of us are at.  We have periods of taking good advantage of time, and investing it in fair-sized chunks.  In between though, we battle with procrastination and distractions before finally going for the next pail.

The last group, the ones that never stop the flurry of crazy activity, feel and look as though they are accomplishing things.  In reality, they get very little done as the multitask themselves into oblivion, needing an army of project managers, tools and gadgets to remind them to go fill the next tiny cup with useful stuff.

Yes, I realize it’s a bit of a stretch as far as analogies go, but I think you understand the point.  Use your time wisely.

If you’re committing the next hour to “spending quality time with the kids”, then do that.  Leave your Blackberry alone and get on the floor with them.  Holding on to BBM while trying to play Monopoly will only cheat you of both activities as you’re neither here nor there.

If you’ve decided your best investment of the next hour is to watch the Survivor finale, then put down the iPad and give yourself permission to enjoy it without giving your pending homework / project / laundry another thought.  Decide that you will deal them after you’ve enjoyed your TV show.

You see, this hour will NEVER come back.  It’s gone.

Will you choose how to invest it and look after your investment, or will you squander it, one tiny expresso cup at a time?

Being conscious of time as an investment is your best time management strategy.

So, how will you spend the next hour?

You have latest and greatest of technology gadgets to get you as productive as possible.  You are connected up to the hilt with 3G,

personal hotspot or good old wifi.  There’s only one thing that still chains you to a building: power.

If it weren’t for that tiny little detail, you could do all your work sitting in the park, at the beach, and frankly, anywhere except your actual physical workspace.

Forget work and productivity.  Think about watching home movies or listening to TED.com talks on your iPhone, iPad or Galaxy Tab.  You know that you will need to think about where to plug in after a few hours.  Not cool when you’re right in the middle of your beach party / birthday picnic / camping trip.

Now there’s a cool, environment-friendly solution.

Best Portable Solar Chargers?

There are literally hundreds of solar chargers out there, ranging from small, pocket sized ones that use a mixture of internal battery and solar power, to the notebook-sized Apple Juicz Solar Panel when packed, but producing a massive 27 W of solar power – enough to charge your Macbook in 8-12 hours!

What do you look for in a portable solar charger?

• Since it’s portable, it’s a good idea that it be of reasonable size so it can fit into your backpack or your latest Luis Vuitton tote.

• A good portable solar charger  should be sturdy as well, to withstand being folded and packed away quickly.

• There must be enough power output to charge up your device(s).  Ideally, it would be great if you can charge anduse your gadget at the same time.

The sCharger-5 from SunTactics

Introduced last year from the California based company (I love their name!), this nifty little device is impressive:

• It’s almost as efficient in charging as plugging into the wall into proper power. 
• You can use your gadget while it’s charging.  This is a major plus.
• This portable solar charger will let you run even completely dead devices using just its internal mechanics and the sun’s energy.
• There’s no internal battery that can leak, break or wear out.
• Non-toxic, clean and as green as you can get.
• It folds into a neat package so the entire portable solar charger can fit into a small CD wallet, perfect for any elegant handbag.
• Water and weather resistant, making it a very useful portable solar charger for those picnics on the beach or at the park.
• You can use standard USB chargers to connect to your devices it and it outputs 5 Watts.
• Suitable for iPhone, Blackberry, iPod, Android phones

The sCharter-5 is one of the best selling portable solar charters, with an average customer rating of 5 stars:

Fits into a CD wallet

Anyway, I digress.  Just in case you’ve never heard of the Japanese 30-second folding technique (it works!), here’s a very short, but excellent video demonstrating the technique.

First, share the video with them, just in case they haven’t already come across it on YouTube or one of the myriads of lifestyle TV channels.

Next, challenge your tweens to a race, and you’ll be amazed at how they will suddenly be motivated to help fold laundry!

Finally, sit back and momentarily enjoy a small victory, while you work out how to get them to do the rest of the their clothes.

With technology changing at breakneck speed, it is not unusual to be have a laptop (or a collection) hanging around, collecting dust.  You know that familiar pang of guilt you get everytime you walk by it, especially when you recall what you spent on the thing?  Well, here’s a few ways to squeeze a bit more out of that so-last-year laptop:

1. Fancy Photo Frame

Even the oldest of laptops has a decent amount of hard disk space.  Copy your favourite photos onto it, set the screensaver to rotate through your pictures, and voila, you have yourself a live picture frame.

2.  Use is as a media / file server

Set up sharing and security on your aging laptop so everyone on your home network can access it, and use to dump files you want to hold on to, but don’t necessarily need all the time.  Great examples are songs, home movies, and scanned copies of your kids’ artwork.

3. Dedicated Videophone Corner

Dress up your old laptop and  equip it with a pair of headphones and a camera (if not already built-in), and make it your dedicated Skype or other video communication station.  This will get around the moans and groans to get your teens to surrender “their” computer so you can use it to call the grandparents.

4. Kitchen Digital Library

Since it’s practically ready for the scrap heap, keeping your old laptop in the kitchen shouldn’t cause you pain.  Find a nice corner for it in your kitchen, load up your recipes, pictures of interesting dishes, and photos of flourishing vegetables and herbs.  You now have instantly accessible recipes, and a lovely screensaver that shows you beautiful images of food.

There’s nothing stopping you combining the photo frame with the media server, or the media server with the dedicated videophone corner.  Experiment, and please feel free to share in the comments other ways of getting more mileage out of old laptops.

Of course somewhere in there, you will need to make the heart wrenching decision of what to keep (those sweet, impossibly adorable drawings for mother’s day), and what to toss (the spelling test book!).

1. Decide on a volume limit per year

It is important that you set yourself a maximum capacity limit, such as number of notebooks to keep, or how many in-class pictures to hold on to.  Another way of setting a limit is to decide on whatever fits in a folder or box.  Manila folders with the wrap around elastic band work well.  Their size accommodates most sizes of artwork and other bits, they can be labelled and even colour coordinated by child.

2. Think time capsule

Approach the filing chore as though you were preparing a miniature time capsule.  What would you daughter love to recall from this year? Which piece of work or project is your son most attached to? Forget grades and school reports – grab the ones with meaning for your child.

3. Store formal reports separately

Mid-term reports are not so important – but certainly transcripts, awards and other formal artifacts of recognition are important.  These should be filed in chronological order, just as you would important receipts or tax paperwork.  In addition, scan them or take a picture and place in an electronic folder, backed up to several places.

4. Include something from throughout the year

It’s good to grab the “All About Me” or the essay about “My Summer” that are traditionally done at the beginning of the academic year to get the kids warmed up.  Similarly, pick something from the middle of the year, typically around December – January time frame.  Many children hit their stride around that time.  And of course, make sure you have the end of year, hopefully triumphant bits of evidence of how far your child has come in just 9-10 months.

5. Don’t forget the visuals

These include artwork, in-class photographs, those pesky “projects” that involve building a boat or a rocket from recyclable material (you know the ones …).  Take a photograph from all angles, and add them to the year photo album on the electronic platform of your choice.  Don’t forget it to back it up.  Several times.

6. Get tough and toss

Here’s the tough bit: if doesn’t fit into your designated storage box or folder, the one you decided on right at the beginning, toss it.  I don’t mean toss it into a temporary other “box” to be “reviewed” later.  We all know that just ain’t gonna happen.  So sort it out now, and get rid of it.

7. Get creative and make a memory

This is the good bit. Grab a little bit of each of these piles of stuff, take a picture, and weave them into a lovely little movie using MovieMaker (Windows) or iMovie (Mac).  Choose some nice music that reminds of this year, and voila, you have a readily available, lovely memory of your child’s academic year.

Click here for some great products from Amazon to help you get the kids paperwork organized

Before you start, make peace with the fact that it will not be perfect the first time, that you will agonize over the trash or treasure decisions, and may even get completely sidetracked and find yourself at midnight surrounded by old photographs getting all emotional.

There are a lot of articles around the web on the actual mechanics of initial de-cluttering, so I won’t get into that.  I will, however, share five ways you can protect your de-cluttering investment by staving off the need for another session.

Everything must have a home.

When things have a place dedicated to them, and you always put them in the same place, it’s next to impossible for them to get lost, and their place to get filled with clutter.  More importantly, it gets rid of the under-the-telephone table syndrome, or the utility/junk drawer problem.

Three clicks or less.

Just like website usability metrics – where you must be able to reach specific piece of content in 3 clicks or less, make sure that you are able to put each thing away in three gestures or less.  So if you have open a cupboard, take down a box, open the inner box, put the thing inside, close the inner box, put it back in the outer box, and put it back in the cupboard, face it: it just ain’t gonna happen.

Obsess over one area per week.

Once you’ve cleared out the bookcase, throw a hissy fit in any member of the family so much as leaves a book facing the wrong way.  By declaring it a clutter-free zone and actively protecting it for at least a week, the rest of household (yourself included) will get a clear message and will keep it that way.  Move on to another area the following week.

Embrace the YAGNI principle.

Employed in a software application development technique known as Extreme Programming, the You Ain’t Gonna Need It principle says let someday take care of itself.  In other words, you ain’t gonna need that health magazine because you probably won’t, in fact, try out that spinach recipe.  And let’s face it, there’s very little you can’t look up on the web these days.

Do a bit each day.

Like dentist visits, the more often you do them, the less painful and expensive surprises there are when you get around to it.  So clear out the mail before it exceeds single digits. Recycle the newspaper every weekend. Donate clothes that don’t fit the moment you discover you’ve slimmed down

Don’t forget to make time to actively  enjoy your space. Make it a point to parade around your beautifully tidy, de-cluttered space and appreciate it.  Notice how calm and in control you feel knowing that you know where everything is, and that you can get to it in three clicks or less. And it will fit!

Not to get obsessive about it, but here is one way to make it less painful, especially if you are a working mom trying to squeeze this chore into a weekday.

The Master List

You need a list.  Going to the store without a list is like going shopping for shoes for someone you’ve never met.  Insane.

So start with a list.  To take the pain out of the list, make up your master list.  No matter how accomplished a chef you are, chances are 90% of your purchases are repeat purchases.

Print one copy of the list.  Yes, you heard right.  One copy. Place it inside a plastic sleeve.  You now have a re-usable grocery shopping list.

The Weekly List

With the a felt pen or white board marker, tick the items from the master list you need to purchase this week.  You can leave this in a handy place, so members of the family can tick items that run out, or even add to the bottom of the list.

Shopping Day

On your errand day, grab your plastic sleeve, and taking care of not to wipe it off accidentally (now, how funny would that be!), take it to the store with you.

Once you are back with the goodies, wipe off the plastic sleeve in preparation for collecting next week’s requirements.

For the truly busy and slightly obsessive

Arrange the items in the master list in the same sequence as your favourite supermarket’s aisles.  This help avoid zig-zagging all over the store, and gives you plenty of evidence to scold the store staff when they dare move stuff around.

Add an MP3 player to the mix, and you have a reasonable chance of actually looking forward to the weekly shopping now that it’s productive, efficient and even environmentally friendly!

For us geeks, that’s re-usability at its best.

Enter Gmail filters.

These filters are analogous to rules on other email systems, and are really easy to set up.  To the right of the search box, right after Search Web and Search Mail, you will find a small link that reads ‘Create A Filter’.  Click on the link to start creating a filter.

Step 1: Select Emails

Fill in one or more of the boxes to decide which emails to filter: From, To, Subject, Has The Words, Doesn’t Have The Words, and even Has Attachment.

In the From and To you can use actual email addresses or just names.  In the Subject and Words boxes, you can enter words in either upper or lower case, and the search will pick them up anyway.

Step 2: Test Selection

To make sure you’ve selected the right emails, click on Test Search.  Hopefully, the filter rules will have picked up exactly the ones you were targeting.  Once you are satisfied with the result, click on Next Step

Step 3: Decide What To Do

You now have a choice.  Trash the emails, archive them (Skip Inbox), label them (my usual choice), or even (gasp!) forward them to another unfortunate mailbox.

Note that you can also have a combination.  I find a good set to be Skip Inbox and Apply Label.  For example, I select all my newsletters from Tech Republic, choose Skip Inbox, and Apply Label, choosing “Tech Reading” from the drop-down list (note: you have to create label the first time).  This way, they don’t clutter my Inbox, and I can find them easily for reading when I have time.

Step 4: Create The Filter

Click on Create The Filter to complete the work.  You can optionally check the “Apply Filter to Conversations Below”, which will immediately apply it to your Inbox.

Repeat steps 1 to 4 for each category of email.  Some examples of my filters:

• Tech Reading for all my geeky newsletters and feeds
• Local Info for stuff from local media such as TimeOut Dubai, ExpatWoman, Arabian Business etc.
• Network Nag for Twitter, Facebook et al

You will likely tweak and revisit a few of the filters as time goes on, and before you know it, you will have a beautifully clean Inbox, where only “real” email lives.

It did, however, have an interesting characteristic.  It had something from all facets of my life.  “Get MBA” and “Write the great Somali novel” were listed right alongside “Sort out closet”  and “Call Aunt X this weekend”.

The thing about a to-do list is that it is  usually related to one or two areas of our life, typically work and logistics of living.  We then duly prioritize and execute.  What we may not realize is that we are only really prioritizing work and shopping lists.  Other stuff – friends, family, personal development, good old-fashioned fun – just doesn’t get on the list.   We are simply not used to listing actions related to our personal life right along with our professional life task list.

So before you get working on your next to-do list , try this:

1. List out the areas of your life.

Think about the various aspects of your life that are important to you.  Below are some ideas to help you get started.

• Family and Friends
• Health and Fitness
• Romance and Marriage
• Work and Career
• Money and Finances
• Fun and Recreation
• Physical Environment
• Community

You can add or remove from this list as is most appropriate to you, but do try to keep it to around 5 or 6.

2. Categorize to-do list

For each item you put on your to-do list, slot it into one of your areas.  The very fact that you have to categorize it will make you stop and think about why it is on your to-do list in the first place.

Gaining this added clarity on your own motivation and what is the goal that each task is contributing to, will give you that much added motivation.

On the other hand, if the task doesn’t even fit into one of your areas, you might choose to not do it at all.

3. Prioritize within each area

Typically you would prioritize your very long to-do list according to the usual criteria: urgency, importance, or my all-time favourite: “what I feel like doing now”.  But rather than prioritizing all the tasks, prioritize within each area.

4. Pick the top items in each area

Now only pick the top 1-3 items (at least one and at most 3)  under each area to make up your your brand-new, Ta-Dah!-ready list.  It should have no more than 10 items on it.  It is now a balanced list that reflects what’s important to you, and not what’s important to your boss, your spouse, or all the other stakeholders in your life.

5. Make it into a Ta-Dah!

As you work through your newly-balanced list, you will note a much higher level of ownership.  Just because work area has more tasks under it, it doesn’t get to jump the queue or get more items selected from its pool.

As each item gets completed and you are that much closer to your overall life goals, it truly will feel like a series of Ta-Dah! moments.

About 12 years after that mid-life crisis, I found that old list.  I was shocked and filled with gratitude to realize that 90% of it actually got done.  Articulating and envisioning what we want is powerful.  It is even more powerful to get action plans towards that balanced vision right into our daily task list.

Here’s wishing you lots of Ta-Dah! moments!