Productivity Geekdom Part 3: How I fell in love with a webapp, and cheated on it

If you are anything like me you have played around with countless webapps by now that promise to help you streamline your work flow. Via GTD or in some other way.

Me? I've tried 7 GTD Webapps. And I always come back to the same one after a week or so. There is another one I really like, but my favorite is just better thought out even with its kinks.
My advice, that I should probably follow as well, is pick one you like and stick with it. If you can it will help you immensely but if you keep on shopping around for a better system it'll just hurt you.

This next few days I'll be writing reviews of 3 or 4 webapps that I believe stand above the rest for their userability and features.

Communicating Securely: GnuPG for Mac OS X Part 1

Reposted from my old now defunct blog and updated

I'm a careful paranoid person... sadly very few people share my specific fears about email and do not take any steps to secure their communications from 3rd parties on the Internet. This is mostly because people are scared of the 'complexity' this security brings with it... but it doesn't have to be difficult to setup or time consuming to operate. Apple Mail.app and Mozilla Thunderbird make it a snap. And today I'll be giving you step by step instructions on how to install GnuPG on a Mac, creating a key and getting ready to use a more secure method of communication.

Productivity Geekdom Part 2: Forcing yourself

Lets face it, deep down most of us are pretty lazy. We procrastinate and avoid things for as long as we can. That is obviously not an ideal way to deal with life or work. So that is where little personal hacks can help you achieve something better.

Your body is sorta like a machine, you take care of it and 'service' it you'll be able to enjoy it for a lot longer than those that don't. I'm currently on a personal fitness down spiral that I am remedying as quickly as I can. I was in pretty decent shape before I broke my hand and stopped being able to life weights.

This enabled me to break my habit. Don't ever EVER break a positive personal habit. So right now I am trying to get myself back into it. It's a slow process

This is where the very nifty Habitizer comes in. It uses the gold star system, just like elementary school to keep track of your habits. And the more you continue to do them the more they become natural and well a habit. Once that happens it becomes very easy.

How to make yourself Work Out by annoying yourself into it

One of the main tricks behind me motivating myself is very straight forward. It is annoying myself into doing something. My alarm clock is across my bed room from me, it is set to a loud beeping noise and most importantly it goes off at 6AM. I don't usually arrive at my office until 8:30AM so you might wonder why I am doing this.

At 6AM I usually, even if my body is trained to wake up at that time, a little upset at being up at that hour of the day. So I force myself to get up, put on work out clothes and walk 4 blocks over the the YMCA.

Now I am pissed that I didn't sleep in and when I get bored with my work out and feel like just quitting half way through this little voice in the back of my head says "Hey you! You just woke up and ruined your morning for this... You better finish this workout to make it worth it!"

I can't work out in the afternoon. I get bored, other people are up and about, there is something good on TV and I could be doing phone calls for my business or other things I can't do while I am in the minority of people that are awake. As an added bonus to my early morning work out, a lot of the top executive and movers and shakers in my city are in the gym in the early morning and it always gives me a good chance to network. Many a business opportunity we have had has come from shooting the shit in the gym at 6:30.

Productivity Geekdom Part 1

"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion"
-Parkinson's Law

This week I will review a couple of my favorite GTD Web apps or task managers. I am not an over organized person by nature and I live in a 'creative' mess. I would also be a perennial front runner if there was a procrastination olympiad.
If one is not naturally get work done fast and immediately type person, and truly few of us really are we really need to develop and trick ourselves into a daily routine that minimizes procrastination and gets your work load done faster. In the end that means instead of being weighed down by procrastination you will have more legitimate quality relaxing time to spend as you please.

Tomorrow we will cover:
Problem One: Forcing yourself to do things

I have over the years slowly discovered certain personal hacks to make myself do things and pull them through that otherwise I would not enjoy or even want to attempt. This for me usually is working out, its especially hard to get back into it after having to sit out due to injury or when work stress just seems to become too much.