Archives for May 2007

As a follow up to this mornings post, I wanted to show you a video of a new alarm clock called Clocky.  It was developed by some students at MIT.  The video will give you a good idea of how it works, but basically when the time comes, it shrieks, jumps off your night stand and starts running around the room making R2D2 noises. The idea is that you have to get up to turn it off.  On the positive side of things, it will make you get up and move around a bit so you'll be awake.  On the negative side, it may put you in a very bad mood.  I heard that someone was designing something similar that would fly above your bed until you swat it down.  Waking up to a giant electronic insect isn't my … [Read more...] about How NOT to Wake Up

Congratulations to Desi and John--the two winners of the Behance Action Pad giveaway. I'll be shipping them out be the end of the week. Thanks to everyone who entered by suggesting different ways to manage todo lists.  You can read all the comments here. Here are a few random suggestions that I found interesting along with my comments: … [Read more...] about Behance’s Action Pad Giveaway

Yesterday we looked at Behance's Action Pads.  Today we are going to give a few away to random commentors on this post.   Specifically we are looking for comments, ideas, suggestions, or random thoughts about how to make a better todo list.  So anything you've done to let you better manage, capture, or execute your list of actions is fair game. So to get things rolling, here are a few suggestions for todo lists based on my experience: Braindump list -- keep a list of all the random "todo someday" items that you think of.  This gives you a place to capture them without cluttering up your daily list. Use objects -- sometimes using objects to represent your … [Read more...] about A Better ToDo List – Behance Giveaway

Awhile back we looked at Behance's Action Method Process. They have a line of products to help support this process.  They offered to send me a few to see what I thought and to give away to readers of Productivity501. At first I must say that I was skeptical. When it really comes down to it, the Action Pads are places to record a list of your actions--so how is that any different than the to-do list I normally keep on the index cards I carry with me?  I mean can't you capture the same information using whatever paper you have available?  Yes, you can. But I found that the design of the products helped change the way I approach creating a task list in positive ways. … [Read more...] about Behance’s Action Pads

One of my clients is a Fortune 500 company.  They need some help setting up some software for their developer teams.  According to their contractor policy, no consultant can come on the premises unless they have a signed PO.  That seems to make sense, but here is the problem:  They recently upgraded their PO system and it didn't quite go according to plan.  No one in the entire company can create a PO.  So I can't come on their property until the system is fixed. What would be really ironic is if I was the person they needed to fix their purchase order system. I wouldn't be able to fix it until it was working. :) … [Read more...] about Bureaucracy in Action

When my wife and I first got married, she moved into my apartment with me.  I had a large L shaped work area made from joining two desks that we shared.  When we bought our house and she started on a Master's degree, I separated them in our office so she had her own and I had mine.  I also went out and bought her a good leather office chair. It turns out this was one of the best things I ever did as far as our productivity. It was amazing how much easier it was for us both to work when we had our own work area--even though the large combined work area was more than big enough for both of us. Every person in a household needs to have their own dedicated work area and storage space.  … [Read more...] about TIP: Two Desks