Canyon R

GTD - A 12 Step Program for the Disorganized - Part 1

This was originally posted as a single article on OnOrganization.com, it’s been updated and posted here as a 3 part series

“Hello, my name is Canyon and I’m a Disorganized Mess.”

Saying that “the first step is admitting you have a problem and are powerless over it” may sound familiar to many. I feel I had to go further than that to accept that I needed help with my personal organization. I was drowning in “Stuff” and the cracks that stuff was slipping through had become gaping holes. I eventually found GTD and it saved me from my self-inflicted chaos. For this first series I want to give an overview of the GTD system. Next series I’ll cover my own implementation and some of the key realizations I’ve had about the GTD methodology.

GTD overview

Getting Things Done, or GTD, if you aren’t already aware, is the personal organization system created by David Allen and published as a book in 2001. It has become very popular with Geeks in the technology community. While there are many other explanations of GTD available, I will try to sum it up for the uninitiated.

The basic philosophy of GTD is that your brain is wonderful at evaluating data and making decisions but terrible at remembering the things you’ve committed to do. These commitments, either to yourself or someone else, take mental energy to remember. Your brain tries to be helpful and remind you of everything you have committed to, it’s just really bad at organizing this stuff. It’s also really bad about picking the right time to remind you of something. As David Allen says “You never remember that you need toilet paper when you are at the store.”

GTD helps you create a “Trusted System” giving you a way to capture and store these commitments outside your head. Trusted means that once you put something in to the system, you will come back to it at the right time. Your brain can trust you will see those items again and so it doesn’t need to hold on to everything. When your brain lets it all go, it frees up that energy for doing the creative stuff that your brain is good at. David calls this “Mind Like Water”. If all of the little reminders stop going off you can focus on doing the things you need to do. This system holds all of these commitments and the steps needed to complete them.

GTD has 5 stages.

1. Collect all your stuff outside of your head.
2. Decide what commitment this stuff represents and what the next action is.
3. Organize those commitments and actions into a trusted system.
4. Review everything at least weekly.
5. Do the tasks.

Collecting all your stuff, from the many different inputs you have, helps ensure every commitment gets processed. Processing allows you to make decisions and form plans from the pile of stuff you have collected. Organizing those decisions and plans in a structured way streamlines retrieving the info when you need it. Reviewing the whole system keeps it current and helps your brain trust it. Finally you can Do the things you have committed to, confident that you are choosing the best action to be taken at any time.

Collecting is all about not trusting your brain to remember tomorrow, or 5 minutes from now, the thought it just had. You must capture all of these thoughts and your commitments as they happen. An important piece is being able to capture anywhere, anytime. GTD calls this “Ubiquitous Capture”. This usually takes the form of a notebook, smartphone, or voice recorder.

One of the benefits of capturing everything outside of your brain is it keeps distractions down. If a new thought, commitment, or piece of information pops up to distract you while you are focusing on something, just jot it down and then go back to what you were doing. Your brain can be confident that it won’t get lost or forgotten, because you captured it. Then it won’t keep distracting you in an attempt to keep from losing this new input. This works for things you interrupt yourself with as well as anyone who attempts to inform you about, burden you with, or commit you to something new.

As you collect stuff, it lands in a series of inboxes. This can include your email inbox, voice mail inbox, a physical inbox on your desk, or a note pad you carry in your pocket. As stuff collects in this series of inboxes, you process the stuff as often as you need to keep it off your mind. Then, once a week, you commit time on your calendar to process all of the inboxes till they are empty. Then you know that everything from all your inboxes ends up in your system. This is a key to trusting your system, processing everything.

In our next part we’ll cover steps 2 and 3, Processing and Organizing. If you would like to dive in you can pick up a copy of Getting Things Done on Amazon.

U.S. ‘not winning’ war with hackers, says FBI bigwig

A very good article about the current state of security on the internet. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone in the IT or Security industry. If it does, you haven’t been paying attention.

secuniablog:

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in an interview published yesterday, FBI executive assistant director and cyber czar Shawn Henry said that despite recent arrests of alleged hackers “Sabu” and others, “we’re not winning.”

Source: Cnet

Two good articles for Blackout day reading

Here are two good articles for reading on Blackout day.

First is a primer for those asking why SOPA & PIPA are such bad laws. Andy Ihnatko lays out in his latest sun-times article exactly why these laws are awful in terms that non-tech people can really relate to.

Second is a wonderful piece from Clay Johnson, writer of the Information Diet, about fixing these problems long term by educating ourselves about congress and then using that knowledge to educate congress about the Internet.

Google Plus - Social for small conversations

The thrust of many Google+ conversations is, understandably, about how it compares as a service to Twitter and Facebook. This also comprises many of the reviews that have been posted so far. The points generally conclude that it’s not as good at one use case or another. I think that the real difference is that the services are optimized for different ways of sharing. Each taking from the others in subtle ways but still basically designed for different tasks.

I believe that Google+ is optimized for communicating with small groups of 5 to 15 people. It is not designed to easily communicate with the “Public”. Many of the complaints about the way the service works relate to it not working as well for these general public conversations as Twitter does. This is because Twitter is optimized for these conversations. It easily allows a many to many conversation but completely ignores the Few to Few conversations. These are the exact conversations that G+ is setup for.

When looking at 5-15 people Circles many of the functions that people are complaining about become great benefits. Take, for example, the “post move to the top when commented on” ordering of your Stream. This feature fails when trying to follow large public figures who have many comments from their other followers. But for a conversation happening with a circle of 8 friends, it helps to keep you engaged as everyone adds their comments.

The private nature of the Circle itself also lends to this conversation. Facebook groups are public lists that allow conversations among a diverse and unconnected group with a similar interest. Where Circles provide a context group within your own definition. For example, I may have a “tennis” group of friend, of which Brian is a member. He may also have a “tennis” circle, with people that he relates to “tennis” which I happen to be a member of. Yet when I share with my tennis circle, the members of his tennis circle don’t see it unless he chooses to re-share it with them. This is not a flaw but is by design, this is the kind of sharing I wan’t and wasn’t able to easily get anywhere else.

The reason, I believe that many of the people who are on G+ now have these complaints is that they are media and technology people who interact with their “public” on social networks and not just with their Circles of Friends. I only hope that user’s requests don’t try to turn G+ into Facebook or Twitter by asking to remove or change the things that make it different. I hope it’s allowed to grow into it’s own service, with it’s own optimizations and social norms.

Podcast honorable mention

In my list of podcasts I focused on the casts that I get the most value from. I covered shows that focus on news, tech, or business. I feel like I’m being unfair if I don’t mention (honorably) my favorite entertainment podcast.

You look nice today is an unbelievably fun, intelligent, unrepentant, and zany show. I will warn that’s it’s not work or child safe, but it’s well worth taking some of your own time to listen to. The hosts are Merlin Mann, Adam Lisagor, and Scott Simpson.

The best example of how brilliant these guys are is their tribute to the foley artists of silent films The Noises Rest. If you like it, you will love YLNT. If you don’t, I’m sorry.

Podcasts for the masses

I listen to a lot of podcasts, as some of you may know. While I’ve often recommended specific casts to people, I have never listed out my favorite shows before. Before I start the list there are a few notes I think you will find helpful.

First: What is a Podcast?

A podcast is a show that is distributed over the Internet. They are usually audio but more are released as video. You can listen to, or watch, them either from a website or on any computer or portable device (ipod, iphone, smartphone, etc).

Second: Why listen to a Podcast?

Podcasts, in their audio form, are great because you can listen to them while doing other things. This is a very similar to the benefits of audio books. I often listen while driving, doing dishes, or even shopping. This gives me a great way to engage my mind and learn about new things in my areas of interest.

Third: How to listen to a Podcast?

If you have an Apple device, iPod or iPhone, then all of these podcasts and more are available in the iTunes Store under the Podcast section. If you have an Android powered phone then I highly recommend the Google Listen application. This is what I listen to my podcasts with and it’s a great experience. If you have another smartphone, like a palm or blackberry, then you may have to find a way to download these shows and sync them to your device. Any modern smartphone that can play music will be able to play podcasts. If you don’t have any of these mobile devices, then you can still listen to the shows from your computer, either by downloading them or directly from their respective websites.

Here are my favorite podcasts.

5: NPR Podcasts :: NPR has done a great job of embracing the nature of podcasting. While their individual shows are available, I much prefer their topic based casts. They bring together stories from several of their shows that are all related to the same theme. I currently subscribe to the Technology and Economy shows, but they have many other topics available.

4: The World Technology Podcast :: Clark Boyd brings together the best and most interesting tech stories from “The World” program. He picks the stories you haven’t heard elsewhere, “tech that matters” as he calls it. He offers expanded interviews with people working on and thinking about cool and important things. When ever I hear the intro start playing, I do a “happy dance” because I know I’m going to learn about something new.

3: Back to Work w/ Merlin Mann :: Merlin is one of the most insightful and entertaining people I follow. Anything with him in it is always great. This is the newest podcast in my list, having only a handful of episodes currently. What is wonderful about this cast is that host Dan Benjamin has coaxed from Merlin the core concepts of his renown talks and his forthcoming book. Together they present these important and always helpful topics in a playful and engaging way. If your work takes any thinking, responsibility, or creativity then you will be better at it from listening to this podcast.

2: Security Now w/ Steve Gibson :: First off, all of the TWiT podcasts are great, and Leo Lapport is clearly the godfather of technology podcasts. I listen to several of the casts from twit and highly recommend you look for any of them you might be interested in. Yet, Security Now is different. Steve’s ability is to take unbelievably complex technology topics and present them in a clear, concise, and understandable way. Listening to Security Now will give anyone a solid foundation in most current technology, including General Security, Cryptography, Computer Processing, Wireless Networking, Online Privacy, and dozens of other topics. This is some of the most accurate and thorough technical content available on the Internet. This is a must listen if you work with or are interested in technology.

1: Manager Tools & Career Tools :: Put simply, Mike and Mark have had a bigger impact on my career and professional life than any one else, period. These two casts, really just two sides of the same body of knowledge, are where I have learned how to be a better at every activity related to work. Their focus on actionable, repeatable suggestions put them ahead of almost all of the other business and career advice available. Call it professional development, career management, or personal coaching, if you are looking for the most payoff for your time spent learning this is it. Manager Tools covers topics from the everyday life of professionals. Topics such as meetings, interviews, projects, budgets, leadership, and presentations. They will make you more competent at the things you are bad at and give you an edge on the things you already do well. Also, the Manager Tools forums are a great community of professionals sharing their questions and support with each other. I have benefited greatly from their discussions and insights.

I hope this inspires you to start exploring the world of podcasts. There are thousands available for every interest and topic. If you have any suggestions for great podcasts or questions about my picks, please post them below.

Adding Twitter and Facebook buttons to Tumblr

I just finished adding the tweet and like buttons to my site and was amazed how both simple and complicated it was. I found many good sites with helpful information but none had the exact combination I was looking for. So here is how I finally got it to work the way I wanted. Hopefully this will be as helpful to someone else as the other pages I found were to me.

Let me start by thanking the Author of the Tumblr theme. I am using a heavily modified version of the Netpad theme from Jumplex. It offered a great starting point that was very close to what I wanted, but more importantly it was very cleanly put together and easy to modify. Thank you Jumplex, your work is very appreciated.

This theme has many nice features, including Disqus and Google Analytics support. But I wanted to add support for Twitter and Facebook buttons. The first place you might start, as I did, is the Facebook “like box” page. This page offers a wizard for configuring your like box.

It produces a code block that can be used to put the info box on the page. It offers both an iframe and an xfbml option. I chose the xfbml option because I was going to be putting both a site like box and a like button on each post.

<script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”></script> <fb:like-box href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/CanyonRcom/189359354428289" width="225" show_faces="false" stream="false" header="true"></fb:like-box>

But the code produced doesn’t fit smoothly into the dynamic nature of the Tumblr template engine. So I moved the script tag into the <head> section of the template.

<script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”></script>

I then added a meta tag to the template.

<meta name="text:Facebook URL" content="" />

This puts an entry under the Appearance menu to input the URL of the facebook page. I was then able to add my facebook page address to those settings.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/CanyonRcom/189359354428289

And I added this block to the code for the sidebar layout.

{block:ifFacebookURL}
<fb:like-box href="{text:Facebook URL}" width="225" show_faces="false" stream="false" header="true"></fb:like-box>
{/block:ifFacebookURL}

This gave me a site wide box linked to my facebook page for the site.

Now to get twitter and facebook buttons for the individual posts.

Again Face book offers a wizard for the like button that allows customization the layout of the button and presents a code block to insert into a page.

In similar fashon to the like box, the button offers both and iframe and xfbml code. This code is a good starting point but isn’t perfect because I need a custom URL for each posting.

<script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”></script> <fb:like href="http://canyonr.com/post/3355399522/online-safety-info-for-your-non-tech-friends" layout="button_count" show_faces="false" width="55"></fb:like>

The script tag is the same one I already added to the <head> of our theme. This allows me to focus on the fb:like tag. It currently contains the URL of a specific article, I needed to substitute the code for each article. The Tumblr theme docs gives the {Permalink} variable that I can use to insert the URL for each article. Fortunately several other pages suggest using the {URLEncodedPermalink} variable instead. This gives a small block of code to insert to get the like button.

<fb:like href="{URLEncodedPermalink}" layout="button_count" show_faces="false"></fb:like>

Now, where to place it. I put it with in the <div class="detail"> and <div class="ndp"> portions of the theme. For other themes, it can be included at the end of the section that shows up at the bottom of each post.

The twitter button is slightly more complex because of the options they allow. The wizard for the Tweet button only gives a few settings but the dev page lists all of the properties that can be passed.

Once again we get a script tag to add to the <head> of our theme.

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”></script>

The twitter button is an <a> tag in order to facilitate browsers that don’t support scripting. I modified the default tag to include several options, most importantly the data-url setting. By using Tumblr’s {ShortURL} tag I was able to send the same shortened URL to twitter that Tumbler’s built in twitter posting uses. I also added a | after the {Title} to give a little visual seperation to the URL.

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="{ShortURL}" data-text="{Title} |" data-count="none" data-via="canyon">Tweet</a>

I placed the Tweet button infront of the Like button because when the page has no likes the number baloon isn’t present but the space is still there. Since I wasn’t going to show the count for the tweets, I think it looked better in that order.

But wait, they aren’t lined up. The Tweet button is at least 6 pixels higher than the Like button. What a travesty. Why wouldn’t the competing social giants work together to make sure there buttons looked good together. Turns out this is configured to look correct in IE and looks wrong in Chrome. After much searching I found some ideas on how to resolve this and decided on creating two new span areas to contain the buttons and “fixing” the floating property for each.

I attached some CSS to the end of the section for the containing <div> tags.

#content .detail .ndp .social_buttons {
vertical-align: top;
}
#content .detail .ndp .social_buttons .twitter {
vertical-align: middle;
}

I then wrapped the buttons in corresponding <span> tags. My final button code is:

<span class="social_buttons">
<span class="twitter">
<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="{ShortURL}" data-text="{Title} |" data-count="none" data-via="canyon">Tweet</a>
</span>
<fb:like href="{URLEncodedPermalink}" layout="button_count" show_faces="false"></fb:like>
</span>

This, somehow, gets the buttons to line up and look correct in both browsers.

And now I have Facebook and Twitter integration for each post and for my site as a whole. I hope this helps the next person who is trying to decipher the confusing realm of social buttons and tumbler themes.

Online safety info for your non-tech friends

OnGuardOnline.gov is a good site with online security information that you can pass on to your non-technical friends and family members.

For many years I have been fielding questions from family and friends about the various dangers online. I don’t want to scare these people with the gory details of just how bad it is. I often wished that there was a site that took the time to relly spell out, in simple English, what people should know and what they can to to protect themselves. Today I was listening to Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast #288 and he talked about this site and it’s simple presentation of exactly this information.

It appears to be a well thought out site covering a lot of different topics. I read several of the articles and even played some of the trivia games. One specific question in the wireless hackers game worried me when it was clear they were expecting a technically correct yet misleading answer. I was surprised when their explanation spelled out my concerns about the nature of the answer. This shows the care that the authors took in striking a balance between accessible and technically correct. I will be recommending this site to friends and family members who are savvy enough to be concerned about security or at least should be.

Getting started

I should have signed up for a tumblr a long time ago.