Sounds like Marco gets this question as much as I do; here's his reply. I wrote my response on Lifehacker in November 2009, and since then LH ran a whole "Night School" series about it. But as Marco said, the question isn't "How do I learn how to code?" The question is, "What do I want to make?" Once you've answered that question, figuring out languages and development tools is literally a matter of reading a beginner's book or watching video tutorials or taking a class. Then, you put in the work.
Derek Powazek's post, Twitter for Adults, is a nice summary of how to use Twitter well. Reading it, I realized what my single best Twitter survival technique is: a private VIP list. It looks like I'm following 551 people in total on Twitter, but in practice, that is just not possible. So, I put people whose tweets I don't want to miss on the VIP list, which appears as my first column in TweetDeck. Right now there are only 51 people on that list, well below Dunbar's number, and I intend to keep it that way. On busy days (and let's face it, most are), I read only that list of tweets, my mentions and direct messages. When I have more time, I scan over to my All Friends list. Sometimes I promote people from All Friends to VIP if their stuff is really interesting; other times I demote folks from my VIP list if they're driving me crazy. The fact that the list is private means no one's feelings are hurt if they're not on it, and this setup means I can follow people liberally without worrying about them cluttering up my primary timeline. I use a similar technique with my RSS reader subscriptions, and it's one of the best ways I've found to focus my attention on the good stuff, while auditioning more potential good stuff in my All Friends/Subscriptions list, too.
Working remotely is so liberating--you get to do what you do best, in a location of your choice, sans commute, maybe even in your pajamas, without your co-workers or boss always looking over your shoulder. But telecommuting also requires a lot more effort when it comes to maintaining relationships and connections with people back at the office. In this week's episode of Work Smart, IBMer Rich Edwards asks about the best practices for staying connected and building relationships from afar. I share some advice based on my own work-at-home experience, and then I ask author of Telecommuting Success Michael Dziak for his. Hit play on the video above to watch and check out the accompanying mind map over at FastCompany.com.
The perennial question we always got from obsessive Lifehacker readers: How do you actually be more productive if you spend all your time looking for new ways to get stuff done?
In this week's episode of Work Smart 2, I got to give my best answer to that question. Bill Clark asks how you can actually work smarter when you spend a lot of time learning new productivity tricks. I share my favorite tool for keeping yourself honest, and then asked author of productivity bible Getting Things DoneDavid Allen for his thoughts. (In short: there are worse ways to waste time.)
Press play on the 2-minute, 30-second video clip below.
When it comes to storing passwords, I've been a KeePass fan and user for years now, but when Leo Laporte told me he uses LastPass, I had to check it out. I don't love the idea of syncing my password file to a third-party web site--I'm that paranoid--but it is a total pain to cart around my KeePass database file. Now that I've tried LastPass, I'm sold--well, for my lower-security logins, anyway. This week's Work Smart video covers the security vs. convenience tug-of-war you have to put up with when deciding on any password system, and why LastPass is a solid choice.
I've travelled to 9 different cities already this year and I've got 4 different major work projects going on, so keeping on top of everything on the go is something I've had to get good at out of necessity. This week's Work Smart video is a question from Daniel Beck, a work-at-homer like I am, about how to not let your whole organization system fall to pieces once you leave your (home) office.
I was lucky enough to get none other than David Allen to agree to be my expert in this segment. I was pretty nervous talking to David, as his material has been an inspiration for me for years now. Hopefully I didn't come off as too much of a dork on Skype with him.
The second season of my Work Smart video series at FastCompany.com premiered yesterday, with a question from Suhasini Kotcherlakota about how to take better meeting notes, and some answers from me and Brad Isaac, who wrote a great piece on mind-mapping meetings at Lifehacker a few years back.
Despite the fact that I still can't watch and listen to myself on film without cringing, I am so pleased with the results. Adam Barenblat at FastCompany did an amazing job on the art and design, which is based on a fun new webapp: Popplet.
Hilary Mason: How to Replace Yourself with a Very Small Shell Script
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Just stumbled upon a YouTube clip of one of the best Ignite presentations I've seen, by Hilary Mason, a computer scientist at Bit.ly. Mason wrote a series of scripts that auto-respond to email with particular content, and auto-nag folks she's emailed but hasn't gotten a response from yet. Hit the play button to hear more. She says once the code's fit for sharing she'll put it up on GitHub. Cannot wait. ∞ May 25th, 2010, 6 comments
The best part about my Work Smart video series at Fast Company is that I get to cover my favorite, classic digital productivity problems with the latest and greatest solutions I know in a whole new medium.
In the past five installments I addressed some old and new issues any tech savvy digital worker encounters: keeping track of passwords, wasting time leaving and listening to voicemail, being a productive freelancer (or just work-at-homer), syncing files across all your computers, and, for fun, a few things you didn't know your cameraphone can do. Hit play on any of the 2-3 minute segments inside.
My two latest videos over at Fast Company deal with how to get things done even when your lizard brain is completely against you. First, a bit on how to procrastinate productively; second, how to get your most important work done first thing, before you start procrastinating.
The topics are very much related. Once you've let yourself dread something long enough, you get stuck in a cycle of procrastination that makes you feel like crap. But my big secret is this: some of my best work got done while I was putting off doing something else. When you're procrastinating, you're highly motivated to avoid something for as long as possible. Which means you've got both the will and the time to knock out something OTHER than the dreaded task you're putting off.
On the other hand, if you see that dreaded task looming on the horizon, you can set yourself up to tackle it first thing in the morning, before anything else happens. I jacked the title of a book I love, Eat That Frog, to describe that one. Here are the two clips.
My latest two videos are up at Fast Company: one's on firewalling your attention with time blocking, and the second is on three ways to use Google Wave in your business.
The time blocking piece is actually a personal confession about my hermit tendencies. Sometimes I just shut everything off, fall off the face of the planet, and have some uninterrupted me-time. I've had co-workers say to me, "Um, where did you go today?" and the answer is usually "To my happy place, a distraction-free zone." As you'll hear in the video, at my last office job, I actually used to schedule a meeting with myself complete with a conference room to get away and focus on something for awhile. Here's the 2 minute, 37 second clip.
37signals' new book Rework is a fast, inspiring read for anyone who's thought about starting a business but froze at the idea of quitting their job, getting investing, and working 24-hour days.
As they do every day at their blog, in Rework the Signals break down their minimalist philosophy into a series of essays written in uncompromising language. Expect a table of contents full of sections entitled things like "Learning from mistakes is overrated," "Planning is guessing," "Outside money is plan Z," "Throw less at the problem," "Skip the rock stars," and "Meetings are toxic." While it's billed as a business book, at its core Rework is a get-up-off-your-ass, stop-talking-and-start-doing book--a productivity book that uses 37signals as its main case study.
People who follow 37signals online know that they are opinionated and contrarian--sometimes to the point of abrasive. At least one person thinks their small business philosophy is downright dangerous. Personally I give 37signals credit for having a strong point of view, a well-executed shtick, and for having shipped some fantastic software products. (At Lifehacker we lived in Campfire.) My advice? Take the book with a grain of salt. After reading it you don't have to cancel every meeting you have at your company. But, if you shorten a few, you've gotten something out of it.
To get a taste of how the book reads, download this PDF excerpt with essays on why workaholism, business plans, and meetings don't work. The book is available today in bookstores and on Amazon.
Panic is a software company that makes useful tools like my personal favorite, Transmit for the Mac. They've also made a beautiful project status display that helps their team keep on top of what they're working on, and what important dates are coming up. Click on the thumbnail to see the full version. The board is actually an internal web page that auto-updates support email queue numbers, how far along each company project is, day over day revenue comparisons, the company calendar, and Twitter messages. Here's the effect it's had on the team:
Les, one of our support guys, said it best after a week: “That board is like magic.” Our support turnaround time is faster than it’s ever been. Just the simple act of “publicizing” those numbers — not in a cruel way, but a “where are we at as a group?” way — has kept the support process on-task and, I think, made it a bit more like a video game. (It helps that when all the boxes are at “zero”, a virtual bottle of champagne appears on-screen, and a physical one is likely removed from the fridge.)
Brilliant! I am dying for one of these for my own personal use. Panic, will you add that to your project list? For the nitty gritty on how this board was built and what kind of display it's on, check out the full post at the Panic blog.
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