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I'm Back! Productivity discussion with Daryl Cook

"Well hello there, It's been a long long time. How ya doing, I guess I'm doing fine. It's been so long and it seems that, It was only yesterday. Ain't it funny how time slips away?"

So let's get back to this blogging and podcasting thing, starting with some Productivity, Technology,and Life, with my mate Daryl Cook.  Just the raw sound to listen to, no intro, no music, let's just get it done.  And no show notes!

Have a listen and tell us what you think, what you'd like to hear about.  Should we go back to The Productivity Show?  Expand to other subjects?  What do people want to listen to?  Do they want to listen!!

Click here to download the interview mp3

My Productivity for 2010

My productivity for 2009 has been shocking!

Partly because I have some very big issues to sort out, which can be kinda distracting, and it makes it very difficult for me to concentrate at times.  Consequently, most of my good productivity systems collapsed in 2009.  My MindManager mindmaps, my Weekly Review, my capture tools and filing (not that my filing was ever any good!).

What I’m most struck by is the difficulty in planning and setting aside time for the thing I most want to do, Podcast.  Why is it, we have our dreams and we don’t fulfil them, even when we are able to.  I had a good crack at my dreams in 2009, but just couldn’t seem to keep them going.  Also, there are some things which happened, including work, which just needed complete narrow focus, to the exclusion of everything else, and sometimes, no time or energy for anything else.  And in the latter part of 2009, I really enjoyed my work.

And so to 2010, loaded with my iPhone, my Sansa Clip+ mp3 player, and my Dell Netbook.  I’ve stopped using my thin leather pocket Filofax for note capture and diary/calendar.  I’m currently using a cheapo spiral A4 book for capture, and no diary system, because my time has been in blocks of months.

Given that I’m on Gmail and iPhone, I think Google calendar and some kind of iPhone note capture would be nice.  Today, I’ve just created a simple shopping list on a Google Docs spreadsheet, and my Actions in columns, on another Google Docs spreadsheet, so that I can view them easily from my iPhone.  I’m having a play with a few iPhone productivity Apps but nothing has hooked me yet.  Dan Bricklin’s Note Taker to finger write notes on the iPhone, Evernote, iThought mindmaps, and gCalWall which produces a photo of your Google calendar and puts it up as the wallpaper.  Not long before that will be automatic.

My main obsession right now is listening to podcasts and audio books rather than producing podcasts and audio books! One may lead to the other.

Every decade for me has been significant in terms of moving onto the next decade, but this time, 2009 feels like it’s dribbling into 2010!!  Is it just me or did decade ends used to me more exciting!  And so, my productivity is dribbling into 2010!!

2009 Purchases of the year!

Just got a Sansa Clip+ 4GB mp3 player via eBay, and it set me thinking what my favourite purchases of 2009 are.  I’m not a big consumer of goods, not a big shopper, brick or online, so there’s not much to choose from.  I tend to choose well, and hence my goods last a long time, if I use them!

1. Hush Puppies – Zinc classic formal shoes

You wouldn’t think there would be a pair of formal shoes I’d actually look forward to wearing.  Given that I’m on my feet, training groups a lot, I thought I’d treat myself and spend a bit more. Well worth it.  Comfortable, “Extra Wide”, “Bounce Technology”.

2. Apple iPhone 3GS

So, I claim I’m not a typical consumer!  Well I am with this one.  Never fallen for the Apple hype, but I have to say, the iPhone is fantastic.  Easy to use, beautiful usability, great as a phone, and of course the Apps.

pUniverse – See the stars as you move around the night sky, find the planets.

AlarmT Lite – Alarm Clock which enables me to wake to my MP3s

Games – FreeCell, Sudoku, Action Blox, Touch4, Labyrinth 3D, Racer Free

tramTracker and Metlink for Melbourne transport

Getting Things Done – Notes, Google Apps (inc Gmail), Guitar Tuner, Laptop Cafe, Evernote, Note Taker (finger write), iThoughts (MindMaps)

3. Sansa Clip+ MP3 player

See, I don’t fall for the Apple hype.  I’m sure iPods are fantastic, but are they value for money?  I reckon the Sansa Clip+ is the best player, depending on how you use an MP3 player.  It’s small and it clips on!  If you cycle, walk around a lot, and go on public transport, it fantastic.  Also the Clip+ has more sound options than the Clip.  Volume/Equalizer adjustments, Audio Book options for double play speed, and micro SD slot for an extra 16GB.

4. Audible Audio Books

I’ve been an Audible user since 2006 for the Ricky Gervais podcasts, but only recently started listening to audio books.  My first book was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was a bit dire as a book, but I persisted, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers read by Malcolm Gladwell, is unbelievably good.  Just listened to some other Ricky Gervais podcasts and more to come.  I was crying with laughter.  And currently listening to Scott Adams’ (Dilbert) God’s Debris.

Just one product I wouldn’t buy again, the Dell Mini Netbook, on the Vodafone plan.  The keyboard is too small to enjoy using and they’ve moved the apostrophe ‘ key and made the right hand shift key smaller, which makes it a pain in the arse to try typing with.  It’s still a good data plan, but would I buy this netbook again?  I don’t think so.  I’ve seen better netbook keyboards.

Cluetrain and Dreams Coming True

The one thing I forgot to ask Chris Locke about was Bricolage.  He wrote about it in his follow up book to Cluetrain, Gonzo Marketing.  I was reminded of that, because I bust a gut all day to get the interview I’d done with Chris, out.  Which meant adding some music.  And I’d been sitting on some music for over 2 years, Stereophile’s “That’s The Shit” I thought it was called Bass, oh well!

It’s great to collect something, and then use it 2 years later.  And I’ve had a dream to interview Chris Locke since podcasting started, so great to get it together and do it.  Who’s next?  I have a few on the list, and I added another person over the weekend, Neil Young (Man Citeh footballer).  Are you out there Neil Young?

What I’ve done over the last few months, is bring my big dreams forward.  Oh yeah, we’ve all learnt about goal setting and all that.  Have a dream and then put actions to achieve that dream.  Well it doesn’t quite work out, does it.  I’ll tell you why.  We keep doing all the short term stuff before we allow ourselves to do the big stuff we’d love to do.  Except there’s always small stuff that keeps on coming in.  So I switched things around.  I looked at what my big long term things are and made sure they’re the first on my list every day and every week.

In fact, I’ve not been very productive recently, but the big ones are happening. Someone told me recently that they can see a lot of the colour orange in my life.  So I used Orange as the main them for The 3 Moments website, and blow me down if the main colour for Cluetrain isn’t orange, and the RSS Feed logo is orange.

What are the big things you want to do in life?  That doesn’t necessarily mean a big house, Ferrari, and lots of money!! 

When you’ve cracked a big dream, it’s a bit like that time after the wedding, and all the guests have gone.  What now!  I dunno!!  Next guest to interview for a podcast.  Next project! Actually, come to think of it, there’s a few other shows I’ve been wanting to do, and now I have the platform. 

All Time Teams, I talk with people who name their all time sport teams based on how long they’ve followed their team.  I ran a pilot show in 2005 for an All Time Manchester United Team, so it’s a bit out of date now, but just have a listen, and if you’re a keen Man Yoo football fan it sounds great! Click here to download The All Time Manchester United Team 1968 to 2005.

Madman Across The Street, interview the people who are on our city streets.  Instead of stepping over them, find out what their story is, how they got there…3 Moments! 

Sustainability and Green stuff, still a subject we all know we should contribute to, but we can’t be bothered!  I have two pilot shows from the last 18 months that I must upload.

Thanks Cluetrain.

Latest Productivity Show podcasts

Two recent podcasts by me, for The Productivity Show, Peter Mahoney of Nuance Dragon Speaking, on Voice Recognition, and Michael Deutch from Mindjet MindManager on MindMapping and Productivity.

I love doing these podcasts.  I love being a podcaster, and I want to do more, with plans for more, not just The Productivity Show.  I love fiddling with sound, and believe me, nothing ever runs perfectly. 

This time round, I’ve really been struggling to save my edited shows as MP3s at the right frequency and bitrate.  Audacity seems sometimes to have a mind of its own with what bitrate and frequency it saves at, in spite of the settings I set.  And even when I get it to save at the right frequency, the sound quality has reduced because it’s changed the frequency from the original recording. 

At least I’m starting to learn about the multi-tracks, moving them around, and starting to edit the sound quality.  Almost time for some music intros.

One of my long term dreams is to edit podcasts live just like a real live DJ, you know, with all those cow bells!! Just 9,900 hours to go to be a genius with sound editing.

Productivity Podcast with Sue Knight

My latest Productivity Show podcast is up on The Podcast Network website,  it’s a discussion with Sue Knight, author of NLP at Work, on Alignment and Purpose, plus a lot of other good stuff.

Check it out, and enjoy.

A Mind Like Water

Listening to Dave Allen of Getting Things Done fame, on Leo Laporte's TWIT Net at Night show, I was reminded of a Mind Like Water.  It's a concept in Getting Things Done, of emptying and capturing everything from your mind, so that you're in the Zen like state of having a "Mind Like Water" so calm you can deal with anything, and a system that captures and deals with anything that comes your way, keeping you in the Mind Like Water state.

Once you've captured everything, you put the Projects/Actions into the context of when you can do the action; @Home @Laptop @Airport.  As Dave Allen points out, you wake up in the middle of the night worrying about something, which is the place you can least do something about what you're worrying about.  He reckons if you capture the thing that's worrying you, into your Getting Things Done system, and put it into a context and time when you can do something, your mind will let go and let you sleep!

I'd forgotten that a Mind Like Water is really the aim of Getting Things Done.  So on Monday, I gave it a go.  Instead of re-setting the Getting Things Done system from the bottom upwards, I kept asking myself all day, if I have a Mind Like Water.  I created a gap for where I was and getting to a Mind Like Water.  Even when I thought I'd filed everything, captured everything, I checked if my mind was like water.  It wasn't.  So I kept on working out why not, until I got to a point, maybe temporarily, of A Mind Like Water.  Yippee.

It's funny, but you get there, it may be temporary and brittle, but what now?  Do I actually have to do some of these actions!!  What I found, is once my mind was totally clear, I was doing actions that I've been putting off for weeks and months.  So whilst not perfect, the system and Mind Like Water is re-generating long term projects which you could say are Non-Urgent but Important.

Let's see how I go, and how my state and system handles something urgent or hassling.  I'll Handle It and What is the next action!

My lack of Productivity

Jeez, it's only taken me 2 months to record a Productivity Show, and then 3 months to publish it, and Daryl Cook did most of the work!!  So much for my productivity.

It's weird, because there's nothing I'd more like to do with my $15m than sitting making podcasts all day and fiddling with sound.  And yet when it comes to doing the things in life I (you?) really enjoy, I don't allow myself the pleasures in life, because I haven't done all the shitty things I don't want to do, so I punish myself.

And this is an attempt to get back to my blogging, which has fallen off over the last 7 years.  I'm doing it for my own writing pleasure, a sort of morning pages, which helps gather my thoughts and improve my creativity, or at least get in action doing something.  Oh, and a full time job, and kids.  That's my time and peace and quiet gone then.  Oh and I thought sitting in a hotel room at night, with all the travelling I'm doing would lead to some amazing productivity breakthrough, with all this time I'm not watching TV in the hotel room, or eating the mini-bar clean with salty snacks.

Daryl has suggested changing my routine.  He's right.  The TV is on in the hotel room, watching an amazing Andrew Denton show with Charlie Teo and Tim Rogers, but at least I'm blogging!

Blackberry Heaven

I'm using a PDA for the first time in my life, a Blackberry.  I'm loving it.  Not because it's a Blackberry, but because it's a PDA synchronised with Microsoft Exchange.  I'm amazed at how quickly my desktop updates the BlackBerry.

Funnily enough I'm not interested in the email bit.  I can read my email on a Blackberry, big deal, but can't really reply on the keys.  I'm a touch typist not a thumb typist.  So unless I get a keyboard for the Blackberry, it's not much use to me for typing purposes.

However, it acts as a great task manager, contact list, and diary, using Outlook synched to my Blackberry.  The first thing I had to do was go back to using Outlook which meant exporting my Thunderbird contacts.  This is not so simple, and the same with mail.  I have to somehow get it into Outlook Express from Thunderbird, and then on to Outlook.  Neither Thunderbird or Outlook make it easier, and leaves Outlook Express as the intermediary.

My Blackberry had been set to synch both ways with Tasks, Contacts, and Calendar, but currently one way on Email, from Outlook to Blackberry.  I may change this, so I can delete emails from my Blackberry.

I'm not out and about enough, and away from the office for the Blackberry to really count, so let's see how we go.

Interview with Tim Ferriss "The 4 Hour Workweek" and being a Sound Engineer/DJ

I've just published my Productivity Show interview with Tim Ferriss, Author of "The 4 Hour Workweek".  Nice of him to say yes and give me some time.  And in fact, it's a good use of his time, by being available for 30-60mins to a potential audience of 500,000 and more, on The Podcast Network.  He asked a few big authors what the biggest use of time, for the smallest return is....Book Tours and Signings.  Not because they don't want to get out to the people and fans, but the time it takes, to get to a venue, do the book signing, and get back home, or on to the next venue.

So blogging and podcasts are two efficient channels for selling more books.  We talk about this on the show, and it was also talked about in Leo Laporte's interview of Tim on TWIT - The TechGuy.

And you know what, a busy person always has time.  Credit to Tim for saying yes, and making himself available and being supportive.

I had more trouble with the technology than the guest!  I record in CallBurner, over Skype.  That's the good bit.  CallBurner records easily, and in high quality, both an mp3, and and 2 high quality WAV files, one for each voice.  I usually copy the mp3 recording into WavePad, save it as a WAV, drag it to The Levelator (and have a listen to Doug Kaye's excellent talk on The Secret Lives of MP3 Files), which magically brings the voices up to the same level, and makes the recording louder. Convert back to mp3, and publish.

However....WavePad, loses the last 10-20secs of the mp3 file when I initially convert it to WAV.  Weird. I usually paste in the missing last 20secs and edit it.  But this time, I thought I'd play with the high quality WAV recordings on both our voices.  Loaded it into Audacity, combined the two channels/voices, into one mono recording, and then convert to mp3.  But, I can't get the mp3 to save in Audacity, at the right frequency.  It keeps saving at 32KHz, which doesn't work on some flash players.  I'm not the only one with this known problem,   And WavePad wouldn't read the Audacity output WAV or from The Levelator's WAV.

So back to the ordinal mp3 recording, which is lower quality.  I'm also experimenting with plugging my headset and mic into the USB port, instead of the sound card, which I think is creating background noise.

Jeez, when I've made my million's with Tim's help, I'd love to spend all day making podcasts and fiddling with sound!  Oh, and recording just like a real DJ in realtime, and mix the sounds in live on CastBlaster or WildVoice.