TonsofTime - Enjoy the now

One of my favourite blogs Lifehack.org has a good article by Shane Magee about how to maximize time for yourself by creatively adjusting your daily schedule.

Sometimes it seems like your life just isn’t your own anymore - work, family, and other obligations swallow it up to such an extent that we often look back and wonder where all the time went! No wonder, then, that many of us feel as if life is just passing us by, and we can do no more than helplessly watch. However, with these tips and a little willpower, you can create time to center yourself and face the world with renewed enthusiasm.

Five Hints to Reclaim Time for Yourself

The 20th century
Ever since my school days, I have been taking and keeping notes. For many years, these notes were solely analogue (on paper). Later on, they were supplemented with digital texts on desktop PC’s. After I bought a Psion PDA in the nineties, I started to use the application Notepad Deluxe (now abandonware) to enter, store and search notes. It was a great app, with linking capabilities, almost like a mindmap, but not graphical.

Requirements for a note keeping system
For me, and I believe these things are personal, the ideal platform has to be portable, computer independent but secure, and preferably digital.

Portable, because it is great to be able to make a note when I am away from a computer. At the moment, I use my Treo 680 for this and applications like Notestudio (which the makers to my disappointment have stopped developing). The mobile searching of notes, like with a smartphone, is less important, however this can come in handy sometimes as well.

Computer independent: ever since the coming of Web2.0 applications like Gmail, Google docs and Mindmeister, I have gotten used to the fact that my data is online and can be reached from every connected computer, be it from the PC downstairs or upstairs at home, from my laptop in the train or from a computer of a customer. Once you are used to this, you don’t want to go back. Therefore, for keeping notes, an online wiki or other Web2.0 site would be great.

The matter of confidentiality
I feel there are a couple of disadvantages to keeping all your notes or other data on a Web 2.0 site. One of them (besides backups) is that my notes often contain restricted information about customers computer networks and IT architecture and I do not want to put them in the hands of a possibly insecure provider, even if this site features encryption of the data and the connection. So, the best way to solve this is to keep the customer-related notes in a separate, encrypted store on the hard drive of my laptop. The application that I have used for this for several years now is Treepad, which is also available for Linux and can be run from a USB stick.

What about online file storage, like Mediamax and iBackup, Skydrive of Microsoft or the storage that Google is preparing for its customers? If I put my encrypted Treepad files there, would they be safe? Maybe, but I still do not want to take the risk of trusting a companies IT designs to an outside hosting provider.

The advantages of digital notes
Digital notes can be searched, which is why it is good to keep them all in the same bucket, so that you do not have to search in several locations. Digital notes can also be backed up more easily, since making a digital backup is easier than scanning in handwritten notes. What I also like, is to copy and paste computer commands, difficult strings and other hard to remember stuff right from a website into my notes. If you want to keep those on paper by copying them from the screen by hand, I think this is asking for trouble in the form of writing errors. Can digital notes be portable? Yes, if you can access them with a smartphone.

What digital information not to keep as a note
Contact information, I use Google contacts for this and sync them to my smartphone with Goosync. For calendar info, I use Goosync too. Passwords: for this I use eWallet of Iliumsoft and keep them synced. Mindmaps: I keep these on Mindmeister, when they are not work related and I use Freemind with local files (on harddrive or USB stick) when they contain restricted information. To do’s and project lists: for these I use Life balance on my PDA, but I am looking into applications like Nozbe, because with Life Balance, you are restricted to keeping them synced to a single computer if you want to avoid synchronization errors.

MediaWiki
Using my Treo, I have tested the readability of Wikipedia (MediaWiki) on a smartphone browser. To my surprise, the texts can be read very well. That’s why I intend to install MediaWiki on a webserver someday and put all my not-restricted notes there. I will definitely use password protection, because wiki’s are very vulnerable to pollution by spammers.

Accessing your notes during a meeting.
What notes should be readable during meetings? In the teams where I work, it is custom to take your laptop to a meeting. But if there is no place for laptops or it is just not that kind of meeting, what can you do? Mediawiki and Notestudio notes can be read on my Palm during a meeting, but not the confidential notes about customers projects, servers, databases and so on, because I do not want to keep them online and they are on my laptop or encrypted on my USB stick. In that case, I can compile an abstract of relevant notes for the meeting, print it out and shred the paper afterwards.

On my reading list is Mattieu Ricard’s latest book about happiness in the buddhist perspective.

A few days ago, Ricard has given a talk in the TED conference.

Here is a related post.

Tejvan Pettinger of Pick the Brain has written an article about the benefits of meditation that I found was a good read.

In a modern world that values activity, achievements and results, it is perhaps surprising that more people are turning to meditation. For all the activity of modern society, many still feel a fundamental need for silence, inner peace, and a moment of reflection. Meditation can reduce stress and help us relax; but, it can also give us a lot more. These are some of the benefits that daily meditation can give us

Read the full article

Click on the photo to see it in Flickr

Leitz 43 Folders (LEI5844)
I use this Leitz folder as a tickler file. When I have an appointment on a certain day that has a paper invitation, badge, slip or note that I have to bring to that appointment, I place it in the appropriate day in the file. (The 1,2,3 tabs are for the days of the current month only, the I, II, III tabs are for future months.) It is a very good solution to the “where do I place the cinema tickets for next week?” problem.

Palm Treo 680
The applications I frequently use on this smart phone, besides the built-in apps, are:

• Life Balance, in my opinion the best todo application there is.
• Note Studio, that I use as my personal wiki.
• eWallet to store passwords.

Cross Ion gel pen
This is a small pen that extends to something you can use to write with. Although the pen has a rather sharp edge close to where your middle finger goes, it writes very well. Because you can carry the pen in your pocket (or on a key cord around your neck) everywhere you go, you’re never without writing tool, which is nice. Pigpog has written a review about the pen, that was a bit of a hype in 2005. Nowadays, Cross sells the Toffee pen which is also pocket size. It is not a gel pen, more expensive but made of metal with a leather coating.

Hardcover paper notebook
This is just a brandless hardcover lined notebook, I use when writing on my Treo is not fast enough. The scribbles in the notebook are transfered to the Palm later on, either with the little keyboard or on a PC.

There is a great post on Zenhabits.net about creating a simpler, more content life for yourself. It has a lot of links to previous posts on Zenhabits that fit right to the context.

At the end of the day, we’re often exhausted and stressed out from the grind and the chaos and the busy-ness of the day. We don’t have time for what’s important to us, for what we really want to be doing, for spending time with loved ones, for doing things we’re passionate about.

And yet, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to live a simpler life, one where you enjoy each activity, where you are present in everything (or most things) you do, where you are content rather than rushing to finish things.

Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment | zen habits

It has been months since I have signed up as beta tester of Scrybe. This week, my account was activated. The first look is exactly what I expected from this great demo.

I will take my work as beta tester seriously and put all of my appointments and clippings in it for a while and report all bugs. In a few months, I will write a review. In the mean time, check out other reviews in the blogosphere.

I have have found an excellent video that shows 500 years of art history:

There is a hilarious short story from Robert Benchley that was published in 1949 (four years after his death) and is about how you can be very productive doing all kinds of things, when you should be working on something else.

The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

The article, apart from being humorous and well written shows that productivity is best served by using your intuition when picking the next action.

How to Get Things Done - Robert Benchley

How to avoid being flooded with obligations and deadlines? According to Bob Walsh in Lifehack.org, the trick is to focus on doing less.

“So there you are with your Today list, your to-do list, your project lists, your house list, your calls list and even your list of lists. You know each and ever one of the 49 things you want to accomplish today. There’s only one small problem: come the end of the day you’ve accomplished zip. What went wrong?

Your focus”

Link to the article.