Gotta teach ‘em right.
Backstage – Behind the Myths Tour
Adam and Jamie are very cool and the show was awesome! My buddy Steve and I had a great time!
Planet Sysadmin clean up
Planet Sysadmin was having some problems running due to some bad feeds. I’ve deleted those and about 20 blogs that were returning 404 or 500 errors for their RSS feeds.
If your blog is no longer on the planet, that’s why. Just send me the new feed and I’ll add it.
Worldwide Photo Walk 2011
This was my second Worldwide Photowalk and I chose to participate in the Durham one again, this time doing the American Tobacco Campus and some of downtown. We got a late start waiting for folks to arrive; it was windy and chilly and the group was much smaller than expected. I spent a lot more time solo this year since we were so few and people were spread out.
My photos are over on Flickr – I went with an all HDR batch this year just to try something different. I traveled light and only brought one lens. That was mostly fine but I regretted not bringing my macro lens and maybe a flash.
Photo above (of me) was taken by Foster over at Silver Dog Photography
Wunderlist – task manager for Web, Mac, iOS
Tracking tasks is super easy with Wunderlist. Simple interface and cloud sync between your Mac, iOS device, or the web site gives you many ways to keep track of tasks. Best of all, it’s free.
My system? I initially capture on paper, whiteboard, or from incoming emails and then transfer my tasks into Wunderlist to track following a loose GTD flow from there.
Take back control of your email
Email tends to be a huge distraction during the day, especially for someone that gets literally hundreds of messages a day, like me. If you’re reading every email as they come in, you’re not using your time wisely. As great a tool as email is, it doesn’t need to drive your day.
Now, as much as I’d like to only read mail once a day like many productivity gurus have suggested, that just doesn’t work for an IT guy. However, I’ve found a pretty good set of rules that I’ve found give me a pretty good balance so I thought I’d share what I do to keep email in check:
- Disable all notifications of new mail. No sounds, no flashy icons. I check my mail when I’m ready to read it. Email isn’t meant to be an instant message so don’t treat it as such.
- Decide when to read mail and do it in batches. I do my heavy email in the morning over coffee and then lighter again in the evening.
- Heavily filter your mail. Anything not sent directly to me gets sorted into various folders. 80% of my mail goes into a folder that I only read through once a day.
- Only mail sent with my name in the To: and that doesn’t match my many filters stays in my main inbox and that’s the only email that makes it to my iPhone or that I’ll see if I check my email between meetings.
- Unsubscribe to anything that’s easy to unsubscribe to and that you don’t need or want to read. Create rules to just delete any mail you have no intention of reading but isn’t easy to unsubscribe to.
- Take the time to mark spam as such to keep your spam filtering working efficiently.
- When you do read your mail, don’t set yourself up to “process” given message more than once. Read it, then act right away (reply, delete, file, or create a task).
When you batch up your email “work” and leverage technology your email stops controlling you and goes back to being a tool that you control. You’ll quickly find that you have a lot more time and focus for more important things, and THAT’s the real work your organization pays you for.
Tully’s
House Blend. Very good. I’d buy this one again.
UPDATE: Their French Roast is pretty good too. I’d buy that one as well but I liked the House Blend better.
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