There's a surprise coming to interrupt you.

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There is a surprise coming toward you that you can't see. If it arrives and you've dealt with all of the things pulling on your psyche, you can be present and welcoming  to the opportunity. If you have 300 unprocessed emails to deal with and a surprise shows up you'll be annoyed at the interruption to your world. 

If there's a quiet moment, tidy a draw, bring yourself as close as possible to a state of total mindfulness where you can be free to bake that cake, teach that child because these loops, they keep pulling. 

IFTTT Request - Tweek to twitter channel to add hashtags

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A quick request to IFTTT via their suggestions page..

Hello - you’re too awesome. Please let me give you money.

Until then: I auto tweet my Flickr shots, the tags attached to my Flickr shots feed through to the tweet no problem, but, don’t have a # on them. Flickr even auto filters # out if I put them in directly.

Can you have a tick option to auto hashtag things like that? Is that possible? It would be super helpfull.

Keep up the good work :)

Never pick up the phone unless it's your own

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What’s the explanation for picking up a ringing phone if the person who owns the phone, is away from their desk?

They caller isn’t calling you, you can’t help. Leave it alone.

The recipient may have set up call forwarding, or a usefull voicemail, which the caller now won’t receive.

More than that - you’re wasting your own time (picking up a call you can’t help with), the callers time (probably needing to call back, wondering who they just spoke to) and introducing uncertainty (will the message you took even get to the recipient?).

Hey, you - leave that phone alone.

Automated photo workflows with DropBox, Hazel and IFTTT - Part One

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In preparation for an even longer post describing my own complex workflow for sharing photos from my phone, across several social networks and back to my own computer for long term storage - here's my wife's work flow for dealing with her images and my daughters art work.

Okay, here goes:

  1. I take the photo using the Flickr app on my mobile. My Flickr app is set to upload photos as public, by default. I tag it with "#alia" during the upload process.
  2. I set up a "recipe" in IFTTT which says, "If I upload a public photo to Flickr with the tag #alia, send it to my Dropbox folder." I have set up a Dropbox folder called Photos/Alia_Art to receive these snaps.
  3. In Hazel on my Macbook, I set a rule which says, "Any photo in the Dropbox folder Photos/Alia_Art should automatically be placed in my iPhoto album." I have set up an album in iPhoto called Alia's Artwork to receive them.

Thus, an automatic process is created whereby any photo I take of Alia's artwork, tagged and uploaded through the Flickr app, appears in a special album within iPhoto. The whole process takes just a handful of clicks on my phone (to be specific: click, click, take photo, click, tag, click).

Once a month, I open my iPhoto album and edit the photographs. Every time the total number of edited photos in the album hits 100, I order a softcover photo book directly through iPhoto, which costs about £16. Bam! A loose-paper-free, space saving way to store hundreds of my daughter's paintings, drawings and collages in date order. We'll be able to see as she develops her art skills, and she'll love to have the books when she's older.

The best bits I'll still keep and get framed. The rest goes in the recycling.

What do you think?

Using an onscreen timer to boost your productivity and stick to the two minute rule.

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One part of GTD which I find difficult to gauge is - how long is 2 minutes? I mean really, what is actually 2 minutes of work and what’s 3, or5, or even 10.

To help, I’ve been using an onscreen timer to time myself, triggering the timer to start each time I start work on a new task. I’ve been using Timer By Ten.

Advantages

  • Seems to make me work even faster, internal competitiveness?
  • I’m getting a (little) better at judging task length

Disadvantages

  • It takes up more screen estate
  • Not integrated into task tracking app

I’m not convinced this is the best timer available, but it’s the best I’ve used so far, any suggestions for an improvement?