Reinke Faces Life

http://www.legalandrew.com/2007/04/24/
get-your-motivation-moving-with-small-steps/

http://tinyurl.com/ytar45

Get Your Motivation Moving with Small Steps
productivity ideas, blog consulting – focused on the legal world
by Leagal Andrew aka andrew flusche

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Now think back to that nagging goal or project you’ve put off. Come up with one small step you can take within 24 hours. Don’t just put it on your trusty GTD action list. Go do it!

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Interesting productivity tip.

BTW in one of my projects at work a while ago, which wasn’t going well, the exasperated honcho directed me to assume the role of devil’s advocate. I was to, for every problem itemized, record who reported it (hurting) and who was to solve it (stuckee). Every day, I was to talk to every stuckee and get a status. BUT, not just any old status. The stuckee had to three choices:

* {#1} solved (which was to be immediately verified with the “hurter”;

* {#2} what was done in the last 24 hours to solve the problem and what would be done in the next 24 hours to solve the problem; OR

* {#3} a project plan to get to the solution.

Anything else, was to be escalated to him in real-time while the stuckee was on the phone.

Needless to say, stuff started being solved with AMAZING hustle.

For my part, every time one of these was “declared”, I just went to outlook and set up a five minute meeting at 730AM Eastern (I like to get an early start!) and sent it. People could propose a new time, which was fine with me.

He also added one more rule at the following week’s project meeting. When some problems didn’t “belong” to the stuckee, they could be relieved if the proposed replacement accepted the assignment. And, no throwing it over the transom. He officiated at the “wedding” (i.e., do you joe give this problem to sam? And, sam do you accept this problem from joe to have and to hold from this day forth?). If he was unavailable, I was allowed to sub in but I had to prepare a “wedding announcement” copying everyone involved. Needless to say, replacements were hard to find. The stuckee had to PROVE that it was the replacement’s problem.

Now those were some fun problems. Capacity, intermittent, bugs, blunders, suppliers mistakes, anything, and everything. As I recollect that when we shut the implementation down as completed, we had about 800 items all total led. MTTR was all over the place. But, there was a trail of “notes” about actions. The maintenance team used that as “as built” documentation.

I’ve never forgot that lesson. Attention and a 24 hour clock.

http://www.carolynnduncan.com/2007/04/27/
wow-weeblycom-is-a-sexy-business/

http://tinyurl.com/25en5r

Wow! Weebly.com Is a “Sexy Business”
Writing by olynnduncan on Friday, 27 of April , 2007 at 1:55 pm
the carolynn blog

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What options does a small business have to get an easy, cheap, non-blog web presence? Sans web skills? Good luck.

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May I call your attention to “Google Apps”?

http://www.google.com/a/smallbiz/

I used it to “throw up a business idea” quickly and cheaply. My expense was registering a few domain names.

(My hero is the fellow who made grazillions selling 5 biz ideas a day. He got it going and sold out. The inet model: get a spark, throw up something, hockey stick the popularity, and sell it off.)

You asked for alternatives. Google Apps is still free. But I have reservations in NOT paying the piper for an idea. Don’t think you want to be beholden to a free service? A cheap equivalent at reputable hosting service is chump change (under a hundred a year).

Just a thought.

ALSO: I looked a Weebly a while ago. I’m not sure you want to take the Weebly route, or for that matter the Google App one either.

Your time is valuable. You’ll spend a lot of it developing your “content”. Then it, and all the effort getting it right, is locked up on a free sites.

No, I have already paid tuition at that school. In my case, I developed a “good enough” site for my consulting business using a WSP’s free web site building tool. When I merged all my stuff on various WSPs to get control and save a lot of money (Some WSP prey on the novices and really stick it to them!), I paid special attention to my sites that were in some one’s proprietary format. (It was NOT HTML.) And, this one site built with their tool did have HTML that look moveable. And, it was. I moved it and everything was hunkey dory at the new site. Until I pulled the plug at the old site, and my modest effort was gone. Apparently, stuff pointed to the old WSP. Argh! Now, I don’t use the WSP tools. The WSP is paid for raw service. I build in NVU and such.

So, I’m not sure that “free” isn’t very very expensive.

From The Electronic Recruiting News In Email_070427

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It’s like being thirsty in the middle of the ocean for most people. The explosion of sources of information leaves a bewildering set of problems for disciplined professionals. They boil down to “what is the best way to spend my time?” Certainly, reading 500 blogs is not going to make you a successful recruiter. The right five, however, might.

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Where do you spend your time productively?

That’s a tough question. IMHO, we humans don’t even know where we spend our time. Unless you’re a lawyer with a sophisticated time tracking for billing purposes system, no one has accurate data to work from. Most systems I’ve seen and worked with are “time charging” mechanisms. They are really about charging your time to some project or other. The accuracy of that is suspect at best and a joke at worst.

So how do you measure your time spent?

I have a rut of things that I do on a daily basis so I know those. The rest is in the hands of the Universe.

But, it would be nice to know where one is “spending” their minutes (like a cell phone bill) and it would be nice to know the ROI on those minutes.

Periodically, when I feel I have “lost my way”, I reassess what I am doing. I dump some habits and try to start new ones. I use that aforementioned rut as my friend. Getting in a good rut is productive; a bad one disaster.

It’s a terrible paradigm. But I have no other. Maybe that’s what twitter could be?

On the ABOUT page, you can enter some thing and shazam it shows up in my email box. FWIW?

Of course I am interested in your thinking about email and your strategy for exploiting the opportunity it represents.

I’ve come to the conclusion, that despite handling prestigious amounts of the stuff. Stuff that varies in quality from vile trash to gems. I need a better mechanism.

It all ties into what platform are you using. Web-based uninstalled or client based or a mixture.

It all ties into creating a “brand”, spam, and throughput.

Argh.

Just as one can take too many feeds and be unable to “drink from the fire hose”, it is possible to be overwhelmed with email.

So how to handle it?

Do you use one email and deal with it? No, that single channel quickly hides the significant from the trivial in a mass of mess.

I think my strategy of using different emails or different purposes has allowed me to get to my current state. Unfortunately, I need more.

(1) I need conversations like I see in Gmail.

(2) I need Getting Things Done applied to email.

(3) I need Outlook email boxes galore?

Sigh. I don’t know what I need?

Here’s a recent feedback I sent to the WORDPRESS gang:

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I really have no problem this time EXCEPT I really don’t like PayPal. I’ve heard too many horror stories. So, how can I send you a check? I assume that credits don’t expire. I am really really interested in using my own domain name. But, I find all the posts about it confusing. I have the domain name www.reinkefaceslife.com at my WSP 1and1. I forwarded it to https://reinkefj.wordpress.com. It appears to do the same thing. But some how deep in my gut, I feel I am missing something and what you are offering is somehow some way better than what I am currently doing. Does that make any sense? fjohn

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So what is the difference between www.reinkefaceslife.com at 1and1 http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=9113251 and doing it with the WORDPRESS gang?

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail-tips/
get-rss-feeds-from-your-gmail-labels-157701.php

http://tinyurl.com/358ebr

Get RSS feeds from your Gmail labels

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There are many emails which I passively consume: newsletters, job vacancies, forums, mailing lists (on which I lurk), banking alerts, blog comments, bug tracking, and so on. These emails may require action, but the action does not (usually) involve replying to the sender.

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Interesting. Use RSS to get BLOGS. Use FEEDBLITZ to transform RSS into EMAIL. This proposes to take an RSS feed of routine EMAIL from GMAIL label.

Hmmm, a new way to handle routine email.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/
obituaries/20cnd-backus.html

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies
By STEVE LOHR
Published: March 19, 2007

John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 82.

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/03/16/
how_to_grow_your_own.htm

http://tinyurl.com/2qzfl6

March 16, 2007
How To Grow Your Own Blog: Nine Tips For Would-Be Bloggers

Joshua Porter is the editor of Bokardo, a site about social web design. He is currently the Director of Web Development at User Interface Engineering, a behavioral research company based in North Andover, Massachusetts.

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How can it be true that if you were to start blogging someone would pay attention to your very own writing?

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It’s hard to believe that about 200 people read, or perhaps take in, my babblings. I don’t know if I would pay attention to me! But, I do know that blogging has consumed my attention space. In the sense that instead of trying to capture stuff on little pieces of paper, I use this blog. It serves me. Then, under the heading of repurposing, if you get some benefit from my rambles, then that’s very effective use of my time. If not, at least, I’ll remember what I took the time to post. But a blog without readers, like that proverbial tree, does it still make a sound?

http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_3_14_07.htm

On War #209
March 14, 2007
Conversations
By William S. Lind

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Why does the American military so avoid informal conversations and require formal meetings and briefings? Because most of the time, the people who actually know the subject are of junior rank. Above them stands a vast pyramid of “managers,” who know little or nothing about the topic but want their “face time” as they buck for promotion. The only way they can get their time in the sun without egg on their faces is by hiding behind a formal, scripted briefing. At the end, they still have to drag up some captain or sergeant from the horse-holder ranks if questions are asked.

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Guess that puts the nail in the “meeting” coffin!

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