Archive for the 'Getting Things Done' Category
29
May
07
May
07
Some thoughts on multi-project workloads
A question that pops up time and time again in forums, newsletters, and blogs, goes something like the following: "People say the best advice is to work on one thing at a time. But when pressed, everyone who is successful says they work on multiple projects at once. What gives?" Well, there are two useful ways of looking at this. At least, two ways that I've found useful. You might agree or disagree. The first way: Focus on one task at a time. If they are writing an article, they sit down and write that article until they are finished. They don't write three lines, then read their email, then write another paragraph, then have a look at that latest Wordpress plugin, and so ...
25
May
07
May
07
How To Prioritise Your Projects
There's a great post by Shoemoney on prioritizing profitable projects. The "fun factor" is one thing I try to avoid. The other is "problem solving". It's easy for me as a software developer to get an idea, and start working on a proof-of-concept (a quick and dirty piece of code that does the complex piece of function, but doesn't have all the easy "been there, done that" pieces, and certainly doesn't look nice). Before I know it, a day has gone by and I've got the proof-of-concept for something I might not even use, and another project that is live or almost live hasn't been updated. Hence:
21
May
07
May
07
Automate Returns From Private Label/Reprint Rights Products
How many times have you purchased something with some sort of reprint or private label rights, intending to use it for one of your sites/mailing lists, and then forgotten about it? One thing I've started doing is IMMEDIATELY taking action when I purchase something like this. Now, the action isn't to blast out an email to that mailing list. It's to add a note. But the note goes in a special place - my Email Marketing Checklist. This is a nice Excel spreadsheet that has columns for each mailing list, and rows for certain types of mails (link to another site, promote another mailing list, promote my own product X, send an article or tip, etc). Then when I purchase a product with rights, ...
11
May
07
May
07
Quick product development
I read an article recently by a very well known marketer, who was explaining a particular process. It was a great process he'd talked about - one of those things that you read over and over again in different places, and suddenly you read it another time and it clicks into place. Maybe this writer wrote in a way that suited my thought processes or something... Anyway this process relied on a web application (a free one), that you would set as your browser homepage. I wasn't keen on that, as it would mean losing my existing browser homepage, which has links to my various sites and applications that I use on a day-to-day basis. So I wrote something quick and dirty ...
4
May
07
May
07
Automated Reminders of Unused Downloads
If you're like me, you've got a pile of stuff that you've downloaded and not used. They could be reports, multimedia files, ZIPs, software, whatever. Here's a trick. Use Firefox. Use CTRL+J to open the "downloads" window, and there, you'll see all the things you've downloaded. Each download has two links next to it: "Open" and "Remove". "Open"... er... opens the file. "Remove" removes it from that list (but doesn't delete the file itself). Don't remove things till you've opened and taken action with that download (eg, read the report, installed the software, watched the video). And keep that window open at all times. Or, you could get hold of my File Tagger software, and it will happily show you the number of files that you've ...
