chrisg.com

Commentful is a web service and Firefox plugin that helps you keep track of blog comment conversations. I have been using it for the last few days and it seems to work pretty well.

Commentful is a service that watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts, Digg submissions, Flickr pictures, and many other types of content. When ever there is an update, such as a new follow-up or comment, Commentful notifies you instantly.

First you have to sign up to the web service. When you have an account you go back and download the software from your account screen. The plugin is customised to your own account details. When you make a comment you right click on your comment and click “Add to Commentful”. A little light bulb in your Firefox status area alerts you to new comments on the sites you are tracking. Pretty neat!

While it is too early to say if I will use it longer term, the few days I have had it installed I have got a lot of use out of it and caught up with some conversations I would have otherwise missed. Not every comment box seems to work, but it has caught most of them.

Tags: blogging, firefox, comments, plugin, tools, download, review, news, tips

One way to get more productivity out of yourself and your team is to understand what motivates them and supply more of it. Seth Godin says many companies are full of two types of people

I now firmly believe that there are two polar opposites at work: Thrill seekers and Fear avoiders

I can see that but I am happier with the types expressed as

• Towards
• Away from

Seths thrill-seeker is a “Towards”; they go-after, want to achieve, acquire, they visualise their goals, the prize in their hands. As he says, these guys make for great salespeople when you set good targets. To keep these people happy you need to provide goals with incentives that match their wants and needs.

I am the other type, the “Away-From” guy. Oh I try to be the first kind, but most of the time I am living in fear of a downside, have nightmares of what-could-be, am running away from the big-generic-monster-in-the-darkness that is chasing me. Rather than having a goal of making money I try to not be broke. It can come in handy, I am usually among the first to spot potholes in a project plan for example Fear of the sack kept me working hard in many jobs.

Motivating the first comes naturally for most people, less so for the second group. Of course it comes down to stick and carrot. You can also use these traits to help motivate yourself.

If you are the first kind you have to picture what it will feel like when you have completed the task at hand. Away-from people imagine what dire consequences could arise if you do not complete your task in a timely manner. You can even create consequences or treats for those tasks where the motivation still is not there.

What kind of person are you and how to you keep yourself motivated?

Tags: seth godin, motivation, productivity, gtd, getting things done, news, tips

Aaron Potts Tagged me with his “Simply Successful Secrets” meme. *Sigh*. Memes. I love reading them, find it hard to do them. This one could be interesting though. Here are the rules.

Compose a new blog post listing the top 5 to 10 things that you do almost every day that help you to be successful. They can be anything at all, but they have to be things that you do at least 4 or 5 times every week. Anything less than that may be a hobby that helps you out, but we are after the real day in and day out habits that help you to be successful.

Successful? Me? Not yet. I will be one day soon, heh.

OK, things I do that help me …

1. Read - A lot. I have about four or five books down the side of my bed, most nights I will pick up one at random and read a bit before drifting off. My reading appetite has never been any less than voracious. I firmly believe reading anything helps but of course I read textbooks too. Sometimes because I have to (every few months I am asked to do a technical review or edit of a geek book), mostly because I love learning new stuff. Expand your mind, read a book.
2. Blog - When I say “blog” I mean everything involved in blogging. Blogging is both a job and a joy for me. I read my RSS, I post, I answer comments, I write new ones on others’ blogs. Far too many bloggers think it is just about writing, how wrong they are. The best bloggers know the truth.
3. Family Time - It’s important those around you get some time. One of the reasons I left my JOB was to see my family more. As I said once or twice before, nobody on their death bed wishes they had spent more time locked up working.
4. Communicate Virtually - Locked up in my house as I am I try to hook up with people online every day. I’m sure this is annoying for the people on my buddy list but I need chitchat in my life! Other people, other perspectives, especially people who disagree are SO valuable. Plus it is nice just to make friends and socialise.
5. Switch Off - This is soooo important but something I don’t manage to always do. In fact I get into trouble with my wife for not doing this most days. It’s a must though. Do something that relaxes your brain, just have some mindless zero-thought time. My solution is to schedule TV programs that I really enjoy. I watch Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Life on Mars, My Name Is Earl, Ice Hockey, Mythbusters … all stuff that takes little thought and takes me out of my day to day concerns.

Stuff I should do that I don’t

1. Sleep - Get up earlier, go to bed earlier, get good quality sleep. My sleep pattern is shot. Partly because I am so obsessive, partly because I have so much to do, partly because I have contacts in diverse timezones. No excuses, I just need to have a better sleep pattern.
2. Exercise - I get no exercise. Visibly. I need to.
3. Get out - My daily routine rarely allows me time out of the house. Just plain unhealthy. I need fresh air and daylight.
4. Organise - While I used to be very organised now I am so disorganised everything is in chaos. I’m going to get a Moleskine and refresh my memory techniques.
5. Me time - Too much of my day is work, I am going to start meditating.

So I think it is fair to say I am a disorganised, flabby, workaholic. Great. I expect others will have much better habits and advice.

I am going to inflict tag with this:

• Brian Clark
• Darren Rowse
• Liz Strauss
• Aaron Wall
• Aaron Brazell
• David Krug
• Jeremy Wright

Ever feel you don’t have enough time? Not enough money?

I’m sure it is a familiar thought. There are lots of things I would like to do “if only I had the time”. I wish I could afford … lots of things.

Thinking about this though I have found there is often enough time to do many of the things we dismiss with this claim. Rather than time being the problem, as usual, the problem is with us. Or rather, our sense of priorities.

Some people do have terrible money problems, I am deeply grateful I am not one of them. Most of us who complain about lack of funds have the same problem with money as we do with time. Our problem is how we spend it.

We would rather watch television. Drink beer. Take a fourth smoke break. Have that extra fifteen minute “snooze” period with our morning alarm. Use the full hour for lunch, and eat all the trimmings.

This post isn’t one of those “tighten your belt, swear off the Starbucks” things. I believe it is important to enjoy your time and your money. After all if you don’t, what is the point?

No, my point is if you spend your time slightly differently you might fix both your time and your money issues. Set a budget for your money and your time. Spend both a little smarter. Invest your time in activities that will return dividends.

Take this example. A forum poster said they would blog if only for the time issue. This was my reply

Yes, it does take time. Think about this though, each post I publish on my blog is a busy little worker. It’s like recruiting a new member of staff who will diligently market my site 24/7 for no pay. He will continue to work for me for years to come, attracting new readers, perhaps advertising clicks, maybe selling my products. My best articles more than pay back the time spent over and over, for years. One article brought me 11,039 NEW visitors in a single day. Not “hits”, visitors. That article is not going anywhere, it will continue to earn its keep, growing in value each time it is referenced.

Every article I write is like another $10 in my daughters high interest savings account, an investment that will add to the compound returns of the whole and grow exponentially in long term value …

At some point this blog will pay off. When it does I will be glad I put the time into writing rather than going down the pub.

I started writing this post at 15:37. It is now 15:51. Nearly finished this post then I will answer some comments and emails. Not a great deal of time to spend communicating with my blog readers. Could you find fifteen to twenty minutes a day to invest in your blog?

A few people took my post on defeating procrastination to be advising producing poor quality under the guise of “just getting something out there”. I would like to correct this if I wasn’t clear in my post. My opinion is if something is worth doing it is not just worth doing well, it is worth making extraordinary.

The point I was making in the original post was to get through your to-do list, perhaps starting with the easy stuff, to get on a roll. When you make some small progress you can build momentum. I do also mention your standards

It’s not actually about setting your sights low, or dropping your personal standards. What you have to do is identify those things you have to get right from the get-go, those items that do need analysis, and what can be fixed later.

The goal must be to make what you create the very best you can. That means putting in all the effort and creativity you can muster. At the same time we need to be pragmatic and know that we don’t have an eternity to dedicate to every little thing.

Not everything needs to leave your desk absolutely perfect. You can incrementally improve your blog over time. Posts can be re-visited. In Japan they call this continual improvement “Kaizen“.

As you make progress you will get into a habit of being productive and procrastination will not be such a worry. At that point you will have the perspective to know when further analysis will be beneficial and not just more delay.

I’m not quite there myself, I still have to stop myself making that one last tweak (followed by another). But I know I am improving, and sometimes that is the best we can expect of ourselves.

Analysis Paralysis is where you can’t make any forward progress because you bog yourself down in details, tweaking, brainstorming, research and … anything but just getting on with it. Sound familiar?

It’s something I struggle with. Partly out of fear of failure, partly because I love the idea-generation phase of projects, mostly because I am an anal geek on occasion. The very worst form of Analysis Paralysis is at the organisational level. If the company you work for spends more than an hour a week in meetings you just might have the organisational version.

There is hope though, even for chronic cases.

I launched this blog quickly. It took about a day from the decision to
launch to having my first RSS subscribers. This was a strange thing for me. I knew if I didn’t just get something up I probably would never do it at all.

Rather than spend an age tweaking and agonising I put together what you see as best as I could knowing that there are some things I can change post launch.

It’s not actually about setting your sights low, or dropping your personal standards. What you have to do is identify those things you have to get right from the get-go, those items that do need analysis, and what can be fixed later.

While it is perfectly natural to want to spend time thinking about a project, especially one with an element of risk, there comes a point where any more thinking is counter-productive and you need to start making some progress.

1. What do you absolutely have to do for the project to be a success?
2. What tasks can absolutely not be put off while later?
3. What are the most painful items to change post launch?
4. What could realistically go wrong?

In the programming world this is about setting your top priorities, the stuff you absolutely must get right and that will be difficult to refactor at a later date. For blogging, and launching a new blog especially, it is about getting the fundamentals right. Hosting. Blog software (I recommend Wordpress). Domain name. Feed URL. Stats. Contact form.  Good-enough design. URL structure. Stuff that is a pain to migrate from down the line. Then just get writing.

With procrastination it always comes down to just doing it but discovering the reasons why you aren’t (other than being a lazy git making excuses!) can be very helpful in getting your sorry behind working. Analysis Paralysis often comes from learned behaviour over several years. Either it has proven beneficial, so you do a little more thinking and planning each time, or not enough planning has caused problems so each occasion you get a little more cautious.

Planning is good. Failure to plan is planning to fail. But too much can be as crippling as not enough.

It never fails to surprise me how different the world seems when my analysis faces reality. We all get some things right while other things seem to come from outer-space and no amount of thinking would have predicted it. Thinking on your feet is often as important as any amount of analysis.

• Set a deadline and stick to it. Don’t be tempted to put it so far in the future we will all be flying around with personal jet packs.
• Partner with or get the second opinion of someone a little more reckless - my go-to hot-head is Nick. I’m starting to think my analysis paralysis has rubbed off on him though, heh.
• Get used to making decisions, it gets easier with practice. Start with small decisions (”caramel macchiato” vs “double-shot-latte”) and work up to the biguns.
• Do one of the tasks on your list, then another. Easy or hard, doesn’t matter. Gain some momentum.

Finally, Stop thinking about it and start doing something.

I’ve never been so disorganized since I switched computing platform. Pre-Mac I used Microsoft Outlook for pretty much all my organizational needs. Sure it was slow, bloated, buggy, crashed a lot, soaked up pretty much the computers entire memory, but it kept my desk tidy.

Now I am lost for what to do. I have made do with post-its, spreadsheets, emails to myself and any number of workarounds. Eventually I need to sort out a solution but this post from BizNicheMedia reminds me to not get caught in the geek-trap

Recently I’ve started using Get Harvest and I’ve setup a personal and company account up over at Campfire. These apps aren’t revolutionary, but they have helped me get a lot more productive and stay on task, and I would bet that your biz could use some help on that front as well.

What is the geek trap?

Don’t go looking for technological solutions as your first step. Software and gadgets can be the answer but they are not always the answer. You have heard “When you get used to using a hammer every problem looks like a nail”? Isn’t it funny how webmasters and bloggers automatically turn to the web for solutions.

Take filing for example. Geeks will jump in and say “document management!”, “data archiving”, “ooh-ooh, knowledge base”. When really if you just filed stuff in some order there wouldn’t be a problem.

Another example, “where does my day go?”. You probably know the answer already. When you are spending time on something non-critical you are already aware you are wasting your time 9 times out of 10, sometimes a time-sheet will tell you something new but you can get the benefits of the exercise using a sheet of paper and a pencil.

One of the most organised people I ever met, a hospital consultant, had a simple system

• He trained himself to have a great memory
• He used a notebook

Why would he use a notebook if he had such a great memory? Well for a start even the best memory is not perfect. Also this was often information he had to record exactly (he worked with peoples health after all). But mainly because it was more efficient for certain information to be stored on paper and other facts to be memorised.

Very often software solutions have you working in a certain way, rather than the way that would work best for you. You need time to learn the system. A pen and notepad is probably the most intuitive system you are going to ever need.

The moral of this story is to get organised first, then find technological solutions that fit into your way of working. Don’t use technology as a crutch.