Snoskred Explains

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The Timer

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

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I am a massive sucker for time management games, the kind you get on your iphone like Diner Dash and Hotel Dash and Wedding Dash. But when it comes to time management in real life, I’m not so good at that. So in 2014 I set myself the goal of becoming better at managing my time.

Last year I had a daily schedule which involved two focused 2 hour sessions – from 10am to midday, and 2pm to 4pm. In some ways this was great but in other ways I found it very limiting. I wanted to set myself a third session in the evening but there were always interruptions in my two hours which sometimes made focusing on a task really difficult..

Sometime in December I stumbled upon a site that mentioned using shorter timed focus sessions. This was actually a pretty revolutionary concept for me and getting annoyed with the limits of 2 x 2 hour sessions, I thought I would give it a try.

There are six basic steps to a short timed session:

1. Choose Your Task

What do you want to achieve today? It could be anything. I’ve set the timer for –

– editing photos
– writing blog posts
– feed reading
– surfing the web
– cleaning and/or decluttering
– household chores
– exercise
– organising the fridge
– cooking
– gaming – especially those addictive can’t walk away from games
– watching the chickens

The last two are especially important to set a timer for, because I can lose hours in a game or just watching the chickens be chickens out there in the yard.

2. Set the timer

I use my mobile phone timer but you can use any kind of timer you like.

I like to set a minimum of 25-55 minutes for most photo editing or writing tasks. You don’t seem to achieve very much in less than 25 minutes at those two tasks. For kitchen or chore tasks I might set 20 minutes with a seated 10 minute break to make a nice round half hour, and then I can catch up on my email in the break.

I am flexible with how long I set the timer for, too. If I have to leave for a appointment in 20 minutes, then a 15 minute timer with 5 minutes of getting ready time means I don’t waste 20 minutes waiting for it to be time to leave.

3. Focus on your task

And ONLY that task. Phones off. Email off. Internet off. TV off. If the doorbell rings, you don’t answer it. I find this freeing in so many ways, especially ignoring the doorbell. I know if it is the package guy because right after the doorbell rings, there is a beep from his scanning the package. That one I’ll get up for. Everyone else can come back another time. No interruptions.

4. Timer Goes Off! Take a short break

If this was a seated writing or computer related task, save what you were working on before you turn off the timer. I’ve lost 55 minutes of writing thanks to a lightning storm before.

This step is *absolutely critical* – I cannot express to you the importance of taking the break the moment that timer rings. . I also recommend getting out of the room you were working in. You are giving your mind a chance to fly free and getting the blood flowing to your limbs again if the task was a seated one.

5. Take a longer break

You’ll find focused timer tasks can be quite tiring mentally. If you kept going for 4-6 hours at a time, not only will you get tired mentally but you’ll find it harder to focus.

6. Plan a reward

You’ve put in the effort so you deserve a reward once you’ve done at least 2 rounds of timed sessions then your break in a row. Your reward could be anything. Mine tend to range from playing a game to a snack to watching a tv show..

Group associated tasks together –

If I gave you 3 tasks that involved three different rooms, and you had to spend some of your focus time moving from room to room to room and back again, you’d find quite a bit of your time spent in moving about.

If you moved those 3 tasks into the same room, you’d save yourself a lot of time.

But only do one task at a time

You’d save even more time if you focused on just one task at a time.

The same goes for almost any task – it is quicker to do one task over and over than to switch from task to task. I find this especially true with things like image editing, writing, taking screenshots for my Breaking Bad episodes.

You can break tasks apart

I might break some tasks down into two separate timed sessions – for example – with the photo editing –

First session = 55 minutes of going through the photo folders, picking out images I want to edit and saving them into one folder

When the buzzer goes for the break, I get up and make a drink or have a quick walk around – my mind by this time has probably already moved onto how I want to edit those photos I have picked,

Second session = 55 minutes focused on image editing.

And even within this session I may break this down further. EG cropping all the images *then* making all the images the size I want *then* using tools to enhance the focus or colour *then* saving them all.

Because I have broken the two tasks into separate sessions, I find I get a lot more done.

About Snoskred, blogging tips, life lessons, Snoskred hearts, time management

Perhaps Try Again

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

There has been all kinds of misinformation and bad reporting with this missing AirAsia plane, but I think we have a winner for the most incorrect press report thus far.

mediasilly

Hmm. Looks like a military helicopter to me. The fact that the press gets plane types wrong is something we Aviation Geeks are well used to, but I have never before seen them mistake a helicopter for a plane. This is a new level of wrong.

I have been nice and removed the name and twitter ID of this press person though others may not be so nice.

Some might see this post as a bit petty. While it could certainly be interpreted that way, I want to make the reason I am posting it clear.

When reporting anything, the press should TRY at least to get the things they say correct. When they cannot get something as simple as a helicopter VS a plane right, how can anyone trust the other words they say?

It will take time to find out what has actually happened here. In the meantime, this is my advice to you –

Take any reports re what has happened to this flight as pure speculation. Was it weather, was it X, was it Y, was it Z? We have zero idea and anyone claiming otherwise you should treat with enormous suspicion. The only fact we know presently is that the plane lost contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) and was no longer to be found on radar.

Ignore reports of the plane being denied to climb to a higher altitude. If the pilot had a reason to climb and he communicated to ATC that it was necessary and urgent, the request would have been allowed even if other traffic had to be re-routed as a result. I have listened to ATC scanners for years. Planes often make requests to ATC that are declined for a multitude of reasons. ATC have a job to do. If an emergency is declared their job is to assist the pilot to get safely on the ground. If an emergency is not declared, then their job is to manage the airspace. A request from a pilot to fly at a certain altitude or track is simply that – a request.

Ignore reports of “wreckage” found until you actually see it with your own eyes. We’ve been here and done this before with MH370. So much “wreckage” was found and none of it turned out to be related to MH370.

If you are looking for actual info, my advice is to forget the general media. They are clueless when it comes to aviation. You can try these sources –

There is a good article from Australian Aviation here if you are unfamiliar with the story thus far – Indonesia AirAsia A320 missing 24 hours (last updated 1040am AEDST)

The PPrune Thread

Aviation Journalist John Walton on Twitter. John often links to some other reliable sources as well, and if you have any questions he will try to answer them.

Aviation is difficult at the best of times. When you are taking people up into the air, a place we were never designed to go, there are always risks – as there are risks in anything that we do in life. Things can and do go wrong, people are lost, and that is utterly heartbreaking for their friends and family.

I cannot imagine how the families of MH370 must feel, so many months have passed and still that plane has not been found. I hope for a different outcome with QZ8501. Of course my present hope is that the plane landed somewhere and everyone is ok. The more time that passes, the less likely that hoped for outcome seems. :(

When things do go wrong in aviation, it would be wonderful if the media could report actual facts rather than hours upon hours of endless speculation, just because they have air time to fill.

I have written about air safety previously – Plane Safety – a must read for all – What Not To Wear In The Event Of A Plane Crash.

Fail Whale, In The News, life lessons, plane safety, things to remember

How To Add Contact Page on WordPress

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

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If you own a WordPress blog, setting up a contact page is super easy. And yet there are a lot of WordPress blogs out there without a contact form.

Why do I want a contact page?

People might want to contact you for all kinds of reasons. I get emails from blog readers fairly regularly and 99% of them are *not* spam. Sometimes they are very interesting emails indeed. I do get a lot of emails about older posts where the comments are turned off – comments on this blog switch off after 90 days.

Can’t I just use an email address?

Of course you can! However, it is my advice to you not to put your email address out there in the usual format – eg mailme@email.com – you will get spammed hugely. Best to put it in this kind of format – mailme {at} email {dot} com – you can see my email address over in the sidebar and I have both a contact form and the address on my contact page..

Can I do this on Blogger?

Sure, but their built in version is a sidebar widget. Here are some instructions which might help – New Blogger widget contact form.

Here is The WordPress How To –

Click on add new page in your WordPress dashboard.

contact1

This will take you to the add a new page form. It looks identical to add a new post. So add in your title – Contact is the obvious one, but you could use Contact Me or Contact Us, if there are more than one of you.

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You will see under the title area, a box titled Add Contact Form. Click on that.

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You will see this pop up preview box appear. Everything is there ready to go, and you could simply click on add this form to my post at the bottom, and it will all magically happen. In fact – lets do that, and see what happens next.

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This is how the contact form appears in the text box in your post –

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it does not look like much here, but once you hit publish page and then visit the page, it will look something like this –

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The form will be affected by your CSS in your theme, so it might look slightly different to the version you saw in the preview box.

So there you have it – a contact form.

What if I get some spam?

If you get some spam you might decide to add a check box to the post – regular humans will know to tick the box, but spam-bots cannot follow the instructions and cannot tick the box. How do we add one? See the section on the form creator which says Can I add more fields?

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Click on that, and you’ll be given a drop down box.

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Choose check box from the list, and add in text – you could put Tick box if you are human, tick this box to send your message, even just tick this box – but make sure you tick required before you hit save this field.. Changes are made live so you will see how your new field will look on the form.

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Over To You –

Have you ever wanted to contact a blogger privately but been unable to?

how to guides, wordpress

I thought I was going to die

6 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

You probably heard about the Qantas plane that recently experienced explosive decompression. In case you didn’t, here’s a news story about it. Over the past day or so you probably saw headlines like –

Qantas boss ‘horrified’ by hole
‘Massive’ hole in Qantas jet
Qantas jet was ‘rust bucket’
Qantas flight plunges 20,000ft
Hole ripped as Qantas jet dives

The most stupid of which being the last one, because the hole was ripped first, and the plane dove as a result of the hole. So why did it dive? Because the pilots cannot rely on the passengers sitting behind them to actually put their oxygen masks on, and if the plane did not dive the passengers would all lose consciousness within 75 seconds.

There have been times in a normal flight when there has been nothing wrong with the plane and oxygen masks have dropped. The passengers tend to look at them curiously. They don’t make any effort to put them on.

There is very little oxygen at 30,000 feet, certainly not enough to sustain life. It is also extremely cold at that flight level and hypothermia becomes a possible problem if the plane stays at that level for too long.

They have to dive – they have no choice, and the pilots are trained to do it. There is a risk that the plane might break up if it is damaged too badly by whatever has happened, but they have to weigh that risk against the risk of people dying from lack of oxygen and warmth.

Headlines like those seen above make me angry. In fact it makes me angry that the first thought anyone would have in this situation would be “I’m going to die”. Thinking this is an absolute waste of time and the only reason people think it is because they do not know better.

If people took the time to EDUCATE themselves before setting foot on a plane, they would know exactly why the plane went into a dive, and they would be sitting there thinking “We’re diving so people will be able to breathe – we’re diving so we won’t die. What can I do now to increase my chances of surviving this?” If newspapers stepped away from the sensational headlines, they could write about why the pilots put the plane into a dive and then anyone reading that would be educated.

I’ve written about plane safety before and the following posts are something you can read if you want to educate yourself before flying –

Plane Safety – A Must Read For All

What Not To Wear In The Event Of A Plane Crash

I once went scuba diving on the Gold Coast. Normally before you can dive you have to do a course but they have worked something out so you can try a dive without all that. Even so, before they let me get in the water, they made me sit through a lecture that seemed like it went forever where they explained to me all the various ways that I could die!

Things like.. If I breathed too fast. If I didn’t take enough breaths. If I went down too far. If I didn’t stay with my buddy. If I went up too quickly. They had a paper we had to sign which said that the risks had been explained to us clearly – and it probably said we wouldn’t hold them liable if we did die, it was a fair while ago now.

But there’s no lecture before you get on a plane. There’s no paper to sign saying you know the risks. There’s not anything to sign saying you listened to the safety briefing or took a look at your safety card. It is up to YOU to do it. If you don’t do it then you *are* putting your life at risk in the event of an emergency.

All you need to get on a plane is a ticket and some ID (and for overseas, a passport). We’ve made plane travel so easy – and so safe – that people consider it like getting on a bus. They don’t worry about safety when they get on a bus – nor do they worry about it when they get on a plane – but they should. They don’t listen to the safety briefings – they read a book or the paper.

I won’t get into the sensationalist aspect of these headlines – the use of scary words, the general stupidity of the journalists involved – even though there is an entire post in that. What I will say is that the press are missing a chance to genuinely educate people on this important topic. So we have to do it ourselves. And you can help by linking to this (and the other two posts) to educate your readers. You can also stumble this post and the two others. Just think – you might save a life – or you might save someone from panic if they do ever find themselves in this kind of situation.

plane safety

All About FTP.

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

When we organise webspace for someone, we offer them the option of FTP access. Many people who I’ve offered it to did not know what it was or how to use it. So I asked Sephy to take a moment and write one of his great how to information posts. Sephy has a knack of taking something scary and changing it to something you can understand, so if you are one of the people we are hosting a site for you will want to read his post.

How-to: Upload files using FTP

Resizing Images

Image Resizing Made Simple – in case you missed Sephy’s explanation of how to easily resize images.

how to guides, Wordpress Training Wheels

Basic HTML For Bloggers November – Tech Tuesday

8 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Every Tuesday in November I am showing you how to do one simple thing with HTML. Today it is how to put in a little line break. Like this –

The HTML code to do the line above looks like this –

Horizontal Rule

HR means Horizontal Rule – rule a horizontal line. ;) It really is that simple. But you can make it more complex if you want to. You can add a few things to it in order to make it look different, be shorter, be one dimensional. Here’s some of the extra codes you can use.

No Shade


NOSHADE means to be flat and one dimensional.

Size


Size obviously relates to the height of your horizontal rule. You can easily change the size of your horizontal rule by simply adding size=X – X being the number you want.

Width


There are two ways you can choose what width you want. Pixel size and percentage. I suggest to stick with percentage for the most part because it will automatically adjust itself accordingly.

Align


You cannot use align without using width. Center is probably the one you would use most. If you use width you may find that the HR centers itself automatically.

Color


So there you have it. The Horizontal Rule. Try one out in a post today!

Further Reading –

Some HTML Tips & Tricks here

If you know nothing about HTML, this is where you start
Getting Started Tutorial
Learn Basic HTML For Your Website
Web Safe Color Chart
Non-dithering colors
How to Style an Unordered List with CSS

HTML Reference And Learning Websites –

HTML Code Tutorial
HTML Help
HTML Tutorials At W3
HTML Goodies
HTML Dog
Learn HTML And CSS

blogging tips, html, tuesday think tank

NaNoWriMo – I Did Not Expect This.

11 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

So, when I signed up to do this crazy NaNoWriMo thing, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. I just had this story idea in my head and it’s been there for a while now – I thought I should try getting it out. So I made the commitment to do it.

You know all that negative self talk you get in your head, like “You can’t write, what are you thinking, doing this” “You won’t be any good at this. You should give up before you start” etc. I thought I had done a lot of work in shutting those negative voices up but NaNoWriMo brought them out by the dozen.

The first day I wasn’t prepared. I hadn’t installed any kind of word processing program on the computer. The Other Half had gone to work and I couldn’t seem to find an easy way of downloading the latest version of Open Office. It was torrent this, torrent that. I just wanted the darn file like a normal person. I’ve never understood torrent. By the time he got home I’d managed to find somewhere to download the file I needed and I got it installed, but I was tired from a long day. I thought – tomorrow is still November 1 in many parts of the world. I’ll get up in the morning and get a fresh start on it, and I’ll write 2 days worth. It’s 1667 words a day, apparently. I wrote it on my to do list.

The next morning I woke up, got the other half out the door fed and clothed, and arrived in here ready to write. And write I did. It all came spilling out, so easily. They tell you not to edit and I haven’t, I am just writing the story. 3398 words tumbled onto the page – and two hours vanished. I woke up at the end of it sort of like waking up from a daydream. Have you ever read the Stephen King book Misery? The writer in the story talks about falling into the hole in the page and that is exactly what happened.

I ended up being happy I missed day one, because it was easier to write that part of the story in one sitting. Now the basis is there. A beginning is made. The hardest part is over – the hardest part for me at least which was starting the story.

So I got up today and The Other Half is having a day off. I thought this would get in the way of my writing but I found out that the story has a life of its own. About an hour later there were suddenly 5176 words. And the story had made me emotional. And a character appeared who I had never imagined being a big part of the plot. Again I woke up like out of a daydream.

I have no idea whether it is any good or not, and when the month is over I will want to give it to someone like Cugat who can read it and tell me yeah it stinks, or actually this is quite good. I can trust him to tell me the truth. :) Unvarnished and unbiased.
I never thought I would enjoy writing anything more than a blog post, but I am loving it. I remember other bloggers who said they wanted to write but they didn’t think they’d be any good at it. All I can say to you is – you will never know unless you try. Give it a go – you might be surprised like I have been.

I have a vague idea of where the plot is going, but this thing seems to have other ideas. We’ll see. All I know is it feels ok. Better than ok, to be honest. It feels fantastic. Those negative voices have shut up for now. I’m sure they’ll be back, but I have news for them and it is all bad. I’m not listening. I’m giving this a go.

I am sure days will arrive when I don’t feel like writing. I have to push myself to sit down and do it anyway. I might not feel like writing but the story wants to be told. I am just the typist at this point.

challenges, writing tips

The Truth About Blog Stats Revealed

10 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

A few weeks ago in Tech Tuesday we talked about site meters and stat counters for your blog and I mentioned how no blogger should be relying on these tools to accurately track their traffic.

Since moving to WordPress, I have been able to keep an eye on three statcounters and I decided to do a little experiment. One of these statcounters is on the server itself. It is a true and accurate reflection of the traffic to this site because it tracks all *requests* to the server itself and is not affected by page load, by someone hitting stop before the counters can load etc.

A Halloween Surprise.

The real stats are about as scary as the average Halloween costume because it shows just how many visits are NOT being tracked by the other trackers. If you are not able to use a tracker on the server where your blog is, you could be missing out on knowing about over 50% of your traffic.

An Experiment In Page Location.

When I switched over I decided to try a little experiment. Statcounter is located right at the top of one of the sidebars – it is the little blue number you can see just under over 60,000 visits. Pmetrics is located in the footer of the page – at the bottom and right at the end of the page load. The results show that location can affect the stats you see.

The Results.. Drumroll Please..

The following graphic represents the traffic for one full week here on the blog – the exact same amount of time on each tracker.
Stats Graphic

What Does That Mean?

If you have your statcounter at the top of your sidebar you may be seeing approximately 60% of your traffic.

If you have your statcounter in the footer of your page you may be seeing approximately 40% of your traffic.

Do Not Rely On Your Site Meter.

As I said in my previous post on site meters – if you define your worth as a blogger in how many people visit your site and you are relying on these free tracking tools, you are setting yourself up for heart break. For no good reason. Site Meters should only be used as a guide to the general traffic on your blog, and not as the bible of internet usage or any kind of measure of how many people are reading you.

Previous Tech Tuesday Think Tanks –

Over To You –

What do you think of the results of my experiment? Have you ever done one yourself and if so, how did that turn out?

tuesday think tank

All About Skype – Tech Tuesday

7 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Sephy’s post today tells you about how to install Skype – I’m going to talk about what you might want to use it for. Skype is brilliant and there is so much you can do with it, I highly recommend it – and here’s why.

Free Stuff –

I’m going to divide this post into things you can do for free – there is a lot of those – and things you have to pay for.

Text Chats – One On One –

You can chat via text to one other person using skype, 24/7, for free.

Text Chats – With A Group –

You can create a group chat, which can have up to 100 participants. So basically I could start a group chat, and then add anyone I had as a contact on my skype list. Group chats can go on 24/7 for the foreseeable future. When you go offline, all the messages you miss arrive as a surprise when you log back in the next time.

We used group chats a lot in the early days of scam victim support and it was wonderful – there was always someone else around who could help you if you needed assistance. This is a brilliant feature. It might not be so handy for bloggers, because our blogs are how we keep in touch. However it could be great for people who are a bit lonely and want to chat to someone.

Other Features –

Send Files To Your Contacts –

Sephy and I use this all the time to send photos – spreadsheets – text files – virtually any kind of file can be sent via Skype.

Send Contacts To Other Contacts –

Say that one of you got skype and added me as your first contact. With a few mouse clicks I can send you other contacts from my list of contacts – thus expanding your contact list.

Play Games –

I’ve never used this feature but apparently it is great fun. They have 18 different games to choose from like Chess, Hangman, Tic-tac-toe and Sudoku.

But Wait, There’s More!

With every update more and more features are added. I have only scratched the surface of what you can do – they now have call centre software (great for scammers who want to call me!), team collaboration additions where you can have a whiteboard everyone can write on, the ability to work on documents together, translation abilities, there’s even the ability to add a “lie detector” – though I’m not sure how well it works, I’ve never used it. All of that is 100% free.

Calls –

Call Another Computer Using Skype –

I am in Australia. Sephy is in the USA. If we were calling via normal phone lines we would rarely talk via voice to each other due to the cost. However because we both have Skype, we can call each other anytime for free. Anyone reading this who put Skype onto their computer – you would also be able to call us, and we could call you, for free.

Free Video Calls To Other Computers –

I don’t do this myself, but if you have a webcam you can make free video calls to other Skype users. This is fantastic for families when one parent goes on holidays and wants to keep in touch, for families who have divorced and the kids want to speak face to face to the other parent no matter how far away they are, for long distance relationships, for those of us who have overseas family, there’s so many things this is great for. It’s not just for perverts and slightly creepy people. ;)

Call 1-800 Numbers in the USA –

You can call 1-800, 1-877, 1-866, 1-855 numbers in the USA and Canada 100% for free – from anywhere in the world, anytime. You do not need to have any call credits with Skype to do this. You can download the program and start making free calls right now.

Call toll free Numbers In These Countries –

You can call toll free numbers in Australia, Austria, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, UK and Taiwan as well – absolutely free. Again you don’t need to have any call credits.

Conference Calls –

This is one of the best features of Skype. You can have up to 5 people on a conference call at once – sometimes up to 9 if you have the right kind of computer. It takes a little getting used to when you’re talking with 4 other people but once you get the hang of it this is fantastic.

Join Skypecasts –

This is a new area for me, I’ve never used it. Skypecasts are basically public chats – a few I spotted were language exchange where you can chat and make friends with people wherever they are, a maths tutor skypecast, a lunch time music concert, an alcoholics anonymous skypecast – and if you want to create one all of your own, you can do that for free.

Pay Stuff –

Call Home Phones And Mobiles From Your Computer –

The prices for calls are all available here – they are not too bad for the majority of countries. Especially considering what you would normally pay for long distance calls.

The HUGE advantage of Skype is – your call cannot be traced. The way the Voice Over Internet Protocol works is your call is sent to the nearest “out” point in that country. If someone you are calling sees any number (unlikely, we scambaiters have tested this pretty thoroughly), it would be the number of the out point. They would never know you aren’t using a real phone. Well, maybe some people won’t think that is an advantage but we scambaiters sure loved it. ;)

Conference Calls –

Remember the free conference call option? You can combine that with one or more outgoing calls. We’ve used this a LOT with scambaiting – one of the most fun things is to call two scammers and then let them speak to each other – a fun game of “who is on de line” “hello” “why did you call me” “I didn’t call you, you called me” is generally the result. We have also called scammers with four scambaiters on the line and each played various characters during the call.

You might use it to conference family members who have skype with family members who do not, or friends who are overseas and have skype with friends who are close to you without skype.

Skype-In –

You can get a telephone number for people to call you on your computer. Again the benefits of this can be huge. People don’t know where you are in the world. You can choose a number in – Australia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States. You get voicemail free with Skype In.

The price of Skype In seems to have gone up since I last bought mine. It’s now 15 euro for 3 months, or 50 euro for 12 months. However if you have relatives or friends in any of those countries above you can get a telephone number where it would be a local call for them to ring you. That is brilliant.

Skype Pro

This is a new option – a low monthly fee for quite a lot of features but they vary per country. Check your country here

You’re In Control

The way payment works is you choose to add credit in small chunks. If you run out of credit it is your choice whether or not to add more. You can pay with Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, Diners, Moneybookers or you can choose a regular bank transfer option if you want to purchase credit regularly. I have used Skype for over two years now – it has always been safe and secure.

If You Want It Now..

Read Sephy’s post for info on how to download Skype, install Skype, and use Skype – Skype – A phenomenal tool for communication. For more information on Skype, you can visit their homepage.

internet, tuesday think tank

Time Management – Tuesday Think Tank

20 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Time goes by – so quickly. Many of us are disorganised people who get distracted by shiny things and lose a couple of hours seemingly in the blink of an eye. Combine that with the ability to access the internet and you can lose half a day just surfing around, reading blogs and looking at photographs. Recently I decided it was time to take my time into my own hands. I asked myself how can I combat this? I did all the hard work, and now I’m going to tell you what has worked for me.

The Daily Planner –

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I spoke about the daily planner before, but this is the number one thing which has changed my life. I treat it like the old Microsoft slogan – Where do you want to go today? I write down all the things I would like to get done during my day onto the daily planner. I give them a priority – A, B or C. When I have finished that task, I put big ticks on either side of it. There is something so satisfying to me about finishing a task and ticking it off my list.

Oops, I Ran Out Of Time –

timedayplan

Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day. I was putting these long to do lists in front of myself and not getting everything done by the end of the day. Sometimes a task takes a LOT longer than you expected. For example, installing wordpress plugins – I thought it would take 1 hour. It took 5 hours.

Permission Granted –

timedayplan11

One of the most discouraging things about setting yourself goals and tasks is not achieving them. It is one reason people simply give up and quit. There were a few days when I beat myself up about not finishing everything on the list. I almost wanted to quit because of it. In the end, I had to give myself permission to draw an arrow through any of the items on my to-do list and then add it to tomorrow’s to do list. As long as I have done my best each day I’m happy.

The Number One Rule –

desk

You will want to write this one down. “Do It Now”.

It sounds simple but it is not so simple to achieve this in reality. You have to treat it like a religion. You have to chant it like a mantra. You have to change your thinking from “I can do that later” to “I’ll do it now”.

Everything Has A Home –

place

As I wrote in my Snoskred Is Getting Organised article, I don’t put things back where they belong. One of the reasons I had trouble with this was – things did not have a specific home. My new office is a lot more organised. I have a set of drawers with labels on them so that I know where things live. I also have a lot more bookshelf space for my aromatherapy oils, for my incense, for my cosmetics and lip balms.

Keep It Bare –

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On my desk, there are only essential work related things now. I used to have a lot of personal items on my desk. I’m finding new homes for them because I recognise I could often zone out while looking at them. That is because I am attracted to shiny, sparkly things. If I see something shiny and sparkly it can make all rational thought vanish from my mind. That’s a good thing – and ok in the right place. The right place for that is NOT my work desk. ;)

Handle It Once –

When you have something in your hand and you are considering putting it down, make sure you put it into the place it is going to live for good. I was one of those people who would put things down and not be able to find them again. Having a home for everything, and being disciplined about putting things back can fix this.

Devotion –

You might choose to devote 5-10 minutes at the end of the day making sure everything is where it lives, or you can choose to “do it now”. I prefer to do it now and devote that 5 minutes at the end of the day to a quick clean of my desk.

Recognise Daily Tasks –

checklist

There are some things I need to do every day. I like to tick them off a daily check list. At the old house there was a week where I was on a roll and got those things done every single day. Since moving here I have got out of the habit a little bit. It annoys me – especially getting out of the habit of replying to the comments daily. So I am putting this back on my to do list and I will be re-creating the list as I have more daily tasks now.

Plan –

Sephy wrote about Google Calendar for his Tuesday Think Tank. Right now I’m a little annoyed at Google but this calendar may be the best thing since sliced bread for me. Perhaps I might look for a version which has nothing to do with Google at all, just because I do not want to become too reliant on them. In the meantime, I am planning my blog with Google Calendar. Planning is a choice you can make, if you want to.

What do you mean, plan?

Here was the plan for last week.

Sun Sep 30 – Weekly Wrap Up
Mon Oct 1 – Emily’s Questions
Tue Oct 2 – Think Tank – HTML
Wed Oct 3 – Hump Day Hmmm
Thu Oct 4 – CD Review – Madonna Confessions
Fri Oct 5 – Out Of Your Niche – Thomas
Sat Oct 6 – Australians Let Us All Waste Water
Sun Oct 7 – Weekly Wrap UP

6 out of 7 ended up exactly as I planned them. I wrote all the articles, this means I have an extra article left over which I can re-schedule.

Why Plan?

  1. You can pre-write your blog posts when you’re having a writing “fit”.
  2. You know where you’re going, it’s the “Where do you want to go today” extended version.
  3. You won’t have a day where you don’t know what to write about if you have planned a topic in advance.

Why Pre-Write?

The simple fact is, there are times when you are in the mood for writing and the words come out fast and lovely. There are times when you are NOT in the mood for writing at all. The Search Engines are more “loyal” (they come back more often) to sites that post new content frequently. That is one reason I have the “Thought For Today” post. It’s not just because I take good photos and like looking for relevant quotes. There is method to my madness.

WordPress Will Change My Life –

The major reason I have switched to WordPress is the “publish in advance” feature. I can go in and write a months worth of “thought for today” posts in one sitting (this will take me an hour or so) and set them to automatically publish at the same time each day – and then forget it. That is an excellent use of my time. ;)

Try It Out With NaBloPoMo –

November is National Blog Posting Month. You can sign up for NaBloPoMo which is a month of posting every day – but rather than going into it without a plan, sit down and think how you are going to post every day for 30 days. Use a paper calendar or Google Calendar and plan your month of November well in advance. Try planning your blog and see if it works for you.

Spontaneous People –

Some people prefer not to plan. That is also a valid choice. When it comes to blogging it may be the wrong choice. Your readers are looking for –

  • reliability
  • good content
  • positivity
  • ideas
  • something unique

The best way you can give that to them is to have a plan. If your plan is positive where will you fit in a negative, spur of the moment post that loses you readers? You can’t. We have ALL done that. We have ALL posted something and regretted it later. You can choose to stop doing it. ;)

Further Reading –

Thoughts On Making Positive Changes – Can You Do It?
Snoskred is Getting Organised – Are You?
Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox

Previously in the Tuesday Think Tank
21st August: RSS
14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog
Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS

28th August: Blog Templates
Blog Design – Open Your Eyes.
Demystifying Blogger Template Editing

4th September: Nofollow
Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!
Say No! to Nofollow

11th September: Site Meters
Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.
Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics

18th September: Technorati
Technorati – Sending Out An SOS
The Ups (and Downs) of Technorati

25th September: Google Reader
Google Reader Can Make Your Life Easier – Here’s How.
Improving your Google Reader Experience

2nd October: HTML
Basic HTML for Bloggers.
Some HTML Tips & Tricks

Over To You –

What are your thoughts on time management?
If you liked this article, don’t forget to give it a stumble. ;)

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