Now that I've fully recovered from SXSW, it's high time I start cleaning up.  The schwag mountain spilled over and caused some damage but I got it under control.  So now it's time to spring clean my workflow and social media usage.  I subscribe to this, follow that, or just end up trying to fill up big holes in my life with tiny sand distractions that it gets way too overwhelming, as I'm sure others can identify.  Once I realize that, then I know it's time to pare down my workflow and regroup.  It's not a perfect system, but when it comes time for a change I'm ready to make it.  So how am I doing this?  Glad you asked.

First off, Twitter, it's time I change my relationship with you.  You see, I enjoy trying to follow as many tweeps as I can to match some of the other D-Grade web celebs follow counts, but it's just not working out.  What happens is a undending stream of garbage and links to articles I already read.  True, you've had lists for a while but I'm sorry I didn't pay attention to you earlier.  That's okay.  I think the change will be made for the better for both of us.  That way, when we have conversations with each other, it can be meaningful.  Here's what's I'm doing.

The dribble will be cut out.  I'm going to use a couple of handy tools like JustUnfollow and Mr. Tweet to cut out the bad and bring in the good.  Most of the time when I tweet, I get no retweets, replies, or direct messages.  Now, part of that is my fault, but another part is the list of followers I have don't match my core values.  So while Tim Bray might stay, Verified Alf is outta here.  Also, if a tweep blasts out multiple links in spurts, I'm unfollowing them and I may even block them.  I will be ruthless so if you get unfollowed don't take it personally.  If you get blocked, then please take it personally.  Especially if you are an SEO Expert or social media marketer.

Because I fell so behind using lists, I will play some catch up to make them more important.  This will be built on the fly and will break out to a set of maybe 10 or 15.  That's about all I can handle.  Then I can check up on certain lists and be able to interject and interact with greater precision.

All of this in the name of meaningful usage.  Most people when they talk about Twitter, they get some kind of value of messaging people.  I don't nearly get as much bounce back as they do.  Even my girlfriend who recently converted is getting better usage than me.  So, I will cut down and build some lists that I can follow easier which will enable me to tweet more effectively.  Included in that effectiveness will be more personalized messages from my link tweets.

On to Google Reader.  Whatever gets missed in Twitter ends up in the RSS catcher.  So whenever I read blogs or hear suggestions of sites from others, I end up subscribing to more and more RSS feeds.  Fortunately with Reader's Trends section, I can see what I use on a more frequent basis and cut back on the feeds that I barely touch.  This again hits at matching my feeds to my core values.  It's easy to lose focus when I spread myself around so I need to keep myself in focus and in check.  It happens to all of us so it's always great to go back every once in a while and clean things up.

Next up, the desktop.  My laptop rocks the house.  It's a beefy Sony Vaio that already paid for itself many times over.  I can run so many things at once, it's a multitasker's dream.  The problem is that I usually have Pidgin and Tweetdeck up going and flowing.  It's incredibly easy to glance left or right on my screen to see what's coming and get distracted.  So what I will be doing is turning them off.  For some it's easy, but I have always had my instant messenger open in more than one location at all times since college.  That's 10 years.  So it will be a huge change.  I'm thinking that when it's time for a break, the starting and stopping of these programs will be a great physical switch.

It's amazingly easy to get distracted and let projects clutter up your mental space.  At least once a year, we need to clean it all up.  Much like our physical space, the junk in your mental space will make it harder to move around quickly and get projects done.  I encourage people to try these methods out to help clean up all mental junk.

The '@todo' identifier states one thing clearly:  The following information is what's left or what's next to do.  It can be compared to the @NextAction context in GTD.  Once that action is completed, there may be another one next and subsequently a '@todo' identifier with that information will be listed.  The difference between that and GTD is that it's left in the code.  But, with a good IDE or a simple awk command, you can compile the list of @todo's for a project thus returning it to a GTD like state.

I'm the kind of person who's insane attention to detail will leave me always uncovering a rock or looking at a problem from all perspectives.  Some people call this being a pefectionist.  One of the major problems with being a perefectionist is that they will refine and tweak themselves into never getting anything done.  Analysis through paralysis is a common phrase for the problem.   And yes, I have that problem.

As some of you may know, a couple of years ago I hit rock bottom in paralysis and have somehow climbed my way step by step by implementing the GTD mehtod (as well as making other life changes).  The perfectionist in me still lives.  The initial mind dump and inbox organization took me about 3 days.  One of the hardest things to do while implementing the methodology was not being sure I was doing it right.  The common voice of the perfectionist.

So I'm slowly learning ot become an almost-perfectionist.  I still do my tweaks and twinges, but set a time limit before sending the product off.  Whenever I do so, there's that voice that doubts whether or not I've done right.  Even when I use a time limit, it reaches out and pulls me down to make sure I double check and triple check everything.  It's going to be with me forever.

Last month, an 'ah-ha' moment came.  And no I'm not talking about jumping up and singing 'Take on Me.'   What I'm talking about is when I started brushing up on PHPDoc, I realized that the '@todo' was the trademark for the perfectionist.  I can roll some code out but appease the perefectionist in me with the simple 5 letter incantonation.  The code is out and I can always come back to it to tweak and twinge.

I've accepted the fact that I will never be happy with my work.  I've also accepted that I will always find something wrong with it and attempt to fix it on the spot.  But with the '@todo' action I can drop the noted fix and move on.  I feel much more relieved and am producing more now that I've left @todo's not only in my code, but also in my other projects, my friends, my family, and my life.

Needless to say, the holidays brought me some changes this year on both the personal and professional side.  A couple of years ago I implemented the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology to help account for changes in my life and to influence the direction it was going.  I recently had the opportunity to start a fresh GTD setup at the office.  Here are the steps:

1. Download Thunderbird 3 Beta 1



2. Setup the mail account.  Mine was an IMAP implementation so access to it via a webmail interface was kept in place.



3. Download and install Lightning Daily Updater.  The current stable version is for Thunderbird version 2.  This Add On for Thunderbird grabs the nightly, version 3 compatible calendar extension.
4. Be sure to enable the Google Calendar Provider in the options for the updater.  This was used to sync up office specific events to my main Google Calendar.



5. Run the updater and install both Lightning and the GCal provider



6. Add 3 local calendars for the main GTD contexts: @NextActions, @SomedayMaybe, @WaitingFor
7. Setup main calendar to sync with external Google calendar, using the private XML url from your calendar's settings.



8. Setup the projects context as Categories in the Lightning Preferences

This is a little bit different than what I had before.  I'm taking the calendar/task approach much differently.  Before I used Horde's implementation of their organizational modules to manage an action and an action that was time sensitive.  With Thunderbird and Lightning, the idea of a task is strongly coupled with a calendar item.  So I had to create the separate local calendars to give a place for tasks to land.  This turns out great because now I can create new contexts in the future as separate calendar types.

So far the implementation is going well.  I more times than not funnel all tasks Thunderbird's way but have caught myself once or twice avoiding the email client.  The next step for me is to explore what the benefit for me in syncrhonizing this setup with my Gmail/RememeberTheMilk system for my main GTD implementation.  It's still a little early, but if I feel the need to jump ship, I'll let you know.

Update 6/5/09: Changed the download link for Thunderbid beta.