January 2012
7 posts
1 tag
The Ultimate Productivity Blog →
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Toss Productivity Out →
I’m really trying.
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“And let go of your long to-do lists and goal lists. They are a futile attempt to...”
– Leo Babauta, Zen Habits
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“Productivity is for machines. If you can measure it, robots should do it.”
– Kevin Kelly via Patrick Rhone
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Free Time
Most people will tell you the thing they want most is more free time. But they never keep it free once they get it. Work to live.
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All productivity methods tend to ensure efficient completion of unnecessary tasks.
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Most people spend just seconds looking at a billboard. Most people spend just second looking at a website. Wouldn’t it be great if more websites were designed like billboards?
Easy is never easy enough.
December 2011
1 post
2 tags
From this week’s Roderick on the Line:
Merlin: “If you’re talking on the phone at lunch you’re not a powerful person. A powerful person is allowed to eat without doing work.”
John: “Most people’s concept of what a powerful person looks like only goes up so high - to middle management. Most people, the highest they can conceive of is the middle manager,...
September 2011
2 posts
From the Archives: My Interview with Trey Spruance
Yesterday, my all-time favorite band, Faith No More, announced they will perform their album King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime in its entirety during a reunion show in Chile with the album’s original guitar player, Trey Spruance. Trey is better know as the guitar player/songwriter behind Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3 and number of other genius projects. He is the true definition of artist: a...
1 tag
Productiviblah
I think the whole purpose for being more productive is to get to the point where you don’t need to worry about being so productive.
Of course, you could be at that point today, if you decide to be.
August 2011
2 posts
1 tag
“The straightforward solution is to present a first time visitor with the...”
– Seth Godin (part of the reason why my home page is now on Flavors.me)
One Pen Addict to Another
Brad Dowdy (@dowdyism) was kind enough to include me in the lucky circle of writers to receive some samples from JetPens.com. I took my time and put each pen and mechanical pencil through its paces. Real world. From the heat of my car to the classroom to a jangly pocket full of change.
Most did well. One stood out.
I was sold the first time I took the Pilot Hi-Tec out of pocket and scribbled my...
July 2011
1 post
3 tags
VHE Updates
I’ve started a twitter feed for my first book, The Van Halen Encyclopedia, currently being revised for its third edition. Follow @vhencyclopedia for updates, insider info and news on future versions of the book.
June 2011
1 post
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Hypocrisy
Merlin Mann:
Being consistent is WAY less interesting than being yourself. And if you’re not interesting? Good luck with your Big Consistency Project.
This is why I call most things I do around here experiments. I write heated posts on a topic, calm down for a bit and then try the opposite, just to see the other’s guy point of view. If you get too hung up on consistency, you can...
May 2011
1 post
2 tags
My First Web Book
The logical progression of writing on a niche topic these days seems to be: create a blog, establish a following and, if the stars align, write a book. In the spirit of contrarianism and experimentation, I did the opposite with my 1998 book The Van Halen Encylopedia.
The idea was to create individual posts for every entry in the book (around 500) and link them all together in new ways. I’d...
April 2011
6 posts
2 tags
Productivity Starts with a Why
“There is no money, inherently, in being productive.” - Stever Robbins
Perfectly put. If you don’t spend time on why you’re doing something before you dive into your favorite GTD app, you’re only moving more efficiently in the wrong direction.
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“Your latest tweet and comment on Facebook and the most recent blog post -...”
– Gary Vaynerchuk
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What Groupon Can Learn from Itself
A week ago, Patrick Rhone posted about the following copy he found in a Groupon offer he received:
“Sweet teeth turn into butter with the soft crunch of the chocolate croissant ($2.95), and macaroons ($2.25 each) melt the taste buds of sweet seekers without the inclusion of refined sweeteners—whose costly education did not increase their manners.”
Curious, I checked my email and...
2 tags
Drawing a Blank
Business cards are one-size-fits-all affairs, revealing the same information for total strangers and your best customers. Pre-packaged, pre-designed and pre-determined. What a waste of an opportunity to connect.
I’m talking about blank business cards.
Marketers often talk about the greater impact of hand-written materials when compared to printed materials, yet every marketer I’ve...
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Print This Email
From the Wall Street Journal (via Jack Baty):
“Notice: It’s OK to print this email. Paper is a biodegradable, renewable, sustainable product made from trees. Growing and harvesting trees provides jobs for millions of Americans. Working forests are good for the environment and provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Thanks to improved forest management, we...
3 tags
Why Journal?
Dave Caolo, writer/curator of nerdery, prompted me to elaborate on the advantages of journaling for writers, after my review of Day One.
I’ve been writing for some kind of publication for 24 years. I write 8 hours a day professionally and about 1 or 2 hours for pleasure. But I know that if I could squeeze in another hour, I’d be a little better. Journaling is a small part of that 1 or...
March 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Sleep It Off
From guilty pleasure CBS Sunday Morning, Ben Stein makes the case for sleep, quoting University of Chicago Economist Frank Knight:
“Never waste any time you could spend sleeping.”
It makes you calmer, less irritable, less feaful and just plain happier. I’m in.
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Event Photographers
I’ve only really studied and obsessed over landscape photography, so when the chance cropped up to volunteer as an Event Photographer for a charity event, I was apprehensive, but willing.
I have a whole new respect now for the Event Photographer: the endless hours on your feet, the rejection of celebrities, the forceful taking of needed photos of said celebrities, the competition with...
3 tags
Why Books Still Matter
From Seth Godin’s new Domino Project:
This is why books matter. Books, used properly, immerse us in a single idea. Books bring a voice into our head, create a different brain chemistry, open doors to a more powerful lever, a learning that can yes, change us. Dozens (perhaps hundreds) of times in my life, a book has changed my mind. So have some powerful lectures or direct engagements with...
3 tags
Poke the Box by Seth Godin
When Seth Godin released Linchpin, it was the culmination of his life’s work, effectively encapsulating all his previous books and blog posts. I sensed he would spend the next few years expanding upon the thoughts in Linchpin, instead of debuting entirely new works, and that’s essentially what’s he’s doing with his latest book, Poke the Box.
While Linchpin was a broad...
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Day One
A writer writes. Always. Part of the daily ritual (and it must become a ritual) is journaling.
Journaling apps are a dime a dozen and most amount to little more than a crashy everything bucket from a fly-by-night company. None of them have been able to persuade me away from paper…until now.
A new app called Day One has come along with a different take than we’re used to. The whole...
February 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Thirteen Days of Focus
I don’t think focus gets enough attention. It’s the single thing that separates the products and services I care about from those I yawn about.
A few years ago, Kevin Costner made two lower-budget, indie-style movies that were better than any of the big budget movies he’s ever touched. One of them was Open Range; arguably one of the best “guy” movies ever made. The...
Levenger's Things To Do Sheets
In my Back to Paper post, I mentioned I wanted to redesign the Levenger Things To Do template for clarity. Maybe only I care about such things, but if you invest time and money into a company you care about, you should want them to help them constantly improve.
I’m considering making my own products to get these ideas out of my head, but until then, here’s how I’d redesign...
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Back to Paper Follow-Up
A few great posts have been written in response to my Back to Paper, Back to Work post. I admire both the writers, so it was treat to see them hack apart my thinking.
Aaron Mahnke wrote:
A great GTD computer application serves one single purpose in my day-to-day: removing friction. Tools like OmniFocus allow me to quickly push tasks and ideas out of the active portion of my brain and into a...
January 2011
2 posts
The Best Songs of 2010 You May Not Have Heard
“LA Water” - Helmet
Helmet was the East Coast reply to grunge in the 90s. They were grittier, harder, lacked even the slightest bit of hippyness, and they had short hair (a revolutionary thing for a metal band at the time). Their latest album features this gem of a song deriding their current West Coast lives. This song would have been the perfect theme for the show Californication,...
Back to Paper, Back to Work
I recently deleted Things for Mac and Things for iPhone. It wasn’t because of the recent squabbles among productivity nerds about Things vs. Omnifocus. It was because of a book called The Shallows. It’s bringing me back to paper.
If you haven’t heard of the book, it’s a scary summary of the decades of studies that have revealed how hypertext measurably alters pathways in...
November 2010
3 posts
1 tag
“Are you trying to tell me that at some certain age, you stop making good music?...”
– King Buzzo, The Melvins and Fantomas
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“Here’s what life comes down to: not how many years you live, but how many...”
– Adam Carolla’s new book, In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks
The Case Against Personal Blogging
Every now and then I question the wisdom of personal (or generalized) blogging. Sure, back in the 90s, you could derive a lot of benefit from the practice, because so few people were doing it. Jason Kottke immediately springs to mind as the general-topic blogger everyone wanted to emulate.
This past decade, personal blogging became about building a personal brand. It meant putting yourself out...
October 2010
1 post
3 tags
“Information overload…that’s not the issue. If it was, you’d...”
– David Allen
September 2010
6 posts
1 tag
“It doesn’t really matter what you look like. There’s nothing sexier...”
– John C. Reilly
2 tags
“Easy is not easy enough. I always forget that. It should be a rule that every...”
– John S. Rhodes
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Selling to Strangers or Writing for Friends
Here’s a snippet from copywriting guru Nick Usborne’s latest article, posted earlier today, titled, “Optimize web content for your readers, and the rest will follow. Hmmm…not always.”
A few days ago I tweeted the link to one of my articles: Should you optimize that web page for the search engines, or for social media?
Someone tweeted back with this message: Neither....
People You Need to Know: Part 1
Instead of the typical Follow Friday thing that Twitterites do, I find that the people who really deserve to be followed, really deserve more than 140 characters.
For the first installment, I’ve randomly chosen 3 of these people - mostly because I only had a few minutes of free time:
Patrick Rhone: I discovered Patrick’s main blog a long while ago and returned to it every so often,...
2 tags
“I have either to learn or have fun when I’m working. That’s my only guideline....”
– Stephen Shore (via A Photo Editor)
August 2010
2 posts
1 tag
“If you’re a writer, you don’t want to be one of these people who...”
– Andy Inhatko (via Mac Power Users)
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April 2010
1 post
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Evernote Review (1 Year Later)
A year ago there was nothing hotter than Evernote, the application touted as “your external brain.” I had high hopes. A long list of writers, podcasters and productivity buffs heralded it as the answer to information overload.
I played with it for a few months, then paid for the premium version. I shoved all my notes and documents in it. I listened to their podcast. I subscribed to...
March 2010
1 post
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Cutting the Chord
I posted to Twitter a few months ago about how I was cancelling digital cable and going Roku. So, of course, as in all Twitter posts, it led to an interview with US News and World Report.
From this month’s issue (March 2010), page 36:
A variety of Blu-ray players, flat-panel TVs, and other boxes such as Apple TV also can stream Web video to the living room, “but Roku is the...
January 2010
1 post
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A Lesser Photographer Launches
The first of my new projects to launch this year, A Lesser Photographer is a site for minimalist photographers. Actually, it’s more about producing the best possible results from the least of equipment. The web has become cluttered with sites preaching to photographers about bigger and badder gear to perform mostly unnecessary and unoriginal tasks for the typical photographer. An...
December 2009
1 post
2 tags
Simplicity Vs. Clarity
Occasionally, I try to explain the benefits of clarity over simplicity to designers and writers. I mostly get blank stares. So, to better illustrate, imagine you need to know what time it is.
This is simplicity:
And this is clarity:
And this is what most web designers and writers would offer as a solution:
September 2009
1 post
2 tags
Music Press Report Interview
I did an interview a few days ago about the demise of the Music Press Report and plans for the future. It’s now up at Music As Follows. The interviewer’s primary language is Spanish, so a little is lost in the translation. One question was about why I closed it down:
It was out of pure frustration. Music journalism has always been treated as a lower class form of journalism. The...
August 2009
2 posts
2 tags
Summer in Chicago
We decided this year on a summer staycation. We’ve never been tourists in our own city (Chicago) before, so we decided to visit all the spots that are the most heavily visited and photographed in city. We ate at all the restaurants that visitors are told are the best. We stopped at all the places Ferris did. We even hit some of the places that tourists believe locals visit.
It was an...
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Better Words
Some things have already been said far better than we’re saying them now.
Leverage = use
Price-point = price
Transparency = honesty