Today’s post was written by Dion Baker.  He is a writer for The Intangible Wealth and a respected song writer, poet, and visual artist.  And he also shares my love of ants.  – Brad

Today I went to the craft store with my wife to return some items we recently purchased. While she was being helped at the register, I decided to venture off into the store to see what else they had in stock. Not too far from the register, I saw several items on the clearance shelves. I perused through the shelves to see if there was anything of interest; not much. The mix of colorful ribbon and Spiderman bookmarks on sale didn’t quite hold my attention. I continued checking out the products to my right and guess what I found? A small pile of children’s books! As I walked toward the books there was a small book at the top titled, “The Ant and the Grasshopper”. Now, I’m excited…

So I picked up the book and started reading.

Here’s the synopsis of the story. There was the Grasshopper, the Ant, and other insects. It was the summertime and the Grasshopper was always being lazy, idle, and playful with his time. The weather was pleasant and he felt he should enjoy it, so he chose to be lazy and not work. But each time he saw another insect they weren’t being lazy, they were working. When he saw the Ant she was carrying food for the winter. He saw the Bee and he had yellow pollen all over his feet from toiling in flower nectar. He saw the Spider and she was threading her web. The Grasshopper was surprised that they were working while the weather was so beautiful. So he told them, “What are you doing? It’s summertime! Put down the work and have fun!” But they all said, “No, no, Grasshopper. We need to work and gather food for the winter! And you need to be gathering food for the winter too!” But the Grasshopper kept playing and never took heed to their advice.

And then the inevitable happened; winter came.

The snow piled and the wind blew and the Grasshopper was left hungry in the frigid cold. He was so cold and hungry that he asked the Ant for shelter and food. The Ant was appalled at the Grasshopper knowing that he spent his summer days in laziness and didn’t heed their advice to work. So the Ant told him:

“If you play all summer, you’ll go hungry all winter”

Summer represents the times that things are easier and winter represents when things are more difficult. Each of these is only a temporary season that comes and goes during our lives. Summer doesn’t last forever and winter is inevitable. When things are easier for us that is the best moment to prepare for the moments they will not be.  Therefore, the best time to ease our sickness (winter) is by preparing ourselves when we are more healthy (summer); the best time to prepare ourselves for difficult financial times (winter) is by saving money when we do have money (summer). The perfect time to gather what we need is during the time we don’t need it.

The Grasshopper didn’t bother gathering his food during the summer. Consequence: when the winter came, he had nothing to eat and was very cold. Why did he end up like that? He spent his days of vitality – when he had the most time and conditions were most comfortable – to indulge in laziness.  We should learn from him, but we should not be like him. Instead, we need to follow the model of the other insects. How so?

Invest our time in accumulating resources of value.

If we do that, the winters won’t feel as cold and hunger won’t trouble as much or at all. As the summer draws to a close, we are reminded that comfortableness is temporary and difficulties are inevitable. I challenge you to reflect upon your last 90 days and think about yourself in terms of your activity. Have you been the Grasshopper or the Ant?

- by Dion Baker from Intangible Wealth

The new TaskBlaze beta is here!

Taskblaze features

What is TaskBlaze?

TaskBlaze is simply the easiest task timer and tracker you’ve ever used.  Plus, it’s the most precise and effective.  It automatically updates your Outlook or Google calendar with the exact time you spent on your task.

So accounting for your time, being more effective, billing, making sure you are spending your time wisely don’t require a MS Project course, just download TaskBlaze 2009 Beta .

Just imagine how easy it is to give a time report to a client.  Think of all the wasted time you can free up.  And picture your jealous partner thinking you are having an affair, all she has to do is look at your calendar and know you were Blazing your time on writing a cost/benefit report – TaskBlaze prevents DIVORCE! Ok, maybe not, but it is still pretty nifty.

Get Started With 2 Simple Steps

There are two simple steps to use it:

1. Enter a name for your task.
2. Hit the Start button

…Thank you and good night!!

– But wait, there’s more –

Use TweetBlaze® to Send Your Tasks to Twitter

Have you ever completed a task and thought a week later “I should have posted that to Twitter”?  Now you don’t have to worry about forgetting.  TaskBlaze will post your tasks to Twitter automatically utilizing a highly classified function I like to call TweetBlaze®.  Start a task and bam, all your friends will know you are working – when before they thought you were just goofing off.

Warning: TweetBlaze® is for external use only.  Do not swallow.

More TaskBlaze Goodness

But you needn’t stop at just naming your task.  You can also set a category.  Good for tracking home projects too.

Plus, creative people can now make their own skins to customize TaskBlaze and make it all your own.

Simple skinning guide – I tried to make skinning easy – especially for people like me who feel using Photoshop is like driving to work every day in a paddleboat.

Here’s a method for creating a skin that is so simple a 27 year old grad student could do it.

1. Find the TaskBlaze folder on your desktop computer (normally C:\Program Files\TaskBlaze)
2. Open the Skins folder
3. Create a new folder with a skin name you like (i.e. Tribute to Brad)
4. Copy and paste the graphics from an existing skin folder to your new folder.
5. Use MS Paint, Adobe Photoshop or your preferred tool to edit the graphics in your skin folder to reflect your own style and individuality.
6. Launch TaskBlaze, go into settings and choose your new skinny-skin-skin.

Sharing and Showing Off

Think you can make a better skin than me?

Well, you’d have to be blind and missing both hands (AND FEET) not to be able to – but that’s not the point.  If you’ve got a great skin to share, please do.  You can .zip it up and email it to me bradisaac at gmail.com. If it’s good I’ll be happy to post it and link to your site until I can get a skins repository set up.

Download TaskBlaze 2009 Beta for Windows

Send Me Your Feedback about the TaskBlaze Beta

As this a Beta version of TaskBlaze your comments are appreciated and will make it better.  Feel free to email me or better post them in the comments below.  I’ll try to resolve them as quickly as possible.

The good news is I’ve finally got an auto updater working so if I post a fix or release you can get it immediately.

Many people love TaskBlaze.  But admittedly, there are some headaches.  Those who use the old Beta version know it’s got some bugs.  Although it looks simple, there’s a lot of coding that went into building it.

 
Default Skin

Well, I’ve been burning the midnight oil on the latest version.  It fixes a lot of bugs and introduces new features too.  I am tidying up a few things and then will post a beta in a few days.

Here’s a sneak peek of what’s to come:

1. Post what you are doing to Twitter – Feeling social?  You can now Tweet what you are doing via TaskBlaze!  When you start a new task, your you can set it so your task-tweet automatically gets posted to Twitter.   Integration with Facebook and other services on the way.
2. New Timer Engine – I rebuilt the timing engine so it is much more reliable, easier to understand, and more bulletproof.
3. Improved skinning – Those of you who like customizing TaskBlaze can now go hog wild.  Skinning is now “folder based.”  That means pop your skin into a folder and pick it from a dropdown.  You can have as many different skins as you want.

   

   Left4Dead Smoker Skin

4. No more textbox clutter – Want to see your skin?  The Textboxes now hide to display your task, tags and other relevant info.
5. Font color picker – Choose the color of the fonts displayed in Taskblaze.
6. 30 Second Throbber -  What’s a throbber?  In the case of TaskBlaze, it is a ‘blink’ of your main button to catch your attention and remind you to stay on task.  Many wanted this feature.  It’s in the new beta.
7. Display optimized for older PCs – There was a display headache with older PCs where Taskblaze would look funky.  This newly optimized display works for those PCs.
8. Send to a friend – Many of you indicated you wanted an easier way to share the pleasures of TaskBlaze.  Now with the click of a button, TaskBlaze will create you an email that you can customize and send the download link to your friends.

 
Blueblazin’ Skin

I am especially thrilled with the Twitter posting abilities of the new version.  Where Twitter asks “What are you doing now”.  With TaskBlaze you can tell people really what you are doing and track it at the same time.  

So check the blog in a few days and I’ll have a new Beta ready for download.

I am curious to see how many of you do set New Years Resolutions…

If you feel like sharing why you do or do not set resolutions, post in the comments below. You can also post your resolutions (if any) there too.

Do you get a lot of ideas, but forget them before you can write them down? Well my friend, if you aren’t using Jott, you should be.

What is Jott?

Jott is a service you call and leave voice note, set an appointment, send an email or you can even do a short blog post! The great thing about it is you don’t get back your voice… Jott transcribes your voice into readable text.

That means, you can blast out a quick email you forgot to write at the office without having to find a computer or fumble with text entry on your phone. You can record an idea when you don’t feel like writing or typing.

For longer writing sprees, you might want to check out my post at Lifehacker about Jotting into Evernote.

Ok, Jott is cool, but what use is it?

For the past few months, I’ve been using it (almost daily) to capture ideas that occur to me. You see, I get a right many ideas while I am driving my car. While driving, writing on a notepad or PDA could be deadly. Instead, I whip out my phone and call Jott and send a note to myself. If I need a reminder, I Jott directly into my Google Calendar. Jott has a built in SMS reminder system as well so it can notify you in that way too. But I prefer calendar reminders.

Other creative things I’ve done with Jott:

• Jotted to my Twitter feed
• Set ToDos and calendar entries with reminders
• Sent an email to friends
• Outlined blog posts
• Brainstormed headline ideas for ads

How can I listen to this site on my cell phone?

This morning, I was spending some time updating my Jott address book and clearing out some of the outdated notes when I noticed an icon called Jott Feeds.

Jott Feeds lets you call Jott and listen to your favorite web sites on your cell phone. Amazing! I immediately added this site to one of the feeds in the Jott lineup.

Here’s how to listen to this site on your phone:

Step 1. Click the button below to add this site to your feeds list:

Step 2: You will see a screen that says add a feed. I recommend you name it Persistence Unlimited for clarity. But you can name it what you want. Just don’t call it “I hereby declare my allegiance to Persistence Unlimited” because it’s too long, weird and frankly a little creepy.

Step 3: Call Jott Call (866) JOTT-123 and say “Jott Feeds” then say “Persistence Unlimited”

That’s it!

I was amazed at how well the service works when I tested it. I called up and listened to the first post. The voice was clear and easy to understand. She muddied a few words here and there, but you tend to understand anyway.

So I recommend you give it a try. I’d love to hear your feedback.

What do you think of the new Jott feed service – especially with regards to this blog? Do you use Jott for other interesting purposes? If so, please share in the comments below. Thanks!!

There’s just something about my secret love of fine writing pens I really can’t explain.

The right pen feels comfortable to hold.  The ink flows freely.  Writing feels smooth and effortless.  The words come a little easier they hit the paper .

The wrong pen, however, is a headache.    It’s true of my Montblanc Meisterstück fountain pen.  This is one of the crown jewels of the pen world, but I can barely stand to use it.  It’s scratchy, inkflow is not consistent and writing feels like it is about 2 minutes behind my thought process.  So my pen of choice for the past 2 years is the Fisher Space pen (read my review here).  I carry it everywhere and use it every day.

With that said, I think pens can be art.  The pen’s craftsmanship can be a miniature sculpture that adorns your desk or shirt pocket.  While the Space Pen writes like a M.F.(censored) tank, it doesn’t attract the attention of the Meisterstück.  Although I rarely carry it, when I do, the Meisterstück always attracts questions as to it’s writing quality and prestige.  Is it like writing with an angel guiding your hand?   Yeah!  I quickly inform onlookers.  It’s like writing with the angel of death. 

Of course, I care less appearance and more about function.

Be that as it may, Montblanc’s latest Skeleton pen attracts me from the pure art perspective.   They are only making 333 for collectors.  And it’s anticipated it will go for between $20,000 to $30,000, so I will be opting out.  It’s fun to look at though…

The Skeleton 333 is a skeleton pen featuring a transparent barrel with a platinum plated white gold latice skeleton. The nib is made of white gold which is plated in rhodium and is had carved whilst the cap features the Montblanc star inlayed out of mother of pearl. Only three hundred and thirty three will be made and will be available exclusively from Montblanc.

via Montblanc Skeleton 333 Limited Edition at Sybarites Thanks for the link B.!!!

Have you ever had a task you were putting off and putting off until you just couldn’t stand it anymore.  Then finally, you start and it takes a whole 10 minutes to do? 

I’m sure we all can relate to this. 

Some tasks are great at creating the illusion of great difficulty.

• The task says “This is going to take forever.”
• The task says “You’re going to hate working on me.”
• The task says “There’s going to be lots of pain involved when you start.”
• The task says “Hope you are ready to be bored because a lot of boredom is coming your way.”

It’s easy to get faked out by tasks like this.  If you let enough time pass, you’ll start to believe what your mind is telling you about the task. 

But the best answer for tasks that speak such nonsense is action.  Action puts a lie to the task’s devious ways. 

• Action says “It’s actually not bad once you get started.”
• Action says “I am more motivated after I get started.”
• Action says “I was putting this off for nothing.”
• Action says “Automatically, I cross the finish line.”

Action requires one basic commitment – a commitment to start. 

Do something, ANYTHING to get started.  Start by cracking open a book, plugging in a cable, unloading one dish from the dishwasher.  All you need do is start, then like magic, action takes over. 

But first you must start.

So…

Start — > NOW!

Give your friends a kick in the seat of the pants! Feel free to share this article by clicking one of the icons below and submitting it to your friends on Digg, StumbleUpon or other networks.

“If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus.” – American Proverb

Barbara Bartlein from the People Pro posted an article about the harmful effect of multitasking on your productivity. She points out how researchers warn of several problems with multitasking aside from decreased productivity including increased stress, stomach aches, and headaches

University of Illinois study of Microsoft workers reports that each time a person gets distracted, it takes a full 15 minutes to get back on track. Put another way, for each time your email dings with a new message, whether it’s a dire emergency or a picture of a cat with a melon skin on it’s head, it costs you dearly in lost time.

With the productivity losses incurred from multitasking, Barbara listed out 4 main ways to combat it:

1. Accurately estimate the time to complete tasks.

For one day, write down all the tasks you have to accomplish and estimate the time needed. Then truthfully time yourself. You will be able to find the percentage that you routinely underestimate and can adjust your work schedule.

2. Use external memory as much as possible.

Albert Einstein once said that he keeps nothing in his mind that can be easily retrieved from paper. A cluttered brain makes it much more difficult to be creative and productive. External memory can be as simple as a pad of paper or using technology more effectively. Use the calendar on your computer to remind you of important dates or appointments and quick lists to organize your tasks.

3. Batch your work. Rather than checking e-mail multiple times per day, set times for reading and responding. Let your phone go to voice mail, if possible, and return phone calls during a specific time. Put similar tasks together, like paying bills and balancing your checking account, to increase efficiency.

4. Remove distractions. Control interruptions and noise. If the workplace is loud, discuss with co-workers ways to control the volume. Set times for consultation or questions rather than allowing unlimited access to your time. And make sure you don’t “interrupt yourself” by running to get more coffee or making a quick phone call. Use “butt glue” until the task is completed.

They are all very good suggestions, however, I am torn on using the external memory as much as possible. I think it’s important to use both your brain’s memory as well as your computer’s memory. We are becoming so used to looking into the Google oracle that we might be losing some of our natural memory ability or at least sending it into hibernation. To combat this, I still use flashcards to test my memory on an almost daily basis.

Here are 6 of my own tips from my goody bag of staying focused and productive:

1. Repeat a Productive Mantra - As you work, try repeating the phrase “I will complete this task 100%” or you might choose “100%” as your mantra. Drive a wedge deep into your brain about how important it is to achieve 100% on a task. Five tasks 1/2 done are useless compared to one task completed 100%. This is also a good visualization strategy. When you are thinking about your goals and the steps needed to complete them, think “How can I complete task A 100% today?” It gives you a direction and focus.It may sound corny, but there’s the old song “One day at a time sweet Jesus”. Sometimes I find myself humming “One task at a time sweet Jesus.” That may not be for everyone, but it is a powerful reminder to keep my eyes focused clearly ahead.
2. Get back in the game faster - If you fall of track as the Microsoft workers did, do you really need to be off track for a full 15 minutes? Of course not. You can get back on the horse in 30 seconds if you stay alert. Therefore, make a note to yourself to be alert to when you are off track and then get back to the original task as fast as you can. Make it a game. Shoot for 100% completion. This will require some dedication on your part to develop it as a habit. But as time goes on it gets easier with practice.
3. Seal your environment - I like to call this tip sealing the environment. This means closing off all distractions by arranging your physical environment. What works good for me is to seal myself off from distractions with these 4 steps:
   1. Close office door – Nothing distracts like other people busting in with their immediate demands. I’m as guilty of doing this others as others are of doing it to me. But one universal symbol of DND (do not disturb) is a closed door. At least with a door closed, they typically knock, allowing you the freedom of finishing up a thought or setting a reminder to get back on task in 5 minutes.
   2. Adopt an earplug strategy – Noise gets me every time. Whether it’s my daughter singing Going to the chapel at the top of her lungs or a server fan going bad, noise can take the wind out of my sails. For these occasions, I keep earplugs nearby so I can pop them in and get to work. Sometimes in-ear headphones will do the trick too as long as the music isn’t too distracting. It might surprise you that I can still carry on a brief conversation while wearing earplugs. They also send a visual cue to my people that I am busy and don’t want to be distracted. So when they see me wearing them, they often turn and go the other way – or they at least keep our impromptu meeting short.
   3. Sit at a different seat – If I really need to get in the zone and my mind isn’t cooperating, I change my environment entirely. I will turn my chair around facing the opposite direction. I’ll stand at a countertop or place my materials on a bookcase and work from there. I’ll go work in my car with the radio off if I have to. The important thing is breaking the cycle of distraction through environmental change.
   4. Turn off gadgetry – Set your phone, computer and PDA to the off position and prepare for takeoff.
4. Shoot for 100% completion of each task before moving on - When did it ever become acceptable to 1/2 finish a task before moving on? For as long as I can remember, my family called that doing something half-assed. Sure, that term doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it is motivating in a way. From now on, shoot for 100% on any task you start. Following Barbara’s tip from above, see if you can estimate how long your task will take before you start. Based on that estimate do you have enough time to finish 100%? If not, pick a task you can complete in the time you have and don’t stop until it’s done.There’s something wonderful about 100%. It’s the relief of a job well done – a job done completely. Shoot for 100% and you can look back at your days feeling as though you were successful.
5. Keep your eye out for boring - All tasks can get boring or tedious. At the point of boredom it’s easy to move on to something else. When you get stuck or bored, try to work through the problem instead of jumping on email or something easy. Not everything you do can be easy – especially when your goals get bigger and brighter. There is some hard work ahead, some of it is boring. Just be aware that boredom can be a trick – don’t fall for it. Fight your way through boredom and there is light on the other side.
6. Unplug Your Internet connection - Internet take me away! Surfing, Facebook, Google; they can all take you away from what you are doing. Remember the Microsoft study – all it takes is a beep or boop and you’ve lost 15 minutes. Solution? Unplug your Internet cable. Granted, this can be difficult for some IT workers. But by disconnecting the Internet connection over a “break” and turning off your phone for an hour during lunch can be some of the most productive time you have all day.

If you like this post, please share it with others by book-marking it to del.icio.us, Digg or StumbleUpon – Thanks!!