DevYou

I’m the first to admit I have too many feeds in Google Reader. As of this moment, I have 137 subscriptions. Since many of those feeds have rather frequent updates, that’s just too many feeds to read every day.

The trouble is, though I do go through the list and prune away the less entertaining or useful feeds now and then, I tend to always have around this many subscriptions. Sure, I could prune all the way down to, say, a dozen feeds and be more productive, but what about those rare cases when I have some free time to waste on the less important feeds?

My preferred way to handle this problem would be to use nested folders. I’d have a high priority folder with all the folders containing feeds that are actually important in my day-to-day work and personal life, a low priority folder for the folders with important but not critical feeds, and finally a folder for folders with purely entertaining, time wasting feeds for when I have a little time to waste and want to be entertained.

The lack of nested folders thwarts this plan, but I’ve come up with a workaround that seems to be doing the trick just fine for me.

I started with the 25 folders I was already using. For example, I have a folder called “clients” that contains all the feeds published by my consulting clients; a folder called “nerd, dev” for feeds about programming; a folder called “firehose” for the high traffic, pure entertainment feeds like BoingBoing, and so on.

Since I couldn’t put those folders into folders, I simulated parent folders by prepending a three-letter code to the beginning of each folder name. For example, “clients” became “aaa.clients” because those feeds are in my “A-list”, the high priority feeds. Google Reader naturally sorts aaa.* to the top of the list of folders. For B-list folders, I prepended “bbb.” to the beginning of the name (eg. “bbb.nerd, dev”). And finally, I prepended “ccc.” to the beginning of all the fluff feeds.

Now, when I bring up Google Reader, I have three, sorted, clearly-labeled categories of feed folders. When I’m busy, which is almost all the time, I whip through the A-list folders. If I have a bit of extra time, I do the B-list too. Once in a blue moon, I do all three categories — or even just the C-list.

This technique has dramatically decreased my feed reading time, and yet I’ve been able to keep the goofy, entertaining subscriptions I enjoy from time to time.

Give it a whirl, and see what you think. And if you have other, cool Google Reader tips, feel free to share them in the comments.

In my recent post — Clear Your Mind, Clear Your Desk
– I posted a photo of my physical desk in all it’s ridiculously tidy glory. Today, purely coincidentally, one of my editors asked me to send a screenshot of my computer desktop. The virtual one, not the physical one. She’s preparing a talk for MacWorld Expo, and she needs an assortment of people’s desktop screenshots. So, I took a screenshot and emailed it to her. When I was looking at the screenshot, I realized my virtual desktop is as absurdly neat as my physical desktop, and for the same reasons. Have a look:

(click for a full size view)

For those of you who are wondering, this uber-neatness doesn’t extend to all aspects of my life. My clothes, for instance, tend to end up in sloppy little mountains here and there in my home. But that’s okay. We all have habits we want to improve. I’ll refactor over time, and all will be well. My point is: I don’t make neatness an obsession, but in places like my workspaces, when I need to be tidy, I can be super tidy. Now… where did I put my socks?

Following on the same theme as my last post, here’s another quick trick you can use to increase your mindfulness and pull yourself more firmly into the present moment. I learned this in a bit of a strange way. A friend of mine and I were watching a video of a musician performing on a television show in France. As the host of the show delivered his introduction of her on stage for the audience, a camera recorded her pre-entrance ritual backstage. She sat quietly, apparently meditating. Just before her cue to go onstage, she raised her head and, staring straight ahead, said aloud, quietly but firmly: “This is now.” Fully focused, she stood and walked to the stage door.

My friend and I were both struck by this little ritual, and we agreed that “This is now” is a great thing to say to bring oneself fully into the present. This is now. This is now. This is now.

Try it yourself. First close your eyes and watch your breath for a few cycles. Now open your eyes and say aloud, “This is now.”

This tip might sound a bit kooky, but if you suffer from anxiety and this technique helps you feel better then maybe a little kookiness is okay, eh? The principle behind it is simple: grounding yourself in the present moment helps calm the mind and dissolve anxiety. There are many techniques based on this concept. Perhaps you’ve tried one or two before. Try this one and see for yourself if it’s more or less effective than the others.

What to do:

1. When you feel anxiety arising, silently acknowledge it and notice what physical action you are performing. For example, maybe you’re walking down the street or brushing your teeth.

2. Mentally say to yourself: “The one thing I am doing right now is walking down the street” or “The one thing I am doing right now is brushing my teeth.”

I find this technique helps bring me back to the present moment and stops my mind from wandering off into the future or the past where I worry about things over which I have no control right now. It’s simple and easy to try, so give it a whirl.

All my adult life, I’ve kept a messy desk. There were always piles of papers spilling over one another, books, pens, and other random clutter. Ever since getting serious about GTD though, I’ve become a “neat desk” person without even meaning to. That is, I didn’t have to try to develop this new habit of keeping a neat, uncluttered desk; it just happened naturally. Take a look at the picture above. That’s a picture of my desk last night. I was walking by it, and ultra-tidiness of it struck me, so I snapped a picture of it. And, actually, the double laptop thing is unusual for me. Ordinarily, I only have three objects on the desk: one laptop, one lamp, and the little Buddha statue at the base of the lamp.

How did GTD lead to this bizarre but welcome neatness, you ask? Well, one of the great things about GTD is you only work on one thing at a time. And when you’re working on that one thing, you’re fully focused on it. That’s a great way to work, and it dovetails nicely with other philosophies about life and productivity I hold, so it works out nicely on several different planes. As Shunryu Suzuki said: “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.” Multi-tasking is incompatible with such a goal.

So, while I’m working, instead of having dozens and dozens of things cluttering my desk, I have only the things that concern that one task on my desk. For example, if I’m paying my bills, I extract one bill from my inbox, and place that bill and only that bill on my desk. If I’m working on a programming project and need a reference book, that one book is on my desk. If what I’m working on requires no physical objects other than my laptop, then there’s nothing else on my desk. The side effect? One very neat desk!

Now, I’m not an absolutist about it. Sometimes there’s an extra thing or two on the desk. Right now there’s a pad of paper and an orange I’ll snack on soon. A stray item or two that doesn’t stay long doesn’t bother me. But generally speaking, the desk is in a permanent state of neatness. My desk was just the way you see it in the picture last night. I didn’t hide things to make the picture more dramatic.

The neatness of my desk has had a nice effect on my mind and stress level that I wouldn’t have guessed would happen back in my messy desk days. Since I don’t see a bunch of “to-be-done” things — “open loops” in GTD-speak — right in front of me all the time, my mind isn’t always glomming on to them at the wrong time and creating low-level stress: “Oh, man. There are those unpaid bills. I should pay those, but I can’t right now. I’ll do them later. I wonder if any are past due. Ack.” Nope. I trust my system, so I know that when I sweep my inboxes today, any unpaid bills will get paid immediately (since they’re: a) actionable and b) take less than 2 minutes to do), so they’re safely “out of sight and out of mind.”

As a long-time messy desk person, I’m not saying that a neat desk is the only way to go. I was certainly productive with a messy desk; but I strongly suspect I’m more productive with a neat one. Either way, I thought I’d share the picture and the thoughts it inspired.

At times of extreme stress — and I mean extreme stress — I find it incredibly difficult to break away from the stress and relax. This is obviously problematic. Sustaining severe stress is bad for your body, and it almost never helps resolve the situation at hand that’s causing the stress in the first place.

Mindful breathing techniques often help, but today I stumbled upon an interesting article called 3 doors to instant relaxation on lifehack that details three relaxation techniques I’d never seen before. Each technique centers on one of the senses: vision, hearing, and taste. For example:

Door 1 is your eyes. Plug your ears (if you have ear plugs, good, if not use fingers). Let your eyes, lazily, slowly drift across any surface near you. Don’t read or identify what you are looking at. Instead, try to just look at the colours and shapes. Is it constant or is there change happening. Can you see definite lines and transitions or are shades blended and fuzzy. If you use only your eyes in this way for a minute or two, you can effectively stop the escalation of stress. You will quickly return to a more normal state of mind and then you can deal with whatever is stressing you.

Intriguing stuff. Next time I’m severely stressed, I’m going to try one or all of these.

(Link: 3 Doors to Instant Relaxation)

The other day, in his post, When Everyday Life Gets in the Way of Your Dreams - And A Plan To Get Past It on the Simple Dollar blog, Trent included among his tips for getting a dream off the ground, this advice:

Turn off the television. This is the single best move I’ve made in terms of giving me the freedom to work towards my dreams. Instead of draining my brain in front of the television for a few hours each night, I instead do other things that are more fulfilling and much more in line with my big dreams.

This is great advice. I’d like to expand on it a bit by looking at the actual numbers:

• There are 24 hours in the day.
• If you sleep 8 hours a night, then that leaves 16 waking hours.
• Let’s say you work an 8 hour day, and it takes you a half hour to get to work, and another half hour to get home. That’s 9 hours. Subtracting 9 hours from your 16 waking hours leaves 7 waking hours.
• In the morning, let’s say you spend an hour having breakfast and getting ready. That leaves 6 waking hours.
• In the evening, let’s say you spend an hour eating dinner and unwinding from your day at work. That leaves 5 waking hours.
• You probably have other things to attend to in the evenings, such as paying the bills, playing with your kids, or taking the dog for a walk. Let’s say you spend an hour on such things. That leaves 4 waking hours.

Four waking hours to do with as you please.

Now, according to the A.C. Nielsen Company, the average American adult watches nearly five hours of television per day. If you are average, then that means you’re spending all your precious remaining waking hours each workday watching television. How many hours are left over for working on making your dreams a reality? Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Do I think television is evil? No. Do I have a “Kill Your Television” bumpersticker on my car? No. I think there’s a ton of great programming on television. I also think it’s nice, sometimes, to relax and watch a show. On the other hand, would I sacrifice working on things that are meaningful and rewarding to me and align with my life goals just to zone out in front of the tv? Not a chance.

If you have unfulfilled dreams — such as: writing a novel, starting a home business, traveling the world, or learning to play a musical instrument — consider how much time you could create to work toward that goal if you cut down, or cut out, television. If you gain 5 hours a day every week day, that’s 25 hours a week or 100 hours every month.

If your dream energizes you, as dreams tend to do, then — take it from me — you can get an amazing amount of stuff done in 100 hours. Give it some thought!

We’ve talked a bit about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and we’ve talked about the Triple Column Technique — a written exercise that helps you identify and deconstruct cognitive distortions. Today, I’d like to talk about how often to do the Triple Column Technique.

I’d imagine that some readers may believe that doing the Triple Column Technique once or twice is good enough. Though doing it once or twice may indeed help you begin to identify and deconstruct some of your cognitive distortions, it may not be enough. Cognitive distortions, like all habits of mind, are often deeply embedded in our habitual, automatic thoughts. For years they go undetected and arise again and again, causing suffering and sadness. Could such a long habit of mind be broken easily with a quick fix? No. Unfortunately, no.

So, practicing the Triple Column Technique regularly is important. Sound like alot of work? No, it’s actually not. It only takes a few minutes to do it each time, and the improvement in the quality of your life will far outweigh the effort you expend on the practice.

How does one make the Triple Column Technique a regular part of life? One easy way is to make it part of your morning routine.

What to do:

• At some point in your morning routine — say, for instance, just after eating breakfast or perhaps just before jumping into the shower — do the Triple Column Technique.
• Make it a habit. You wouldn’t leave the house without brushing your teeth, right? Make the Triple Column Technique a similar habit.
• Keep your Triple Column Technique worksheets. New insights can be gained by leafing through your old worksheets. You may find, for instance, that you’re particularly susceptible to specific cognitive distortions, and you can raise your own, inner awareness about them, which can be very useful in preventing them.

It may be easier to pick a different, regular time of day to practice. If that’s true for you, feel free to pick what is best. However, morning’s an especially great time to practice since doing so helps you get your day started on a more rational, calmer footing.

Many of us have dreams of things we’d like to accomplish in life, but haven’t yet. Perhaps it’s writing and publishing a novel. Perhaps it’s visiting the Taj Majal. Perhaps it’s finding an excellent relationship, acquiring material wealth, or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Whatever it is, if you have a dream you’ve long nurtured but haven’t acted on, today’s article entitled “When Everyday Life Gets in the Way of Your Dreams - And A Plan To Get Past It” on The Simple Dollar blog may inspire you. In it, Trent describes how to transform a nebulous dream into an actionable reality.

He advises writing down the seed of the idea (eg. “I’d like to have a book published”), and then building on that idea until you have tangible steps to perform.

When the dream starts to get quite detailed, enough so that it begins to actually step out of the clouds of nebulousness and become something tangible that you can actually understand, think of the first step you can take to make that dream happen. … This step gives you a very specific action that you can follow to get started. It moves this dream from something tangible.

Have a dream you’d like to make a reality? Read the full article on the Simple Dollar! And, if you’d like, share your dream endeavors in the comments of this post.

Now that you are familiar with all 10 cognitive distortions and maybe even using the Triple Column technique I discussed earlier, wouldn’t it be convenient to be able to remember all 10, right off the top of your head? As it turns out, it’s quite easy!

When learning to read music, people use this simple sentence to remember the notes in the treble clef (which are E, G, B, D, and F): Every Good Boy Does Fine. We can use a similar mnemonic for the 10 distortions:

All Optimists Meander Down Jagged Mountains Expecting Splendid Little Prizes

Each word of that sentence begins with the same letter as one of the 10 distortions:

• A - All or Nothing Thinking
• O - Over-generalizing
• M - Mental Filter
• D - Disqualifying the Positive
• J - Jumping to Conclusions (Fortune Teller, Mind Reader)
• M - Magnification (Catastrophizing)
• E - Emotional Reasoning
• S - Should Statements
• L - Labeling
• P - Personalization

So, when you’re trying to remember the 10 distortions, simply say to yourself, “All Optimists Meander Down Jagged Mountains Expecting Splendid Little Prizes.” If you’d like to make it more memorable, you could invent your own sentence, or just change mine around ‘til it suits you. For example, if you’re a foodie, you could change the last three words, like so: “All Optimists Meander Down Jagged Mountains Expecting Savory Little Pizzas.”

Mmm… Pizza…