Silver Clipboard

Clear Your iPod Clutter with Smart Playlists

Merlin Mann has made a list of smart playlists that help you cut through the clutter of music on your iPod. The ‘Big and Useless’ playlist is particularly great for getting rid of big songs you never listen to that just waste space.

[Click here for ‘Smart playlists for pack rats’ on 43 Folders]

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Header photograph by powerbooktrance

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Use White Noise to Help You Work

Noise comes in colors: pink grey and brown are just a few examples. Each of these colors signifies a precise, scientific definition known only to acoustic specialists but one color, white, has entered the general lexicon. White noise has come to mean constant background sounds that the listener eventually becomes unaware of. The sound of rain or the hum of an air conditioner is white noise.

There are many benefits to working with white noise in the background:

1. White noise blocks out distracting peripheral noises. For the ADD among us, white noise helps minimize sharp, distracting noises by smoothing them out. For example, if you are in a cafe playing music that you don’t like, listening to white noise on your headphones helps blend the noise into the background much more than trying to drown it out with loud music would. There is even a field of design, called architectural acoustics, which works to reduce distracting noises by intentionally adding white noise to the environment.
2. White noise encourages thought and creativity. Where is it easier to work: in a silent library where every page-turn and pencil drop is sudden and distracting, or in a room filled with computer keys clicking away? Think of the test halls you sat in as a child, where teachers enforced silence — it’s hard to focus in situations like that. White noise encourages creativity, which is the topic of a book called ‘Noise’.
3. White noise stops you from futzing with your background music. Instead of getting distracted by hearing a song your sick of, then hitting ‘next’ for two minutes until you find the perfect song, white noise is uniform. It will never pull you out of your thoughts.

Now that you’re sold on the benefits of white noise, how can you get it? These are a few sources of white noise:

• White noise machines. White noise machines are sold primarily to help people sleep. They usually generate uniform sounds such as static or waterfalls.
• White noise CDs. There are many recordings of white noise generally available. Some of the ones that seem strange but work well are recordings of a fan, an air conditioner or a washing machine.
• Podcasts. Framework is a podcast dedicated to a weekly hour of background noise. (Credit to Boing Boing for alerting me to them)
• Nature sounds CDs. While not exactly white noise, I often listen to these. They block out background noise without tiring my brain, as pure white noise can do. Also, they can set the mood for the type of work I want to do: a scary thunderstorm for working at night or beach sounds for early morning. However, good nature CDs are hard to find — most want to play dirty hippy, new age music in the background. Awful.
• Real Life Machines. In my previous office, I had a very large window fan that I used to turn on and place in the middle of the room as a source of white noise.

Next time you’re working, give white noise a try and see if it helps you focus.

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Header photograph by greg westfall

Autohide Your Inactive Apps with Spirited Away

Spirited Away is a free program that will autohide your inactive applications. If you haven’t used a program for a predetermined number of minutes, spirited away will hide the program — the icon will still be in the dock, but when you use expose, it won’t show up. I’m a big fan of spirited away, because it’s a gentle way to encourage you to monotask rather than multitask.

[Click here to download Spirited Away]

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Header photograph by peasap

Why ‘Next Actions’ Make Big Projects Easy to Tackle

One of the key ideas of Getting Things Done, is the ‘next action’. Like much of GTD it’s a simple idea that makes a big difference.

Next actions are the steps you take to complete a project. For example, your project may be ‘sell my old CD collection. That’s a typical to-do list item, but it’s not something that you can do in one go — so it lingers on your list. Forever.

To decide what the next action is, you need to think of the next physical step required to move the project forward. For selling your CDs, you need to decide how you are going to sell those CDs. On the Internet or at a store? Your next action is ‘find the phone number of local music shops’. After you complete that, your next action is to call music shops to see how much they pay for old CDs. Then you may want to ‘research eBay and Amazon auctions online’ to see if they are better options.

Next actions improve upon the idea of breaking down a project into small steps for two reasons. First, you’re only need to think of one next action at a time. This way you don’t get overwhelmed by trying plan every step from start to finish. Second, by thinking of the next physical step, you force yourself to clarify exactly what needs to be done — and don’t end up with a nebulous, undoable to-do list.

So take a look at one of your big projects, define the next action and get started.

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Header photograph by visualpanic

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If you live in London and would like personal help, please check out my workflow and organizational coaching services.

Dilbert on Time Management

Dilbert author, Scott Adams, has kicked off a very long discussion on his blog with a simple observation: there isn’t enough time to live a relaxing, health life. There’s a lot to read in the hundreds of comments from people talking about how they try to balance their life, their work and their health.

[Click here to read ‘Time Management’ on the Dilbert Blog]

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Header photograph by Ol.v!er [H2vPk]

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