But finding the right portfolio on the internet is hard. This is really a task where searching sucks! If I only relied on google to find one, I would have to choose between a couple of brands, and a lot of cheap no-name leather outlets.

Another issue is the tactile experience. Touching and having really good close-up look are key to finding what you want. So right now I have actually found most of the candidates for my next portfolio in actual stores!

Here a my wishes for a portfolio

• It must be zipped... because I use a lot of loose papers
• I prefer nice quality leather
• I'm looking for a minimalistic tasteful design. No inbuilt calculators or strong product branding
• It must be A4

Right now I'm looking at this shortlist of portfolios:

Tumi Meridian Zipped Pad

This is quite nice. Well designed interior. It has a nice big pocket for loose papers. I must say though, that I found it a little boring. This could be something for an accountant. Not a very luxuious feel to it either. But it's rather sturdy. This was about 900 DKR.

Filofax Domino

This is the one that I had until last week when the zipper broke. It has been really nice. Not the best build quality though. It's made of faux leather so the feel of it isn't as nice as I would like. I considered upgrading to the Finsbury series to have a better quality but that one is just plain ugly. The interior is ok. The pockets for paper are of no use cause they are to tight. I'm considering buying another one though, because the Filofax Domino is cheap! It'll be mine for only 349 DKR

Aspinal of London - Executive Zipped Portfolio

This looks really nice. Haven't handled it personally, but it has the looks! It like it for it's simplicity and old school luxury style. It's a little pricey though at 1500 DKR.

Smythson Mara Brown Zipped Portfolio_

Awww man. This one looks amazing. I'm already a sucker for Smythsons expensive notebooks and I could easily be a sucker for this one as well. EASILY! You can have your name engraved in gold for 60 DKR a letter. What a bargain! And of course I would have to shell out 3.300 DKR

Gianni Conti Cognac Leather Portfolio

This one was wonderfull in the hands. Smooth like a loving caress. And I loved colour too. A stylish cognac brown with a fine patterned lining. Unfortunately it had a rather vulgar branding on the front. I don't want to be a walking commercial for some leather manufacturer. The price was reasonable at 900 DKR.

I haven't got any pictures of the Gianni Conti, because the website looks like this:

That's an awesome online store :D

What would you buy? Got any got ideas? Please post ideas in the comments

— Jens Poder

When writing this blog post Filofax actually wrote me and promised to replace my domino! Kudos Filofax :)

Nerd alert :) And have a nice weekend!

• Jens Poder

I fooled around with the application Document Palette yesterday, and quite liked the service it offered. Being able to make a new file from a template with a couple of keystrokes. But I hated having a dedicated app cluttering up my dock to do this.

I would like nothing more than be able to launch a new meeting minutes document, or a new prepopulated HTML document from my favourite launcher launchbar with a couple of keystrokes.

I think the solution could be a homebrew applescript to do this, so this is my new sideproject.

This would bring the number of applescripts deeply embedded into my workflow up to 4. I have these already:

• Take current mail, copy content to evernote with tags, then archive mail in archive folder.
• Take current mail, copy content to TheHitList (todo manager), then archive in archive folder.
• Tweet this via launchbar. Tweets to twitter with tinyurling and other niceties.

It's a geeky delight to be able to cut corners with these little scripts. Every time I invoke them, from a snow leopard service or from launchbar, smily wrinkles form around my blue eyes.

It was a really nice feeling. My worklife seems have become an extension of my natural likings.

• Highlevel daydreaming
• Strategy making
• Drawing and scetching

I found this drawing from my childhood. It's a representation of a game I played with my friend Steen at the age of 11. It is a detailed plan of my future house. You can se the annotated version on flickr by clicking at the picture.

Steen and I could spend hours hunched over our drawing pads planning all kinds of elaborate schemes. We were always building - making prototypes - of imagined worlds. So I seem to be right back where I started. :)

It's a nice feeling to be running on your preferred fuel. Mileage is a lot better. But best of all... your head is clear.

Only problem right now is to refrain from working all the time.

What did you like doing when you We're a kid?

• Jens Poder

Energy Ball by Jam343

One of the things that leaves me dumbfounded all the time, is the way I often let myself be slowed down by not knowing the process of the workplace in which I work.

In the beginning of a new job I am really inqusitive, and explore every aspect of the companys way to do stuff. But after a while I refrain from doing this.

This is bad. And I'm trying to fight this tendency.

1. Explore further

You ought to explore even further, because this will increase your leverage in the organization, increase your ability to get stuff done. Once in a while challenge yourself. Find out what ressource in the company you would like to be able to have access to, and then go about finding out how to influence this ressource to do work for you. Often the answer is really simple. It’s right there in front of you, but you just didn’t see it. Perhaps you we’re afraid to ask.

2. Don't get bogged down reorganizing other peoples processes

I, on the other hand, have a tendency to reengineer the way in which people around me work. While in some cases this is a good thing, it also drains a lot of energy, and takes a long time to deliver results.

It is of the outmost essence to know WHEN to reengineer, and it's a lot less often than you might think. Changing the way things work in your workspace is HARD work. Don't reach for this solution just because you don't understand what's happening.

Because... sometimes, this is exactly what's happening. You chose to reengineer a work process, not because it's wrong, but because you feel more in command when you're changing, than when you're admitting ignorance.

3. Nurse a happy, helpful and interested attitude

Most people loves to talk about what they do. If you're genuinely interested, they will be willing to share a cup of coffee and tell you about what they do. This is what we all do, when we start a new job. The key is to do this on a regular basis, even when you're firmly established in your job.

You could say this is a form of personal Kaizen. Continously furthering your ability to coorporate with people around you. Keep exploring your workspace for possibilities and gradually you will be able to perform better and better.

• Jens Poder

Autofocus gives you a simple list and easy fun rules to guide your proces

I recently read about this system by Mark Forster. Autofocus is a todolist system based on simple rules, and an in-built trust in your own innate ability to sense the right thing to do right now.

The autofocus system will appeal to people with a fondness for paperbased systems, and particularly the Moleskine Crowd.

Here's how Mark Forster describes it himself:

1. Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them. 2. Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you. 3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so 4. Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it 5. Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out 6. Move onto the next page and repeat the process 7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items. 8. Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.

I like several things about the autofocus system:

1. it's compact

I love to be able to walk around with my system all the time. Capturing ideas depends on this. I must admit that my Iphone with Omnifocus is used a lot less, than I had imagined. My test-run of autofocus had me capture more stuff, and remembering more as well.

2. it's simple

It's not complicated. I tend to lose my perspective when everything is sorted in projects and contexts. Especially the context part of GTD makes less sense to me than ever. I don't really need anything besides @work and @home. Autofocus urges to have two lists. One for work and one for private stuff.

3. it gets rid of old todo-list garbage

The idea of dismissing old items when you look at a page without anything standing appeals to me a lot. The thing I get rid of this way, is the non-doable things, that seems to creep into every todo-list I make. In autofocus you highlight it, and then someday later you can review these dismissed items and totally forget them, put them on a someday/maybe list og or re-enter them in another form.

4. it's fast!

You can do this really fast. With 22 lines per page, you can quickly skim a page. Adding new items is lightning fast. And since you never grow your list to more than 10-15 pages, findign something is actually quite simple.

5. it's in a moleskine

Well... you gotta love a moleskine. I love touching them. I love carrying them. I love looking at them. Well... maybe it's just me :)

Anyways... that's it. A simple analouge system that you can check out at the blog of Mark Forster. The decribtion of the system is a mere 6 pages in the printer. So go ahead read about it. I have been using it for my home stuff for a week now, and I'm pretty happy. I am considering moving my someday/maybe lists into Taskpaper, but that's another story.

Oh... by the way... drawing  on the top was made with wonderful children focused drawing app: Doozla.

• Jens Poder

This, in my opinion, is a bad mode to be in. Because when everything serves the goal of efficiency a couple of other important parts of life is at risk. I often found myself anxious about thing I should be leisurely enjoying. 

So, since new years eve I have been on a kind of productivity diet. No more fiddling with OmniFocus, at least for a while. Instead I have been trying to introduce a couple of new focal points in my life. These aren't projects that I am trying to achieve. There's no deadline to them. It's three ways of being that instills relaxation and enjoyment.

1. Thinking deeply

I love staring through the window. In my home in Copenhagen, I have an absolutely amazing view over the entire city. While looking at horizon I often float into a state af calm, pondering. It's one of the things in life I really treasure, being alone in deep thought. When doing this I often find that amazing things happen. Good ideas seems to hit in the back of my head out of nowhere.

I also find myself in this state when I'm writing in my journal, but ideas tend to be more related to the subjects I'm writing about.

BTW: I love this talk on deep thinking from google sessions on youtube.

2. Being Happy

This one became a goal of own after reading Tal Ben-Shahars book Happier. I hadn't been very good at just doing stuff that made happy. Benjamin inpsired me to mindmap all the things in life I knew would make happy doing more of.

I now carry this mindmap around with me in my notebook. And from time i'll look at it and get ideas for something that'll make me happy.

Reading novels instead of productivity literature or blogs has been one of the things I have introduced. I used to read several novels a month, but came out of the habit, reading business related stuff instead. Now I'm frequently relaxing with a novel and great coffee instead, enjoying the sound of a turned of telly.

3. Being Healthy

This one has been a troublemaker in my life since childhood. I don't like sports. Or... let me rephrase that... I like the idea, but I can't seem to get my butt from the couch after a long day at work. I just think sports are so amzingly time-consuming.

So I'm trying to do slowly take very very small measures towards a healthier way of living, and I'm doing it in a rather different mode than I used. No more putting ambitous goals into the calendar.

For me, it's all about removing hurdles and adding little incremental habit-changes, to become healthier. I have been bicycling to work for a month now, and I have been eating a lot healthier. I have found all kinds of gymnastics I can do without leaving the house.

Instead of focusing on my disability to turn myself into a marathon man, I focus on the small things I can do instantly, now and here.

So there you have it... This is the reason why I haven't been posting as frequently. All this computer time simply feels to much like work. Now I'm going to get myself a cuppa and a good long stare at the horizon before my loved ones return from work.

Please share you experiences below, if you have any, regarding lifehacking and relaxation.

• Jens Poder

It explores the connection beTween being playfull and the ability to be creative.

Key points in the talk:

• Go for quantity: You need to be able to suspend judgement when you generate ideas. This is difficult for adults. We tend to edit a lot of ideas away, because we worry about the opinions of our peers.

• Think with your Hands: Building prototypes is the best way to get a good discussion about ideas. How will this work? Make a crude prototype, and pretty soon you'll be able to get a sense of it.

• Roleplay: Act how users will use your product. This works great. Good design is based around user needs, immersing yourself in these needs will make you able to build a better product.

• Jens Poder

Related Posts: - Play your life may depend on it! - Begone Curse of Greyface

OmniFocus is a really flexible app. I let's you do a lot of modifications to suit YOUR specific workflow. The problem, however, is how to build YOUR specific workflow. Because OmniFocus doesn't come with an easy inbuilt one. And over the long run this will slow you down and hinder your productivity.

What you have to do, is figure out how you want your workflow with OmniFocus, and then implement it!

Perhaps you have already experienced one of the following problems

• The next action list grows to enormous size
• Urgent tasks hides behind non-urgent stuff
• You use a lot of clicks, when moving around the application, slowing you down and hindering your ability to get a clear perspective on the state of affairs.

Well, luckily there's a remedy for these nuisances. And it's all about tweaking the software to suit you. And though I can't tell what your optimal workflow, what I CAN do, is show you how I have tweaked Omnifocus.

BUILDING MY OWN WORKFLOW

Customizing OmniFocus to fit your workflow will save you a ton of time.

The goal we're aiming for is to have a set of custom perspectives and corresponding short cuts in the toolbar.

Perspectives are predefined views/sortings of your tasks, and they are really handy. I have a set of custommade perspective for each cornerstone in my GTD workflow.

• Inbox
• Today
• Next Actions
• Projects
• Waiting For
• Review

In the recently published version of OmniFocus some of these got build in. But I still prefer to make my own. It let’s me make precisely as I want them, and I get to have keyboard short cuts.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN PERSPECTIVES

To make a perspective is quite easy. You just fool around with the possible sortings and filtrations, until satisfied, and then you go to the perspectives pulldown menu and press save as perspective.

You can watch the whole process in this video:

OmniFocus Workflow from Jens Poder on Vimeo.

Short cuts to perspectives in the toolbar got into OmniFocus from version 1.1. Right clicking and customizing the toolbar, will let you put your custom perspectives buttons into your toolbar.

This is what pulls it all together. Discard the unused stuff and put in your own perspectives.

Now you have all the main ingredients of your GTD-workflow at the click of a mouse or keyboard shortcut.

Tomorrow we'll look at how to tweak OmniFocus to only serve your tasks relevant right now.

• Jens Poder

RELATED ARTICLES:

• Omnifocus - My new GTD-Todo-Manager for MAC

Dan Messing wrote this brilliant piece of software. It's a Two Minute Timer! You know... for processing your inboxes!

Now you can easily adhere to the David Allen rule: If you can handle it in less than two minutes... Do it now!

I makes me immensely greatfull, that people like Dan exists out there. Someone who codes perfect little solutions to all my problems. Free software is my favourite kind.

- Jens Poder