While you performed that search, you probably saw links to articles on how to get started with GTD. Ok, I’m really late into the game. I can find a lot of detailed materials on how to GTD on the internet.

But here are quick tips on how to get started with GTD.

1. Read the book. I know, there’s nothing quick about purchasing, waiting for the delivery, and finally reading the book. But that’s the only way you can really grasp about the GTD concept. There’s no shortcut to that. David Allen is making millions of dollars on it. Here’s my amazon affiliate link to the book: Getting Things Done by David Allen. You’ll make me 50 cents richer. Thank you.

2. Incrementally apply the concept. It will probably take you a couple of days to read and fully understand the GTD concept. It took me a week to finish the book. Hey, I have a real job. Three years later, I’m still trying to learn how to fully incorporate GTD in my life. It’s not easy but you’ll get there with consistency.

3. The power of purge. Purging is a skill you have to learn. And I’m not kidding. Before you can fully adapt to the GTD lifestyle, you must learn the art of purging. Purge daily.

4. GTD is not a tool. Search online and you’ll come up with tens of so-called “GTD tools”. There is no such thing as GTD tools. You use tools to manage your Inbox, or stuff that lands in your slate. Of course, you know what I mean by “Inbox” if you read the GTD book. It’s not your email inbox. GTD is not To-Do list either.

5. Automate if you can’t go paperless. Paper trail can complicate your GTD life. If you have paper in your workflow now, find a way to automate the processes involved. If you automate most of your tasks, it will be easier for you to adopt the GTD lifestyle

6. Mind like water. Study what it means.

7. Be consistent. Once you’re on the GTD zone, you’ll never go back. So practice consistency. Learn about dedication.

8. Learn the 80/20 Principle. Eliminate the things that you don’t need. 80% of your success comes from 20% of your effort. 80% of what sucks in your life now come from 20% of something you’re doing. Find those out. What’s the 20% that’s giving you 80% of your happiness. That’s maybe an activity, a relationship, a task, or whatever. Multiply the positive stuff.

9. Eliminate unneeded baggage. Purging is one thing; eliminating is another. Learn the difference. Cut activities that are not yielding values. Look for that 20%.

10. Dominate the world. Your world could mean your calendar or deadlines, or particular tasks, or a nagging boss. Be in control. Stay on top.

Photo Courtesy of flickr user wibbly pig

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Very true.

There is nothing else I can use to check metrics aside from hits and pageviews.

Nonetheless, I look at Page Rank as a way to check how my SEO efforts are affecting my blog technically.

In just one short month, I was able raise my blog’s Page Rank from PR0 to PR3 (Check | Verify). Usually, it would take a couple of months to reach that level but I did it in one month after registering the domain and building the blog from the ground up.

This only shows you don’t need to resort to blackhat SEO or buy expensive SEO tools to rank your blog higher.

Domain: marlonribunal.com
Domain/Blog Age: 36 days
Alexa Rank: 600K+ (from 3M+)
RSS Subscriber: 45
Blogging Frequency: Once a Week

Here are the components of my blog:

1. Running on the WordPress platform

2. Using clean and responsive template based on Twitter Bootstrap

3. Utilizing the following SEO related plugins
- 404 Redirection
- Akismet
- All in One SEO Pack
- Better WordPress Minify
- Disqus Comment System
- FeedBurner FeedSmith
- Google XML Sitemaps
- WP Smush.it
- WP Super Cache

4. Increased paragraph spacing and font height for improved readability

5. Implemented Rich Snippets

6. Content – Content, content, content.

If you think Page Rank has some values you could use and want me to help you rank higher, let me know.

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The phrase “5:01 developer” was coined to describe a “developer who bolts out the door at 1 minute past 5pm.”.

We’ve worked with these people – when the clock strikes at the 5:00 PM mark, they’re gone for the day.

But of course, there are those who keep working far beyond that time.

Let’s not attribute a bad connotation to the 501 workers. In fact, we all should aspire to become a 501 person.

You should read the story of Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook, and learn how and why she does not work beyond 40 Hours per Week!

Let’s define what a 501 Productivity is all about:

Effective Work Throughput

According to Wikipedia, “Throughput can be best described as the rate at which a system generates its products / services per unit of time.” The key phrase there is “per unit of time”.

The question is, how many tasks can you cross off your list in an hour? Or the better question is, how much time do you need to cross off all your day tasks?

It’s not about the amount of work you can generate within the 8-hour window you’d given.

It’s not simply a matter of speed, either.

The key is improving your process, workflow, or system in order for you to maximize your time.

Effective work throughput is being able to do more work without really overworking yourself to death by improving your behavior, technique, and style of performing your job.

Well-defined Daily Goals

Maintaining a list of your daily goals might add an extra task you’d need to accomplish.

That seems to be counter-intuitive to getting things done.

Your target is to accomplish all the things you need to get done by the end of the day. You must know your goals.

If you’re working on a project that spans multiple days, even weeks, set tasks in blocks and schedule them on daily basis.

You should have a strategy on attacking your goals.

Delivering Quality Results

The main goal of the 501 Productivity is not “doing work fast so you can go home fast.”

Avoid jam-packing your tasks just so you can do more work within limited amount of time.

There are ways to do more work in short amount of time. The key here is discipline, dedication, and awareness of goals.

You can really go the extra mile without stacking up extra hours.

Other Tips For The 501 Productivity

1. How Not To Overload Your To-Do List

2. Why You Should Schedule Your Priorities

3. The Habit Of To-Do List

4. How Your Daily Rituals Can Set The Tone Of Productivity

5. Establishing The Habit Of Staying Productive

6. Dealing Effectively With Information Overload At Work

7. How To Overcome Disruptions And Achieve Your Productivity Goals

Let’s all do 501 Productivity and bolt out our doors at 5:01 PM! Let’s go!

Photo courtesy of flick user wallyg

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To make the idea clearer, we’ll let Mr. Wikipedia define the concept to us:

“Preemptive multitasking involves the use of an interrupt mechanism which suspends the currently executing process and invokes a scheduler to determine which process should execute next. Therefore all processes will get some amount of CPU time at any given time.”

Now let’s borrow that concept and apply it to how we should deal with our To-Do List.

The embodiment of GTD himself, David Allen, said “daily to-do lists don’t work”. Yes, they don’t work as such. But if you are like most people, you depend on a regular To-Do List to organize your tasks.

To-Do lists (as such) don’t work. We already know that. One main reason is the shifting of our priorities. How many times have you been interrupted in the middle of a tasks only to be asked to do something else instead? You just screwed your To-Do List.

To-Do lists work. Yes, I just said a couple of sentences ago that they don’t work. They work if we incorporate Preemptive Multitasking in our daily routine.

Interrupt Mechanism

Plan ahead of time. Define some milestone – some point in the middle of your tasks that you can stop working. I cannot recommend enough the Pomodoro Technique on this.

What you do in Pomodoro is divide your work time into 25 minute chunk and take short, 5 minute break between each chunk (Pomodoro).

So, for example, if you’re using the Pomodoro Technique, design your workload in a way that each milestone falls into a 25 minute window.

Scheduler

You should be able to tell your To-Do List which tasks can be preempted with other higher priority tasks. For example, if Task C comes up on my plate at any time today, I have to immediately stop Task A and bump Task B at the end of this list.

You should always be aware of your schedule – priorities, deadlines, ad-hoc requests, etc.

Balanced Amount Of Time

Not all your tasks on your list have the same level of priority. That’s for sure. Some tasks require bigger amount of time dedication and resources.

But in order for you to keep the balance in your job, you should know how much time can high priority tasks exceed without bumping other tasks completely off the list.

Photo Courtesy of flickr user Areldos.

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This is how it usually works. You delegate or automate the least important stuff on your To-Do list to pave way for more space, and thereby time, that you will put back to your main work pool.

By delegating or automating, you’re accomplishing two things – One, getting rid of yourself of the extra load that is likely to cause you open loops and, two, gaining more time for more important tasks you have at hand.

But how do you take your hands off these least important stuff tasks – stuff like things you need to get reminded of, little notes you need to track, etc.?

These are some of the least important things that I have on my plate now:

Read It Later

I am following some great blogs that I love to read on a regular basis but I don’t just have the time during my work day to peruse all of them.

Take Notes From Specific Email

I am receiving email with specific subject which I want to take note of in an online note application. But I don’t have the time to check my email every hour. Usually when I check my email service at the end of the day, these emails are nowhere to be found in my email mill. Plus I have other more important emails to track (i.e., work-related emails)

Announce My New Blog Posts via RSS

The social network sites are a big source of web traffic. Friends may want to get notified via these sites of the latest article. I post links to my new articles to at least three sites. I want to set this action once, and forget it.

On A Certain Date At An Exact Time Reminder

I want to receive a SMS message to my cellphone to remind me to pay my bill on certain accounts. I don’t want to miss any payments on these accounts. I need a reminder when I need to pay them. And I don’t want to see things like this on my To-Do List.

I Want To Get A Voice Call At Certain Time Of The Day

I may need to receive wake up calls when away from home. Or I need to get preset message at particular time. I just want to have somebody or something to do this for me.

I Want To Know Immediately When Free Kindle Books Become Available

I don’t know when is the exact time these free Kindle books become available. I just want to know, via email, when they become available.

This is just a partial list of what I would want to delegate to a personal or virtual assistant. These tasks may not be as important as the tasks that I perform at my day job but they hold certain level of importance in my personal life. They are not to be left out in my regular To-Do’s.

If you are like me, and the conditions I described above resemble your current needs, I have a good news for you: You don’t have to hire your personal or virtual assistant. Or you can fire your current assistant if you already have one.

If This, Then That (IFTTT) is your answer. IFTTT is a free web service that will help you automate many parts of your life.

IFTTT is an intuitive, easy-to-follow web application. You basically instruct it “when something happens (this) then do something else (that).” In short, it’s a simple but very useful notification service (and more).

The service is made up of four components: Tasks, Triggers, Actions, and Channels.

Task is the result you want to achieve – when this happens, do that. Trigger is just that – trigger. It is the “this” in the equation. Action, on the other hand, is the “that” part.Channel is an app or another service that will bridge the “this” with “that”. Users might have already created the tasks you need. They can share their tasks as “recipes”. A recipe is a template of a particular task.

Happy IFTTT’ing!

Photo courtesy of flickr user Victoria Sanderson

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1. Users of social networks are increasing in number. More people are signing up.

2. More people are engaging into a somewhat form of online communication via social networks.

3. Social networks are the preferred form of engagement online (versus email, chat rooms, etc.)

4. Social networks are not slowing down in terms of activity.

5. We spend some of our time interacting with people on our social network on daily basis.

6. The world’s population is about 7 Billion. That means 1 out of 9 people is on Facebook.

I’ve been reflecting upon my usage of social networks – how does it impact my daily activity in terms of my personal productivity.

The amount of time we spend on these social networks are inversely proportional to the time productivity requires from us to accomplish our tasks at work, home, and wherever human-to-human interaction is required. The same is true on all online activities that are not producing values.

Does that mean we need to avoid using social networks? No. For most of us, cutting off social networks would mean disconnecting from a lot people who are of value to us personally or to our business.

As our productivity rate is inversely proportional to the total time we spend on the social networks (and other non-productive online activities), we need to cut down the amount of time we are on these social networks.

But we cannot dismiss these social networks as mere noise. They can have benefits also. We all have our own stories on how we benefited from them in one way or another.

The key is maximizing our social network usage. The effective way of social networking is not about spending more time on the networks. These are some of the ways we can maximize our use of social networks:

Go Vertical Instead Of Horizontal

Cultivate the relationships you already have. Find more ways on how to improve interaction with fewer “friends”. Identify the benefits on both sides – the “what you can give” and “what you can receive” factors. Disconnect if you cannot identify any benefits at all. Benefits can be abstract (i.e. “friendship”) or concrete (i.e. “business lead”).

Do Not Follow Based On Personality Status Alone

We follow or subscribe to personalities because we want their updates. We like reading their stuff. In other words, we find benefits in what we read from them. Take a look at the picture below and tell me what’s wrong with it. This is a screen capture from the Kindle Most Followed user.Timothy C. Ferriss (or Tim Ferriss) is a popular personality. He didn’t have this much followers when I first checked. He continues to get Kindle followers and I don’t understand why! He hasn’t posted a single highlight or note.

Create Your Personal Benefit Gauge

Using an online tool I started unfollowing people who have not posted any tweets in the last 6 months. That’s just too long for me. That’s just a personal metrics for me. No deep logical explanation. I am looking for same tool for my other social network account. In Facebook, if all I am reading is your game updates or Multi-Level Marketing ads, chances are you’re on my Do-Not-Follow list.

To sum up, using social networks is not bad per se. You just have to find ways and means to make them work for you. Identify the advantages and disadvantages.

Start from the benefits you’re getting from using them. If you don’t carefully measure the values you’re getting and don’t actually reap these benefits to your advantage, then they may negatively impact your productivity.

Post feature photo courtesy of flick user Anirudh Koul

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For many of us, email is a simplistic form of communication – one that wouldn’t take too much of our brain power to do. But if you are like some people, email is not as intuitive as it’s supposed to be.

Have you been annoyed in the past by a co-worker’s compulsion to hit “Reply All” every time he receives a group email? You know what I’m talking about.

Email is very old but not all email users know how to properly use it. That is a fact.

You wish you have an official written policy on sending email in the workplace. Seth Godin has a email checklist for you. The checklist is written for email marketing. Some of the items may not apply to you.

Some of my favorites on the checklist:

“Am I blind-ccing my boss? If so, what will happen if the recipient finds out?”

“Is there anything in this email I don’t want the attorney general, the media or my boss seeing? (If so, hit delete).”

“Is any portion of the email in all caps? (If so, consider changing it.)”

“Is it in black type at a normal size?”

“Is there anyone copied on this email who could be left off the list?”

And here’s one of the best…

“Did I hit ‘reply all’? If so, am I glad I did? Does every person on the list need to see it?”

What does this checklist tell us? Email should be common-sense. If you’ve seen this checklist violated as I have seen many times, you know that for some, email requires some extra mental effort.

Have you been paying attention to you email habit?

Photo Courtesy of flickr user Sean MacEntee

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Sometimes having the right tools means having to shell out extra dollars just to get them.

I wanted to do stuff over the internet when I am at home during the weekend. Being productive for me also means I have time to do things that I like to do on the side.

I have a laptop that I use for everything I do online. I basically run my blog off my trusty, old laptop.

I have a decent internet connection around my house. I can do multiple things online at once. I can stream HD-quality movies on my secondary monitor while working on an article I need to publish.

But I need another workstation at home. One of the options is to buy a new laptop – one of those high-end, multicore little machines. Or maybe the latest iPad.

Being productive – money-wise – means being practical. I have a decent desktop computer sitting on my tech junk in my storage. The technical specifications of this desktop are still on the range of those decent newer models. I decided to set it up.

My garage is a place in the house where I cannot be distracted when I want to focus to work on something important. So I set up a “remote office” there.

But the problem is that my desktop does not have a built-in wireless network card to connect to my router.

One solution is to purchase an ethernet cable and run it over from the house to the garage (I have a detached garage). That doesn’t work for me. I think it’s not gonna look good.

Ethernet cable is cheap and, perhaps, I can buy some cables long enough to connect my primary router to my desktop at the garage. Who really cares about aesthetics, right?

I decided that running a cable from the house to the garage is not a good choice.

I have a tech junk bin that I’ve been keeping. It contains some computer parts, cables, adapters, etc. At the bottom, I found my old Linksys router (WRT54G).

Problem solved!

There is this firmware hack that I can use to make my old router receive signal from my primary router. It’s called DD-WRT.

Here are the 3 general steps:

1. Flash your router (the secondary router you’ll use as “receiver”) with the DD-WRT Firmware (follow the link). You MUST follow the step-by-step, or you’re putting your router at risk.

2. Setup your secondary router with the installed DD-WRT Firmware.

3. Sync your secondary router with the primary/base router. You have the option of making your secondary router either as a Client Bridge or Repeater.

In a Client Bridge setup, you can only connect to your secondary router via wired ethernet.

In a repeater setup, you can use your secondary router to broadcast Wi-Fi to internet devices (e.g., cellphones, laptops, tablets, etc).

If you want to connect to your secondary router both wired and wireless, you setup the secondary router as a Repeater Bridge. See other ways to link your routers here.

By choosing Repeater setup, you’re expanding your Wi-Fi signal. That is useful if you have some dead spot within your house. But since the repeater process need to distribute the signal between routers, that will slightly impact the performance of your Wi-Fi signal.

I opted to use my old Linksys router as a Client Bridge using the DD-WRT firmware. It’s neat. It only requires some steps to run the connection setup in no time. My wireless signal from my primary router to the garage area is still strong; so, I don’t need to “repeat” the wireless signal in that area.

Another hack tip for you…

Do you know that you can make your internet speed faster by using the Google Public DNS?

I can explain to you how it works and how to implement that but I would just waste your time and my time. It’s enough that you believe me that changing your computer DNS can somehow optimize you internet connection. Just follow this instruction to change your DNS setting.

See, that’s being productive. Saving money and improving your work condition without spending a dime is some wise, productive move!

Photo Courtesy of flickr user fensterbme

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The DIY Kit, Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), as described in a BGR report , is “a safe and effective means of increasing cognitive performance.”

The way I understand it is it stimulates some part of your brain which then somehow increases neuronal excitability. Ok, honestly I don’t understand it.

Then who needs hard work? You might need some work to get that $99.

Apparently you can learn more effectively with tDCS than with any traditional methods (i.e., hard work plus more effort) – that is if you’re willing to spend that 99 bucks.

GoFlow, manufacturer of the $99 kit, advertises tDCS as “one of the coolest pieces of health/self improvement technology available today.”

I perceive the whole thing somehow as science fiction. Although tDCS is a proven science (used by “US Army and DARPA to train snipers and drone pilots”), I’m a little bit concerned about its negative effects on the brain over all function, if there are any.

I guess, I’d stick with the traditional methods of learning (e.g., read more and often, watch tutorials, practice, practice, practice, etc).

I am not really comfortable with hacking my own brain, or any of my biological parts for that matter.

Plus, sending increased amount of current to my head is, to me, over the top.

Perhaps, If I can double my effort rates by 2.5, I could achieve the same neuronal excitability that the tDCS kit provides.

I could spend that $99 to buy some books (or ebooks) to read. Or keep the $99 and quit being lazy learning.

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There is an urgency that school children need to learn more math and science. That is specially true here in the US.

What if the parents can utilize a cool tool to augment their kids’ learning? What if the hardest part of this tool is convincing kids to sit down and watch videos (I guess, that is not hard at all)?

This is the future of education.

Khan Academy is at the heart of this movement. Its goal is “to revolutionize how we teach and learn.” Simple step. Giant leap.

This online academy is currently serving millions of students worldwide. It is free to use.

The online academy offers a range of video lessons from basic math to advanced physics. It is very useful if you have kids at early stages of elementary education. High school students will greatly benefit from the algebra and physics video lessons.

Every parent has the responsibility to teach his or her kid. This is a shared responsibility with the school teacher. Khan Academy definitely eases that effort.

Khan Academy is so great that even Bill Gates is a fan. In fact he mentioned in one conference that he used the site to teach his kids.

Khan Academy is a funded non-profit. visit the Khan Academy website for more information.

60 Minutes recently featured Khan Academy. Watch the CBS feature on Khan Academy.

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