Lately, pretty much every second of my productive time has been logged. Now, this may seem a bit strange to many of you, but it’s been awfully good for me.

It started with freelancing

You see, I started tracking my time working on freelance projects, because on a freelance project, I need to know exactly how much time I spent in order to receive the correct amount of money for it. When I realized how effective it was, I started tracking my time on everything.

Then I started wanting to know exactly where all my time went. As a college student, with various projects across my classes, it was hard to know how much of my time was spent doing productive things and how much was lost — whether through video gaming or other pursuits.

So I started tracking all my time

I started keeping track of all the time I spent in classes or on coursework. Within a week, I knew that much of my time was simply wasted. I spent hours just sitting on the computer surfing the web. And yet, I was surprised just how much time I did actually spend on schoolwork. Combining the time that I worked with all my coursework and my freelancing, I was racking up quite a few hours in worthwhile things. Just not enough.

Why this was helpful

What really surprised me, though, was how much more I could focus when I knew that what I was doing was being recorded. I wanted to be able, at the end of the week, to see where I had spent my time. To know that I was, in fact, doing the equivalent amount of work that I would with an actual career.

Each day, I’m eager to get started. I want to be doing something that will contribute to those hours for the day. On days that I have more things that will keep me from work, like a doctor’s appointment, and extra-long drive, or time to hang out with friends, I find myself starting earlier to make sure that I can still log enough hours to feel like I’ve been useful.

What’s more, I can tell if I’m working too much. If I log over 60 hours in a week, I’m pretty sure that the next week I need to spend a bit more time in recreational pursuits. Life has to be balanced, you know. Therefore, I can know if I’m spending too much or too little time with something.

Streamlining my workflow

In addition to knowing how much time I spend, I track it according to my projects, classes, or other pursuits. For example, I know that last week I spent over 12 hours either in or working on homework for my calculus class (yeah, I’m not the biggest math whiz).

When I know where my time goes, I can decide where I can improve. For awhile, I was spending at least 30 minutes each day preparing workout plans for the swim team I coach. Then I realized that if I planned the whole week at once, it took much less time.

I love it

Knowing where my time goes is priceless. I’m so much more productive now, and I’m not so backed-up on school projects, because I’m focusing on spreading them out over the course of several days. When I finish one task, I’m immediately onto the next one, trying to keep the clock ticking, rather than stopping to play video games for a couple of hours. Procrastination isn’t a problem anymore. Really.

My tools

There are many systems out there that allow you to track your time free of cost, but I personally use Toggl. At times it has some problems synchronizing, but it lets me have a little program open on my desktop that shows me how long I’ve been working on a specific task. Plus, there’s an iPhone app that has proved to be awfully useful.

The end

All in all, time management is important for all of us. This is what’s worked for me. Incredibly well, actually.

People tend to enjoy things more when they’re fun to do. Have you ever noticed that? Well, just in case you hadn’t, it’s true. For example, if I think climbing a tree is fun, I’m more likely to climb it than I would otherwise be.

And that applies to all things. I remember that when I was younger, and didn’t enjoy doing chores, my parents counseled me to ‘turn it into a game.’ While it was, at times, difficult to be creative enough to turn anything and everything into a game, when I succeeded, those things did truly become much more entertaining.

And thus it is in this video – by transforming these stairs into something fun, many more people elected to take the stairs. And thus, kudos to Volkswagen for the idea of the fun theory. The idea is that socially beneficial activities, such as recycling bottles, throwing things away, etc, can be encouraged by making these activities fun for people.

Check out thefuntheory.com to learn more. (And see more videos like trashcans that make noises, a bottle recycling arcade game, etc.)

Economics is a fascinating subject. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I am entranced. Now, before you go off thinking that I’ve totally lost my mind, let me explain.

Learning about what best serves everyone’s economic interests is ever so interesting. For example, learning why it may, in many situations, be more beneficial to invest money than to donate it hit me like a cannon. And I don’t mean beneficial for me — I mean for the man who stands on the corner, begging.

Now, for those of you who think that I am simply losing my mind, I’ll explain:

Let’s say you have $1,000 with which you have absolutely nothing to do. Not likely to begin with, but for the purpose of this demonstration, it’ll work. Now, with this money, you could:

1. Choose to walk up to a man standing on the corner and give it to him outright — no strings attached.
2. Donate it through a charitable organization. Let’s say, the Salvation Army.
3. Invest it in a start-up business that provides, let’s say, handcrafted wheat bread.

Now let’s go through what might happen — hypothetically, of course — in each of these situations.

Situation 1 – The man on the street corner uses this $1,000 to buy a new jacket, pay a month’s rent, buy food, ride the bus, repair his bike tire, and maybe stop at a fast-food restaurant several times. And that’s a wrap. Overall, he’s had a nice month, thanks to your kindness and generosity. But what about next month? He’ll likely be relying on someone else’s donation to carry him along. So where is he at the end of the month? Not far from where he started.

Situation 2 – In 2004, the Salvation Army reported an overhead of 17%, meaning 83% of funds donated were actually spent to assist those in need. Assuming there were no other costs along the way, (which seems quite doubtful to me), that means $830 of your hard-earned money made it to those who needed it. And, like in the situation above, much of it will go to pay for food and other amenities. Perhaps a few will have the chance to take part in a class to improve their well-being and self-sufficiency. Well done. In the end, what’s happened? You’ve supported an employee of the Salvation Army, bought food, and maybe helped one person along the way to self-dependence. Not bad, altogether.

Situation 3 – The business in which you invested, Bread Co. Incorporated, uses your thousand dollars to purchase ingredients to make 300 loaves of bread. They also use part of it to pay their employees’ wages. With the revenue generated from the bread they sold (using ingredients supplied through your contribution), they generate revenue to purchase ingredients for 400 loaves of bread for the next month – and still pay their employees’ wages. This perpetuates as the business grows, allowing the business to employ more people, generate more bread (which is also quite useful to the community), and overall, make a profit. Not only that, but your $1,000 has increased drastically, and you can pull some of that money out (part of the profits) and use it to help start another business. Or, if you feel so inclined, donate it as in situations 1 and 2.

And thus you can see, though very few of us would imagine that investing in a business could possibly be helpful to those who are needy. But it most certainly can be. Now, I’m not saying that’s in all situations.

It certainly depends on the specific circumstance in each situation. But at least now we know it’s a possibility. And it’s one that I had never really considered — mostly because it’s something I never would have initially expected. But upon further examination, it makes sense. So, what do you think?

New and revised categories will soon appear, including design, photography, and life sections. I’d like to be able to focus on displaying my talents with graphic and web design as well as photography, but I’d like to avoid completely shutting the personal nature of my site. Thus, I’ll include ‘life’ section to provide information about what’s going on in my day-to-day life.

I will, at some point, be launching a special-interest blog, though that will come at a later date, when I’ve narrowed down the topic for the site and have some appropriate content.

Also, I will be adding a portfolio section to the site to showcase my work. I’d like to focus more on freelance design and development, and therefore will be implementing changes regarding that, so that I can direct potential clients to my site for previews of my work.

This will help me streamline the process and focus more on posts, my portfolio, and doing work for other people. In all things, keeping well-organized is conducive to productivity. Thus, having a well-designed site will direct me toward that end.

Let me know what you think in the comments. It’s still a work in progress, but with your help, it will be much better than it would be with only me.

I don’t know how many of you know about this, but Microsoft recently released a brand new version of Internet Explorer. It’s Internet Explorer 8.

Now, being a nerd, this is of great interest to me. Especially with the fact that I’m a web-designing nerd. And I’ll tell ya why: Internet Explorer 8 (and its predecessor, Internet Explorer 7) embraces long sought-after web standards.

Internet Explorer 6 was, until very recently, used by a whopping 40% of the web-browsing public, which was absolutely ridiculous. It’s a web-developer’s nightmare, really. It’s not compliant with standards for web design, which meant that things that looked absolutely incredible in other browsers, such as Firefox, Google Chrome, and the newer versions of Internet Explorer, looked absolutely horrid in Internet Explorer 6. As a matter of fact, they still do.

Truthfully, the reason I write this is to encourage any of you who still may be using Internet Explorer 6 (that’s 25% of people that visit my site!) to please, please upgrade. Not only will you do a favor for yourself and all web developers, but you will also do a favor for starving people, because Microsoft is donating money for food for each copy of Internet Explorer 8 downloaded from this site.

It will make your life better. I promise you that.

Different Types of Blogs

In the blogosphere, there are multiple types of blogs. The first, and most common type, are simple personal blogs. These are, as the title suggests, personal in nature, run by a person or family to serve as an informative portal to those who have a personal interest in the individual or family running the blog. For example, if my mother ran a blog, I may be interested in reading what she had to say, for the simple fact that she was my mother. However, a personal blog run by a person I’ve never met, have no close connection to, who lives in the outskirts of Toronto, probably holds no interest to me.

There are also special-interest blogs. These specialize in informing members of a specific community of advances in that community, and therefore providing info that is valuable to those members of the community. These serve a role very similar to that of special interest magazines, though they do have some important advantages – as they’re normally free.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. There are also corporate blogs and news blogs. As you might imagine, corporate blogs apply mainly to shareholders and others who hold a vested interest in specific corporations or companies. News blogs apply to any person who has an interest in the type of news provided, though they are almost always run by large news corporations.

Building a Successful Blog

Before building a site, it’s important to consider what type of blog you want it to be. Personal blogs are easy to build and maintain, because they rely on little more than some relatively interesting personal stories.

Since I know nothing of either news blogs or corporate blogs, I’ll instead focus on special-interest blogs. These, in particular, require frequent posts, in-depth study, and high-quality content. But, of course, these blogs also provide valuable business opportunities.

What Does this Mean for Me?

It’s for that reason that I’ve decided to focus more on building a special-interest blog. I’ve decided that building a special-interest blog could help me in many ways to be able to improve myself. Up to this point, my site has been somewhere in-between. I’ll still maintain a personal blog, for those of you who enjoy reading about my life.

But, in the meantime, while I’m building new layouts for both blogs and figuring out exactly how I’m going to arrange it, I doubt that I will be posting much. And, hopefully, when I’ve got it all organized, some of you will find the information on my other blog to be interesting.

Oh, and by the way, this post was meant to be a sort of test to see how I could do in formatting a more detailed, interest-based post. How do you think I did? Let me know in the comments, if you would be so kind.

Sometimes I’m awfully lucky. For example, with this photo, I didn’t even plan to get out of the car to capture it. But, at the insistence of my girlfriend’s parents, I strolled down into the meadow off the side of the road and captured this shot – which turned into one of the best shots of the whole day. Gotta love it.

I had to write something about this movie, since it was pretty much amazing. But first, I’ll give you a bit of background.

I am, officially or unofficially (it really matters not), one of Pixar’s greatest fans. I once doubted them — at the release of Cars — due to my incredulity that a good movie could be made based on Nascar, though soon thereafter I realized the error of my ways, and have since repented.

And therefore, when I saw, about one year ago when I watched the classic Wall-E, that Pixar would release their next movie on the very anniversary of my birth, I knew that I simply had to see it — on that day. Not only that, later on I realized that one of the characters, the cute little scout guy, shares my first name. At that point, I knew that Pixar was simply paying tribute to one of their greatest fans.

Overall, it was quite a stellar movie. I sincerely believe that I am going to have to see it again shortly, because it is such a great movie. While I have to say that it likely isn’t the best movie ever created, it most certainly was very enjoyable, and definitely worth multiple watchings.

And therefore, it’s amazing.

Wow. I mean, I may like Rubik’s cubes, but this one… Wow… I just wanna buy one to keep on my desk for decoration. I could change it up a bit every day just to keep things interesting.

Anyway, this, as I’m sure you can tell, is a new twist on the classic Rubik’s cube. I once learned how to solve one, though I’m sure that I’ve totally forgotten now… I had it so I could solve it from anywhere in about 2 minutes… But now… Well, I’m out of practice, and proud of it.

But this would be neat. Not so much to solve it, I think, (at least for me) but to just have sitting around. All the exterior edges are mirrored, and the only way to tell where they go is based on the size of the piece. But, as you can see, it does make for some awesome shapes. So, yeah. I do believe I’d use it for decoration, nothing more.

Here are some links, if you wanna see a video of someone playing with one, or buy one from Amazon Japan.

Hammocks are wonderful things. The problem is that I don’t have one nearby. But if I did, oh man… I would use it daily. There’s nothing better than a good ‘ole hammock, skillfully woven together from strands of soft rope… I think I need one in my bedroom. Heck, why don’t I use one as my bed? I think that would be absolutely stellar. Somehow I think it would cause back problems or something of the sort, but it would sure be a comfy way to ruin a back.

But, sadly, this post really has nothing to do with hammocks. It does, however, have everything to do with the sort of laziness that I would experience if I were in a hammock. Y’know, that simple, pure desire to relax… Let everything else take care of itself. Heck, I’m sitting in a hammock. There ain’t nothing that’s gonna get me to move. Except perhaps a tornado.

And the point is, I’ve been awfully lazy. I guess that I did have an excuse for not writing anything here while I was away… But I did still manage to get one thing written up… So, you know, kudos to me for that. One thing in the past month. Oh, yeah. I’m amazing.

But I do fully intend to overcome my laziness and write more here. Cross my heart. So, expect more coming up soon. As a matter of fact, I’ve already thought of a couple of things to write about. So, just you get ready.

As the chariot maneuvers to the left side of the track, the other chariots swerve aside – a horrendous collision could’ve occurred had such measures not been taken. The smaller vehicles in this Roman race swerved in and out – a dangerous web of high-speed objects weaving between one another. The Italian music on the radio set the perfect mood for the stunning display of land-based aerobatics.

The vehicles involved in these aerobatics – a mixture of larger trucks (though still small by American standards), puny cars, and two-wheeled wonders, really do create quite the incredible show. What I love about the whole thing is the kindness of all cars involved. Though swerving in and out of traffic seems blatantly rude by American standards, in Europe (or at the very least in Rome), it’s perfectly acceptable. It seems that absolutely no one cares.

What’s weird is that I don’t find it to be the slightest bit obnoxious. Granted, I’m not the one driving, but, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the ride through Rome. Everyone treats others and allows others to treat them as pigeons – if you move somewhere, others will move out of your way. Likewise, if someone is moving in, you let them. And the surprising thing is that despite all the crazy swerving, merging, and passing despite deadly odds, I haven’t seen one accident. Heck, I’d even go so far as to describe the roads of Rome to be living organisms in and of themselves. The fluid movement of the vehicles on the road seems to work for the benefit of everyone involved. And I love it.

I sincerely wish that the streets of America functioned in such a beautiful way. Though many, I’m sure, would be scared witless at the sight, I feel that it’s the best way to go.

So, I decided to see what worlde would come up with for my site. What you see above is the result of wordle scanning the latest 10 posts on my site, and making a pretty creative compilation of those words, with their size based on their frequency of use.

It’s really a neat, simple tool for use in creating basic typographical works that represent something. Anyway, if you feel so inclined, head on over there and make one yourself!

Anyway, as I realized that, I happened across a stunning table design. And here it is, folks.

Sadly, I can already hear what my mom’s words would be as a result… “It would be impossible to dust!” Well, shoot dang. It’s awfully pretty, even if it would be kinda bothersome to dust it. Plus, it can go completely flat.

So, in light of that, and the fact that lately I’ve seen some amazing examples of typography, I’m putting up some of these examples.

While this one certainly isn’t the most creative, it’s pretty funny – especially if you speak Spanish.

While this one isn’t the most amazing thing, I felt that it had a good message to it. Plus, including the names of the victims makes it all the more meaningful.

This one is especially cool if you’re a fan of Star Wars, which I happen to be.

I was very, very impressed with this work, done by the Graphic Designer Josef Reyes. It’s pretty stunning design, overall. I am especially fond of the first one, with the words ‘Shortcut Through Time’ cleverly and skillfully split up between the top and the bottom, as if passing through a portal (or, imagine this, a shortcut through time!).

Mostly, it’s just beautiful.

Many of us, myself included, need to exercise a certain amount of creativity in the workplace. Whether it be in creating a graphic, drawing something, coming up with a new marketing scheme, or whatever, it is an important part of what we do. Creativity is an essential part of nearly all business pursuits.

But, on the other hand, we must also have points in time where we focus entirely on what we’re doing – when distractions make us lose valuable time.

And these two aspects of work involve completely different approaches. With creativity, we don’t want to disregard or throw out any idea. Distractions, random suggestions, or seemingly ridiculous ideas can prove invaluable. A little flash of inspiration often makes all the difference. Additionally, simply surfing the web looking at random photos or works of art can be one of the most productive parts of the process.

But when we’re doing in-depth study, creating charts, etc, we don’t want to be random. It is important to focus on the task at hand – without distraction.

This really came as a surprise to me, truthfully. It makes complete sense when thought through, but before I simply hadn’t realized it – or its potential impact on my life. But it’s helped me much. Now I’ll be able to be much more productive in my specific pursuits – adjusting my environment and mindset to the task at hand, therefore optimizing my use of time and brainpower (however limited that may be).

When a blog randomly jumps from one subject to another, it becomes drastically less likely that a person will be interested in all content posted there. This means interesting things for bloggers, namely that they have to focus on one subject or another. If they ignore this, it’s very likely that the only people interested in that blogger’s site will be his or her immediate family and close friends. But this poses another problem: if a blogger focuses solely on other content, he risks alienating his family and friends that don’t share his precise interests.

I also stronly believe that is the precise reason why out of so many blogs, so few have a decent level of readership.

In order to be effective, a site must have interesting, thought-provoking articles. While many life experiences can provide that, they must be presented in a certain manner.

With the coming redesign of my site, I’m going to do my best to address some of those issues. I sincerely hope that it will work out well. If it doesn’t, my blog will simply remain a part of those with a low readership.

As I’m sure many of you know, I’m a big fan of well-designed things. In the last few days, I’ve been looking at quite a few re-designed corporate identities, including Jack in the Box. Those of you from Utah may not be all that familiar with Jack, though it’s quite prevalent in many places on the West Coast. I myself became much better acquainted with it because of my long stay in the state of Arizona.

Anyway, this is about the redesign of their logo and identity. Their original was just your basic, straightforward fast food logo. It’s got the “Here I am, look at me!” type of feel to it, if I may say so. Oh, and I seem to recall some people that I know complaining about the ‘Christian Fish’ type thing where the ‘O’ and the ‘X’ connect, though I don’t see why it was a big deal, even if it was put there to symbolize something.

The new logo, however, has a very different feel to it. I’ll say right up front that I’m not a big fan of the huge separation between the ‘Jack’ and the ‘in the box’ part. The parts are just too distinct, I feel. They don’t tie together well. But, as to the ‘Jack’ part of the logo, I’m really a big fan. It’s got a retro, cartoon-style to it, of which I’m a huge fan. The script they used is also quite catchy.

Overall, I feel that it really takes them in a different direction and separates them from other fast-food restaurants. It’s just got a really different feel to it than most fast food logos.

Oh, and down below, I’m a huge fan of the all-horizontal alignment in the first picture. I think it looks very, very nice.

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So, I figured that this video was pretty funny. My dear mother sent it to me via email.

I also wanted to test out what exactly my blog does with video. I guess I’ll find out soon, eh?

Mostly I’ m writing this because I haven’t written anything in awhile, and believe it or not, that makes me feel lazy. So, in an effort to make myself feel less lazy, I’m writing this post. There’s actually been quite a bit of interesting stuff that’s happened lately, like a trip to St. George, constant singing of the song (whatever it’s called) that goes, “Are we humans, or are we dancers?”

Plus, I’ve scored pretty well on a couple of tests, found a huge bug on Priceline, and been to Ikea for the first time. So, yeah. I’d say that I’ve had an interesting couple of weeks. But I have to blame the fact that I haven’t posted on one simple thing: I haven’t really been actively seeking topics about which to post.

So, from here on out, I’ll be better at it. I promise. Also, I promise that the redesign of the site will be up & running soon.