My good friend Gary at work gave me a great tip recently. By default, if you tap on an address in Contacts, it takes you to Google Maps. It seemed to him that it would be more useful to have Sprint Navigation (the GPS program) come up instead. Lone and behold, you can make your Palm Pre do this:
> From the launcher, go into Device Information.
> Pull down the Preferences menu and touch Default Applications.
> Next to Addresses, change it to Sprint Navigation.
Thanks for the tip, Gary – this makes the Pre even better as a business productivity tool!
Tags: Palm Pre
Eons ago, I wrote about how excited I was to get a Palm Pre. Well, with finances, being busy and just being comfortable with my Palm Treo in the way, I didn’t do it, till now. I’m really glad I did. Here is a mini (well, as “mini” as I get) review of my first impressions:
Built for Business
I love how the Palm Pre lets me, a business professional, be more effective.
- The screen is incredible. Graphics are beautiful and easy on the eyes. Text, despite the small screen and form factor, are easy to read and work with.
- I thought that Copy / Paste was going to be weird & awkward, however, it works great – kudos to Palm on coming up with an intuitive way to do this.
- While you are focusing on the task at hand:
- I love being able to have other items quickly at hand. For example, it is fantastic that I can be in an IM and quickly jump to my calendar to look something up with the “slide of a card.”
- I REALLY LOVE that if something “happens” while I’m doing something, you are not rudely interrupted like other phones (iPhone included) with a popup. The Pre simply displays a quick notification at the bottom of the screen which does not interrupt what you are doing. You can either ignore it (which after a few seconds the notification full text goes away and an icon stays at the bottom of the screen so you can act on it later), or, tap on it and act on it then.
- Again, being a multitasking operating system, whatever you were working on is simply put to the side, allowing you to quickly resume it after you are done.
Call Quality is INCREDIBLE
- This is the best sounding phone I have ever heard. When you are on a call, it’s DARN CLOSE to the quality of a land line.
- I have yet to drop a call. And, I’m in a low signal area. My old Palm Treo was challenged all the time at keeping the call quality reasonable, let alone not dropping the call.
The feel
- This phone feels great in your hand. I was always intrigued by Palm’s “river rock” persona for the phone – and they hit a bull’s-eye with this one. I love holding and working with this phone.
- I looked at the Droid and used my daughter’s for about two hours. My hand hurt after that; with the bulkiness and sharp corners. The Palm Pre, on the other hand, is a joy.
I even love the Task List
- This has been hammered and taunted by many on the web. But, just like the “river rock,” this simple task list has a great feel to it.
- It opens with a Moleskin cover listing all of your lists (perfect for GTD).
- Going into a list, it gives you a great punch list of what your next actions are. And, is very easy to work with via Palm Pre’s touches and gestures.
I love the concept of the Touchstone!
- Being that I work out of a home office, the Touchstone is a perfect companion. I can quickly set the Palm Pre down to keep it topped off. I can quickly answer the phone just by picking it up.
- A Negative: After the Palm is “full,” there is a slight hum / buzz. I found several reports about this on the web. Very disappointing as it sure is anti-Zen!
- Update: Sprint swapped my Touchstone and charging cover and the buzz seems to be gone.
Synergy
I love the Synergy database; I have it tying together three sources and it does it flawlessly!
My only other negatives (besides the Touchstone comment above):
- It sometimes gets slow. But, the Zen of the phone makes me very accepting of that.
- I installed the 1.3.5 update and it seems better.
- I found a bug in the calendar for accepting appointments that are sent from Gmail and accepted by someone from Exchange. (Palm sent me a Kudos for finding the bug.)
- Battery Life – Many have written that battery life on the Pre is poor. At first, especially after installing the 1.3.5 operating system, that seemed like a non-issue. But then I headed out on a trip for work. I didn’t * think * I was using it more than usual. I made a few calls, surfed the web some and used the GPS a hair. I was in a major metropolitan area (Denver). Yet, by 1:00pm, the phone was dead, which was not a good thing. I have bought a car charger from Palm. The cable is short, but, it * is * a USB cable, which I can use to keep the Pre topped off by connecting it to my laptop.
Comfort with my Treo was one of the reasons I delayed getting a Pre. Yet, many times you have to force yourself over that hump of change, get uncomfortable for a while and finally reach a new level of comfort. In this case, I am much more comfortable with the Pre; it is a great companion. And, I’m willing to live with the slight discomfort of the battery issue above as the rest of the benefits of the Pre far outweigh it, especially for a busy business professional like myself.
Question: Are your mobile tools allowing you to have the relaxed productivity you need?
Tags: GTD, Palm Pre, Personal Productivity, Relaxed Productivity
Photo by 'laffy4k' as posted on www.Flickr.com
Buzzzzzzz, buzz-buzz buzzzz!
5:45am and my Palm Treo is buzzing to wake me up for another work day.
I am not a “morning wake up” person. When my Palm goes off, I am not an “Oh, boy! I’m ready to go!” person. I generally say “Oy! I have to get up,” and, very slowly (if I’m lucky) I get out of bed. Though, I am not a “morning wake up” person, I enjoy being a morning person once I am up as I get much more done and believe it is important for success. The other morning, I stumbled across something that changed my whole attitude and helped me succeed at getting up.
Instead of saying I have to get up, stated in the future tense, I said to myself, “I am getting up,” as in the present tense. This one little change sent such a good feeling of energy through me that it made it a TON easier to get up and do what I wanted to do; be that morning person. I am now working more on applying this to other areas. For example, instead of saying, “I have to work on that goal,” I will say, “I am working on the goal.” It just changes the whole ball game.
Question: What can you change to the present tense to help you succeed?
As you may have read about at www.FixYourToDoList.com, or the short blog post I wrote the other day, I finally came to the hard decision of shutting down Foresight. As I have always done with this blog, I want to turn this into a “lessons learned” in hopes that my lesson will be a valuable lesson to others.
“Being comfortable” is the best theme for the lesson. As I have written about at least once here, David Allen himself once told me, and I firmly believe that you have to be “comfortable” with your To Do list. You have to be comfortable with what is on it, the size of it, the importance of things on it and the “do-ability” of things on it (all my words). When it came to Foresight, I was getting uncomfortable with it as the do-ability was gnawing at me. I knew with a full time job, with my children and my Fiancé that I did not have the time and resources to devote to Foresight. One might think the decision seemed easy. However, there was one item that kept holding me back.
Challenges
You would think with all the above reasons that I would just pull the plug. However, there were a couple of things holding me back. The first one was money & debt. I have a relatively significant amount of debt built up from developing and deploying Foresight. That debt stares at me every day. When I started thinking about shutting down Foresight, a little nay-saying voice would say to me, “But you have to keep it going; you have to pay back the debt.” And, it is that little voice that would keep me basically frozen, which is not a good state.
Action
Lately, my Pastor has talked a lot about a two themes:
- Things must remain in motion, otherwise they stagnate and die. (For example, think about a stream of water in nature – if it flows, it stays fresh. If it does not, it stagnates and grows crud.)
- Action is required to make progress in all facets of life.
In thinking about this, I identified that I was not taking action and thus things were stagnating and slowly dying. I figured action – any action – was better than none. Does shutting down Foresight help with my debt? Well, not on the surface; the debt is still there. But, taking action might help in the long run.
Giving
I’ve always been a generous person. And, over the past couple of years, I have purposely tried to increase my generosity; to give more and to be a blessing to people. Being that I use Foresight everyday to keep many projects (27 is today’s count) successfully moving forward, I decided that my success should be one major factor in taking action. I said, “Foresight is still a great tool as it is. Let’s let others gain what I gain out of it every day.” It is my hope that with giving it away, my generosity will be returned by people who find it adds the same value to their lives and choose to make a contribution. And, in continuing with the giving desire, it is my plan to give away a portion of those proceeds to charity, hopefully keeping motion, in motion, for some time to come.
Closure
So, even though my “action” on the surface may seem like it will not address my severest needs, I have high beliefs that it will. On top of that, it brings closure to a chapter in my life, makes my To Do list comfortable again and allows me to move forward.
Just a quick note in case people come looking and wondering. Today I shut down Foresight.
Per my promise, I have posted an un-locked version. Simply download the current version from the main website and install.
I’ll write more about my decision in the next few days. In the mean time, you can read more about it here.
Thanks everyone. I appreciate everyone’s support – this was a fun and good adventure.
A good and timely (for me at least) post. It’s a quick, short read.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/chai-wallah.html
Make it a great weekend!
Like I said yesterday, T.G.I.F.
Just like most weeks, this week was another intense one keeping everything moving forward. Let’s wrap up the week, and series, and talk about Friday:
- Had conference call right out of the shoot. While waiting for it to start, banged through the DCL. Being that I keep my inbox (well, inboxes, see my other post), at zero everyday, this was a breeze.
- Transitioned to my Next Action list (Projects Widget), and managed to hit about five different projects. Again, I date things for follow-up, so three different projects popped up for follow-up, and I got them all done.
- The rest of the day consisted of work on one project. I was able to get that one wrapped up; a nice way to end the week.
So, all in all, I think this was a relatively good week. I helped a lot of people move forward on their projects. Also, I moved forward on * all * of my projects (even if it was a quick glance during the Weekly Review to assure they have follow-up dates on them so they will pop up in the Projects Widget) even with all the interruptions.
What were the lessons learned from this week?
- Quick Capture Interruptions.
- As I think I commented about this week, interruptions are the real killer. You have to capture them and keep your focus. I didn’t do as well in this area as I like and will need to focus on that more next week.
- Break the addiction to email, IM and Twitter.
- These are all major sources of interruptions.
- Block out more time, especially when you have projects that require big chunks of un-interrupted time.
- This, along with corralling interruptions, will be my goals for next week.
That wraps up this series for this week. On the onset of this series, I had said that I had two goals for it:
1) To give you some ideas / tips / tricks on managing multiple projects.
2) For me to track what I’m up to – helping me see progress as well as possibly see where I can improve.
I hope this series helped you out; it did me and I have some great goals for next week to help boost productivity even further. Make it a great, relaxing weekend!
Tags: GTD, Personal Productivity, Relaxed Productivity, Stress
Wow, T.G.I.F. —- tomorrow.
Small problem kept me up till midnight (hence what I think is a really hilarious graphic above – the corporate icon symbol, the warning – that is actually on GE’s support page!). That, plus an overcast day today made it a rough day.
Here’s what I did to get through it and make progress:
- Americano!
- DCL - I kind of just blew through this. Email traffic heavy, but I pressed through to get them out of the was because I really wanted to make progress on my large “report” project.
- Because I glanced at my calendar (as apart of my DCL), I saw that commitments on two projects were coming up – so I made sure I was ready for those.
- Successfully focused my my report; good progress made.
Signing off for the day. Stick a fork in me; I’m done!
Tags: GTD, Personal Productivity, Relaxed Productivity, Stress
As I’ve written about in the past, flexibility is a must to effective and relaxed productivity. And, as I reflected on at the end of the day today, capturing and containing stuff is a must! Here’s Wednesday:
Americano (this one is a deal breaker; I lived above – no flexibility for me on this one first thing in the AM! Well, I lied again, I don’t go to Starbucks very often; instead, I bought one of their home espresso machines and keep plenty of beans in stock. My Fiancé is an incredible Barista!
On to the Daily Check List….
- Voice Mail (had call from internal client and returned it immediately as I feel that if they left a voice mail, as opposed to email, they are desiring a call back sooner than later. Glad to be of service to Mr. WW!)
- Check e-Mail (Though I still believe that this being my primary form of communication and job for my employer, I’m starting to feel I’ve become way to addicted again – it comes and goes – to checking email. I feel like I’m in the movie “You’ve Got Mail!”)
Side Note: Wow; crazy day already (though, this is not unusual – hence why I want to write more about relaxed productivity). Several things, a couple via IM, popped up and put me off down some different paths. Fortunately, and as usual, they are related to current projects, so, progress has been made. If they were not related to current projects, I would have Quick Captured them and got back on track.
Wrapped up DCL. Wrapping up the “different paths” from above. Then, I’ll stop, take a couple of deep breaths, and regroup to make sure I get my focus back. Decided to drop the blogs today; especially with how busy it is today.
(Later that day…) Well, “wrapping up” really never happened. Today ended up being a “chase several fronts” day and I now am noting that I didn’t make much progress on “Big Rock” projects. Some, progress mind you – I have one thing checked off. And, I’m going to SHUT OFF email, IM and focus on getting one more “notch in my belt.” for the day.
Lesson of the day, or at least something to ponder – how to stay pertinent and relevant in today’s connected society, without letting it eat you (and the important stuff you need to be working on) alive. One things I didn’t do as well today as I usually do — and it’s pretty much in line with David Allen’s advice, capture everything that hits your plate, get it contained, get it off you mind and get back to -a- mind like water and -b- the important task at hand. That ultimately needs to be my goal for tomorrow, use Quick Capture much more.
Tags: GTD, Personal Productivity, Relaxed Productivity, Stress
(To put picures in the blog, or not? That is the question)
The secret to my success – follow-up’s; after I touch base with someone, or delegate something, I put a follow-up task on the project, dated, so it will pop up in the Projects Widget, reminding me, and basically forcing my attention back to that project.
This is something I’ve always done, but then had it really solidified for me when Jack Welch said in his book that * you have * to follow-up with people. It’s the only way to make sure things keep moving forward – and that’s so true!
Tags: 4-Hour Work Week, GTD, Personal Productivity