Windsor Castle

I'm back after two days in the London area, one of the highlights was a visit at Windsor Castle. The photo is taken with my Sony-Ericsson K750i, which I managed to drop shortly afterwards and after that the camera stopped working. Bummer. 

Google Analytics stops accepting signups

According to the Google Analytics sign up page, they have temporarily disallowed new accounts. They also removed the "Add new profile" link from inside analytics which previously allowed a single account to track up to 40 different Web sites.

Well, it seems I beat the sunrise rush...

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Google Analytics

In case you haven't noticed, Google have released a webstatistics tool free of charge. There are several statstool that is free, but I have yet to find one that gives the same amount of data as Google Analytics.

Actually it's Urchin Software, a company Google bought this March, and the service used to cost $500/month.

Way to go Google!

The joys of sensory deprivation

There is an intersting thread at Google Groups : 43 Folders regarding sensory deprivation (i.e. less RSS, IRC, IM, e-mail and WWW) to enhance daily focus. Some quotes:

Basically I read this article about sensory deprivation chambers and I was thinking about how oversaturated I am with information and cognitive simulation throughout the day, so much so that I'm always ooperating in this state of panic that I'm missing something critical. Thinking about this, I posit a way to do this with electronic information, focusing your zone of perception on one thing at a time.

And so, I decided to go on a diet. I'm cutting out media for the month of November. ... David even says that GTD is designed to remove the burden of your tasks from laying heavy on your mind, but that doesn't mean we should be filling it up with other crap.

And some links to people who are cutting down on their info diet:
Chris Thompson
Blackrimglasses.com

The last couple of months I have been thinking myself about my infoconsumption. How did I get by 20 years ago? Now I often find myself consuming information without digesting it. So it is actually time wasted since I never let myself reflect on the information, just letting it sweep through my mind.

Just as your body needs a diet, so does your brain.

Project planning, the forgotten chapter?

One of the chapters in David Allens "Getting Things Done" is "The five phases of project planning". To me this was one of the most important chapters in the book, and the model described for project planning is something that can be used outside of the GTD system. This is a part of the GTD-bible that is hardly ever mentioned by the lifehack community. We talk a lot about Next Actions, and that they are grouped into Projects but never about how we actually define a project.

The five phases, or The Natural Planning Model is:

• Defining purpose and principles
• Outcome visioning
• Brainstorming
• Organizing
• Identifying next actions

Notice that "Identifying next actions" is the last step. Just realizing that we need to use more than one Next Action to accomplish the task (thus making it a Project) is not enough. Not even deciding upon the next atomic thing we need to do to move the project forward is enough. If we let it stop there we will have to decide upon the next thing to do over and over until the project is finished. Wouldn't it be better if we already had decided that beforehand?

By just Identifying Next Actions you are moving the project forward, but as a car with deflated tires. Don't skip the four very important steps that comes before Identifying Next Actions. It will take you a bit more time to organize your thinking and get moving on your next actions, but it will pay in the long run.