Organize IT recap for 03rd April 2009.
- There has been plenty of GTD-bashing of late (has the bubble burst or are people just looking at both sides of the arguament?). But now it looks like it is the turn of The Four Hour Work Week. Jonathan Mead has a very detailed critique, saying that the promise of a four hour work week magically righting all the wrongs in your life is a lie. To complement this, however, Hunter Nuttel has also done a counter-arguament. That should cover all bases! A lot of attention goes onto cutting back your work hours, but what do you then do with the free time?
- Social media is here to stay. Whether it’s sites like Twitter or Facebook, they are all useful networking tools in one sense but a veritable productivity minefield in another. Thankfully, David Allen of GTD fame is getting in on the act and has provided his thoughts on the topic over at BusinessWeek. Personally, I’m currently trying to find the right balance in my Twitter usage because it can be a huge distraction. I’m going to earmark one day a week to tweet and see how it goes. What are your own experiences of managing social media?
- There are a lot of free personal development ebooks out there, and thanks to Peter Clemens at The Change blog, they can now all be found in one handy list (which includes my own Clutter 101 ebook). Highlight’s include Leo Babauta’s look at how to simplify in the tough economy, and another on how to apply the Four Hour Work Week principles to blogging.
- Cracked.com is technically a humour site, but occasionally they come up with articles that are actually pretty thought-provoking too, and their look at five ways common sense lies to you is exactly that.
April 3, 2009 at 10:44AM
I only use Twitter on my iPod Touch. So as a result I only do it about three times per day when I am taking a break.
April 3, 2009 at 06:33PM
Thanks for sharing. You always have cool stuff that I am interested in.
I was following Tim Ferriss for a time a little after his SXSW presentation and it seems that the critique just disagrees with Tim’s definition of work and hasn’t really taken a look into what he actually says.
Tim does a lot of stuff. He immerses himself in pretty much everything he does and works very hard. The payoff is he speaks something like none languages fluently, is an MMA champion, and holds a world record in tango.
He just doesn’t like doing stuff he doesn’t like to do, if he can figure out a way to get it done without him having to do it. He’s a pretty smart guy at figuring ways to avoid the unnecessary. He’s also pretty good about responding to communications if you want to drop him a line.
By the way, on a side note, the success of T4HWW was primarily due to social media.
April 3, 2009 at 07:02PM
Thanks for the comments. Glad you enjoy the blog, Daryl (love your daily plan cards by the way, will mention them in the next recap). I agree what you say about Tim Ferriss. I don’t think it’s about cutting out work, but rather cutting out stuff you don’t want to do or don’t enjoy. If you enjoy making pro websites, that’s great. But if you’d rather put your time into learning nine languages, that’s fine too.
April 5, 2009 at 02:48AM
Wow, that would be totally awesome! Thanks.