Organize IT

As a slight change of pace I thought I would ask you, the readers, what your top five websites would be if you were stuck on a desert island with a big nasty firewall in place that stopped you viewing any other sites. Below is my selection along with explanations. Please do leave your own choices in the comments.

• BBC: The first place I go to if I want to get the latest news or if I want to find out the sports scores. Plus they have a load of radio streams.
• Lifehack.org: The biggest productivity site out there with both fresh and user submitted content. If I can’t view any other GTD sites at least this site will give a good idea of what’s going on.
• Zen Habits: My favourite producitivity site. It’s updated regularly and comes complete with a philosophy of simplifying your life that I can really relate to.
• Digg: If I want alternative opinions, tech news, cool photos and videos then this is the site to go to. Plus the comments are always entertaining :)
• ProBlogger: Seeing as blogging is one of my favourite hobbies right now, it’s only appropriate I choose the ever popular ProBlogger.

In the past I have talked about the GTD vertical map, and related to that, roles and responsibilities. One thing that GTD encourages is to write your life purpose/vision at the 50,000ft level. In other books it is often called a mission statement and is one the most common elements of any personal development program.

However recently I have been aiming to trim away some of the fat from my system, primarily evident in the latest iteration where I use a single sheet to do all my organizing. One thing I decided to leave off it is a box for defining a mission statement for my life. Even in the past when I did always write one down, I found little practical purpose to having one. So, I am curious to know if any of you guys have a mission statement, and if so how do you go about using it?

I read an interesting point in a book called Dejunk Your Life by Helen Foster which makes an interesting point about how working full time can actually be more expensive. In theory doing more hours means more money, especially if you get paid by the hour. However, 40+ hours a week is a lot regardless of any other factors and it means you have to give more consideration to such things as travel, food and especially childcare. Helen Foster claims the average worker spends around £3000 a year on actively going to work and that can seriously make a dent in all that money you would otherwise make from long hours/overtime.

Most people when they are young will often go for a fun and unique email address. For instance, I used to choose email addresses based on song titles. It was fine at the time but nowadays when people ask me for it, it’s actually quite inconvenient. Plus there is the perception it can give off. Have you ever looked at someone’s resume or business card and noticed their email address was something quirky like crazychickxxx@genericmail.us? Has it altered your perception of that person? While I’m sure most people wouldn’t use an email address like xxxhardcore@ubermail.com to publicize themselves, in your opinion does having a sensible email like peterparker@hotmail.com over a more imaginative one have much influence? What about if you’re in a creative field?

As we get more space on our computers and can now save so many files digitally online, the whole issue of having the physical product versus the space it takes up is a big one. While I keep digital copies of my photos on my computer, my partner likes to have them developed and put in photo albums. The only problem is photo albums tend to be quite bulky. The photos alone from my recent holiday will likely take up two entire albums and combined with the three I already have, that’s a lot of space taken up. How much space will my photos take up?