jameswang.net » Productivity

Genius Machine

James Wang — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:52:13 +0000

I love playing with ideas. I’m definitely an idea guy. Unfortunately, though many of them do, many of them also don’t tend to ever see the light of day. I was reading Jason Curlee’s blog and saw this post recently talking about the book Genius Machine. Here’s quoting his analysis of it.

Ideas enter the process fuzzy, weak, and partially baked. Using the eleven steps–

Distinction (seeing something new),
Identity (knowing who you are and why you are driven to share your idea),
Implications (exploring every possible consequence of your idea),
Testing (find the breaking point),
Precedent (who else has done something like this),
Need (who will it be most valuable for / focus on your audience),
Foundation (discover the underlying principles or rules),
Completion (can your idea stand on its own),
Connecting (flattening the learning curve),
Impact (is the impact of your idea in alignment with your goals)
and Advocacy (you must champion your ideas)

You can check out his post here and while your at it, check out the rest of his site. I regularly find myself saving his stuff to think about and chew on for later.

TED Thursdays: Tim Ferriss – Smash fear, learn anything

James Wang — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:35:16 +0000

I thought overall he has some very motivational things to say. A lot of what I got from him is, if you are scared, ask yourself why and what’s the worst that could happen. Learn from the best. Reading some other people’s comments, he might over simplify some things in the sense that they may not be exactly reproducible. Specifically, he learns japanese, buuuuut he says it was because he had a kanji poster that helped him narrow his problem space. Having a poster on my wall of stuff might help but the fact that he was also living IN Japan AND living WITH a japanese family probably helped a little too. I do agree with narrowing and breaking down your problem space though and also that attitude is a huge part of achievement and success. He’s got a great amount of attitude, achievement and success.

Like his talk? Check out his book:

Posting from my G1 with Postbot

James Wang — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:05:13 +0000

I just found an app on the android market called postbot. This is definitely going to be nice to have the option of posting straight from my phone. I doubt it will actually make me post more but who doesn’t like more options

*update* looks like it doesn’t format correctly. bummer. Hmm, the search continues . . .

Desktop, Faster – 4 apps that may drastically increase your productivity

James Wang — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:26:45 +0000

Here are 4 of my desktop productivity favorites that I use all the time:

Xobni – http://www.xobni.com/
Google Desktop – http://desktop.google.com/
Rocket Dock – http://www.rocketdock.com/
Enso – http://www.humanized.com/

Xobni is inbox spelled backwards, or I think their pitch is “looking at the inbox in a different way”. This integrates with Microsoft Outlook. If you haven’t tried it or heard about it, it is worth a look, especially if you work in a profession that requires you to be in touch with a lot of people. Even if you aren’t, it will help you know things like, “what are all my conversations with this person?” “Where are all my attachments from this person?” “What time of day seems to be the time that they respond most to my emails?” “Is this person on linkedin, and did they upload a picture because I’d love to know what they look like?”. Yes, all the above can be answered and more, even what they look like if they did upload to linkedin.

Google Desktop is great because it is Google Search for your desktop, but also your inbox. I’ve found this less necessary over time, to be honest, since I have xobni for my inbox and at home I use Vista, so the search is actually quite good, but with that said, there is a whole endless library of widgets and searching to be explored for those still in XP land or just really hate your vista search and widgets.

Rocket Dock is nothing special for Mac Fan Boys. It basically brings the joy of the mac-like dock to the windows world. I think it works for linux too, not sure. A good idea is a good idea. Its extremely easy to drag and drop from the toolbar, and it is awesome eye candy as well. You’d be surprised how much time you save with this dock.

Enso is basically like having a command line to everything on your desktop anytime you want to call it up. This may be a little too nerdy for some. If you like command lines, you will love this. Imagine holding down the caps lock key (much less wierd than it sounds) and typing “google Dave Thomas” and there you have it, a browser window pops up with the google results for Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s. BUUUUUT what if you were reading about something or someone, and you wanted to know, LIKE RIGHT NOW, more about this person or thing. You could use your mouse to select the text and then use capslock and type “google” and let go, and it will google that selected text. There is much more it can do, like instead of digging for the menu location of say excel or word, just type, “open word” and it will give you the option to select or just open it right then and there. Trust me, there is much more than you would want me to even bother telling you about. If you are a nerd, or are a brave non-nerd, you will like this.

Hit me up in the comments and tell me what you think!

Controlling computers with your brain now a reality

James Wang — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:56:03 +0000

Basically, there is a company called Emotiv and they have a headset called the Emotiv EPOC headset. You strap it on and you think and it picks up the brain activity from electric impulses created by your neurons firing. Crazy, I know.

Here’s a picture from CNN.

You can read the full story here

Remember the milk . . . while checking your GMail!

James Wang — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:31:33 +0000

how great is this! Remember the milk now has a firefox plugin that lets you have it integrated with your gmail. This is great because it adds outlook like functionality by letting you manage your information better. This really helps both apps out a lot in my opinion. Will this be making Google apps a little closer to becoming an outlook killer? Maybe just for consumers, but not for corporate I’m guessing, unless Google buys out Remember the Milk and just integrates it into Google Apps. Hmm, . . .

Well, either way, check out the screenshot and if you think it’s cool, take a hop from this link to do it as well.

Begin With the End in Mind

James Wang — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:27:11 +0000

I’ll flesh this out some more maybe later this evening, but I wanted to put down that it is good to sometimes sit down, hopefully at least once a year and figure out some of the “ends” that you are trying to get to and then work backwords. If there is one thing I’ve learned while working at Planitax, it is to begin with the end in mind and to work backwards from your goals to figure out how to get there. Simple, I know, but when was the last time you sat down and wrote your 1 year, 5 year and long term goals down? I know for me I don’t do it half as much as I wish I would. I try to do this once a quarter and make quarterly goals for myself, from things like “skydive this summer” (which I did) to “learn to surf” (which I have yet to do). I lost my old “About Me” page so it is time to write a new one. I see this as a good thing and a time to rewrite and take inventory of who “me” is again. I love hearing other peoples goals because many of them end up being ones I had never thought of doing but would love to do too, so please comment with some goals you might have or write me in an email. You can use the “contact me” to do this if you would like. Thanks for the emails so far and response.