Matthew Lang

Mike Vardy has been writing about his experiences with Todoist recently. If you're a fellow user of Todoist then I definitely recommend reading his recent posts on labels and conducting weekly reviews in Todoist.

Yesterday I wrote about coasting along. Good for when you're driving and taking in the good views, but when you're coasting for everything you do, you're just ticking the boxes. Today marks the first day of a reboot to purge this nasty habit.

If only everything was as easy to fix as a reboot. Got problems with your computer? Reboot and try again. It's amazing how often this works. I'm not technical support person, but the amount of times I've given technical support to family and it was simply a matter of rebooting their PC is astounding. It's not this easy for everything though.

Rebooting yourself takes a bit more thought, a bit more time. Let's face it, we're complicated entities. Our brains have the accrued knowledge and memories of a whole lifetime. We have habits, whether good or bad, engrained in us. How we approach problems and solve them is different for others. This rebooting lark then is going to take some time then. I'm not expecting a change overnight, but I am expecting to see good results as each day comes. I'm not trying to achieve everything on day one, just making sure that for each day, I've made a positive change to how I work and what I do.

This is the first day of the reboot. So where do I begin? Well, this morning I decided to ditch the MacBook and went out for a cycle. I haven't done this as much as I would like to, as I like to use the Friday to catch up on a few things. Those things can wait though. This morning I just wanted to clear my head and start again. I put on my bike gear, grabbed the bike, walked my oldest son to school and then headed out.

The west of Scotland is having a period of sunny weather so it could not be a better time to head out. As it was the morning, the heat hadn't reached it peak and the trails were great. Dry hardpacked roads mixed with some dry grassy paths further up. The descent back down was even better.

The bike ride was good. It gives me a chance to clear my head which is something I wasn't doing often enough. Using the Friday morning for a bike ride, even if it's just 90 minutes is a good use of time. Everyone knows that exercise is important but what's also important is the chance to leave a few things behind. The feeds, the timelines, the inboxes, the emails, the messages, the tasks. They can wait. They'll still be there when we get back. The difference now is that with a clear head I might be in a better frame of mind to take a few of these on. And that's a good starting point I think for the rebooting process to begin.

It's a horrible thing to admit, but I've been coasting since the start of the year. While I've had the chance to just get on with work, it's not good for my long term goals.

I started the year with the best intentions. I wanted to do so much this year, but six months on and I've nothing to show for my intentions. There's lots of reasons why my plans fell apart over the last six months. Loss of interest and motivation, doing just enough and simply punching in and out of my work day. It might keep my stress levels down by simply doing the work that I need to do, but in the long term this isn't going to keep me getting paid as a software developer in the future.

Coasting along isn't going to pay the bills in the future. Rather than simply doing the work, I need to keep learning on the job, writing about those experiences and re-using them in the future to deliver value in my work.

Costing along isn't going to build a successful freelance business with great clients. I have a handful of clients now that keep me busy, but I need to keep those clients by continually delivering good service and value.

Coasting along isn't going to make me spend more time reading and writing. Yes, I'm reading alot, but on the flip side my writing has tailed off in the last six months. Writing is not only something I enjoy but a possible revenue stream in the future if I decide to publish.

Coasting along is bad thing to do. You end up cheating yourself of new learning experiences, opportunities, a good career and more importantly, the life that you want. Coasting is a short term fix if things get hectic but in the long term it's not going to get you back on track. Eventually you're going to end up in the wilderness wondering what the hell happened.

For me it's time to get back on track.

Last night I took my oldest son to his coaching at the golf club. He had a great time. Chatting with his new friend, hitting some balls on the practice ground and getting some tips from the club's new professional. I sat and watched him from the clubhouse, just making sure that he was keeping his focus for most of the session. At the end I met him on the practice ground, grabbed his bag and shoes and we headed home to catch the opening game of the World Cup. The conversation in the car comprised of who was playing in the football, the plans for a golf compeition on Sunday and the many epic shots that my son said he hit. A good night.

This week hasn't always been this good though. I now understand why my parents frequently referred to themselves as being 'broken down record players'. I finally get it. It's just taken me to having a kid of my own to understand. Every day this week, my son has got himself into trouble for the stupidest of things. It's been a frustrating week. It's at the stage where you continually repeat yourself. My son does listen. I know he does, but in between him thinking about golf, football, food, gaming and getting outside, there's only a small window of opportunity for the message to get through. I feel like I'm on repeat. I shouldn't be too hard on him though. I was reminded yesterday thay I'm fortunate that I see him every day.

Last night I read about the sad news of Eric Meyer's daughter, Rebecca. For those that don't know Eric, he's a noted expert in HTML and CSS. Eric is a respected member of the web community and many developers and designers are familiar with his work and contributions since the early days of the Internet.

Eric's daughter passed away last week after a long fight against cancer. Yesterday was her funeral service. Eric has been writing about Rebecca's progress on his blog. Reading his 'Never' post was especially difficult and put things into perspective. They are beautiful words for tragic circumstances. That's the only way I can describe it. If you've got a few minutes I suggest you go and read it.

I started to think about my own kids. Their future is a mix of maybes, possibilities, and definites. A lot can happen, more to the point a lot will happen. For the many times that they get into trouble, do the wrong thing or play up, they're still healthy kids and they have the rest of their lives ahead of them. As parents with kids or even as guardians to the kids in your life, we might not appreciate seeing these them grow up and the experiences they will go through.

That's all been taken from Rebecca's family. The chance to see her grow and all the experiences that she would have gone through in her life. I sincerely hope that the Meyer's find some peace in the future. I can't begin to imagine what they are going through but it's something that no parent should experience. We take it for granted that our time will come before our kids, but that's not alway the case though. Next time I get frustrated about repeating myself to them, I should remember that they're still there in front of me, even if they are continually getting into trouble.

Every week it seems there's another new service or product online that aims to solve the problem of information overload. Why can't we solve this problem on our own?

Toastio announced their new service today. It touts itself as Twitter for email. It limits the length of emails you receive to 350 words. Anything longer than is bounced back to the sender asking them to send a shorter message. I don't see any benefit in this, but I could be wrong.

One problem I immediately see with this is that it's another inbox that I need to manage. I don't want another inbox. I have enough of them already. Everyday we interact with different inboxes that feed us with streams of information that we view at intervals. Some of us spend hours in these inboxes while the more efficient among us might just check these inboxes once or twice a day spending just a few minutes of our precious time.

There is a couple of solutions to this problem.

1. The All-In-One Inbox

If you're still wanting to get all the relevant information you need then the all-in-one inbox is the solution. A smart inbox that pulls content from any publishing stream and orders everything in order of interest. It regularly updates and orders the stream each day, determining what type of content it should display based on your current location and status.

Sounds like a rather far fetched idea doesn't it? Well it is. There's two problems with this idea. The first is that building a single inbox that handles a variety of data from different sources is a big challenge. The second is that not all data sources are easy to subscribe to for updates. I think it's fair to say that the all-in-one inbox isn't something that we are going to see anytime soon.

2. Limit Yourself

Don't despair, the second solution is within easier reach. Limit yourself. Limit the number of inboxes you have, limit the amount of data coming into those inboxes and then limit how often you check those inboxes. Do this regularly enough and you'll spend less time in your inbox and more time working, creating or doing whatever it is that you do.

There's one thing about Toastio that I do like. The 350 word limit on emails. I've seen this in a number of different forms over the years but perhaps the one I remember the most is five.sentenc.es. The idea here is that your adhere to a five sentence limit on your outgoing email. While this isn't feasible for all your outgoing email, the idea of limiting the length of an email is one that we can all do with.

Why don't we do it though?

Well, aside from the fact that most people would give up on it faster than a New Year resolution, it would force people to re-think the email they're sending. For some people that's just too much like hard work. Rather than pausing for a moment to think about what to write, they would rather put their every thought and opinion in a email spanning 500 words when only 150 would have done it. So even asking people to write less and think more isn't going to make your inbox go down. No reasons why you can't make it your own persoal limit when sending emails though.

And that's the last thing about limiting yourself. Limit your outgoing data. Limit your email length, limit your social network time, limit your time aimlessly surfing the net. Limiting yourself in this way gives you more time to get stuff done. The important stuff.