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Are You Financially Fit? Find Out Your Bills IQ

Debt is a serious problem in America. With gas prices sky high and the mortgage crisis going on, it’s getting a lot worse. You can’t simply rely on a new president’s financial plan to turn your situation around.

Whether you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck while your bills stack up behind you, or you’re dipping into your savings to put food on the table, there is help for you.

The best thing you can do to achieve any goal is to have a plan to get there and Bills.com can help you put a financial plan into effect. They offer Debt relief.  Debt consolidation, and Debt help that is tailored to your specific needs.

All you do is take the simple Bills IQ Quiz. This will give you a number and letter grade that helps you identify your situation. Once you have taken the quiz, Bills.com will actually give you the solutions you need to get a perfect score.

You will receive expert advice and be connected to specific resources to help you with Credit card debt, Bankruptcy, Consolidating debt, and more.

The best part about it is that this is all free. I took the quiz myself and I was kinda surprised at what I found out, but it’s a lot less shocking when the solutions are provided for you. You can always go back to Bills.com periodically to check your progress and make sure your score is increasing.

Go check it out. It’s free. Tell me what you think about it.

Sponsored by Bills.com

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How I Keep Up With Identi.ca, FriendFeed, Twitter, Kwippy, and Rejaw

This is quick video showing how I keep track of multiple micro-blogging services using Pidgin, Launchy, and Ping.fm. I basically send everything via Ping.fm and recieve everything via IM.

One thing I forgot to mention here is that I can also “post” to Twitter from TwitterSpy (which I mentioned in a previous post).

How I Keep Up With the Micro-Blogosphere–>

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Cross-Posting Etiquette: A Few Ways To Stay Connected

Everywhere At Once

Welcome, StumbleUpon users! Don’t forget to subscribe.

Ok, now that we understand the evils of posting across multiple services, let’s talk about the basic ways we can go about keeping track of these services.

The main issue with cross-posting using services like Ping.fm and Hellotxt is that you’re not actually engaging with people, you’re just using their time-line as your own personal billboard. I’m pretty sure this is detrimental to your personal brand.

If you don’t care about your personal brand, let’s just say it makes you look like a total noob.

There are 3 simple ways that you can interact with a micro-blogging service short of visiting the website. There may be other ways, but I choose these because I actually use most of them on a daily basis.

Instant Messaging

Identi.ca has full IM support

You can send and receive all your updates via IM. Simply login to http://identi.ca and go to Settings->IM, then follow the directions.

Kwippy provides alerts via IM

Kwippy will IM you when you recieve new comments, private message and various other things you might want to know. To set it up, login to Kwippy and visit your dashboard. The first thing you see should be the instructions for activating IM support.

TwitterSpy pretty much replaces Twitter’s IM functionality

Twitter is currently working feverishly to restore IM functionality. They also plan to implement a monetization strategy, completely fix the spam problem, and bring about peace in the middle east. Until their work is complete, you can use TwitterSpy.

Simply add ‘twitterspy@jabber.org’ to your GTalk buddy list. Typing “help” will give you a list of commands. Don’t worry about all that right now:

  • track @<username> (this will make sure you get your @replies)
  • twlogin <username> <password> (this logs you into twitter)
  • post <message> (now you can post to Twitter via IM….again)

For those who miss the “track” feature on Twitter: “help track”. (more info on TwitterSpy).

Email

Most services allow you to receive basic notices via email. Identi.ca does allow posting via email, but I don’t see a method to receive updates on any of the micro-blogging services I’m actually using.

That is not to say this isn’t possible. There are various hacks and services you could use such as TwitterMail and this one.  Those work (I guess) for Twitter. I’m pretty sure you could do something similar with Identi.ca. As for the others, I’m not sure.

SMS

Identi.ca supports SMS via Email

This means that you can receive your updates if your carrier has an Email<->SMS gateway. Most do. Just check the settings to see if your carrier is listed.

Twitter has full SMS support

I know this may come as a shock, but Twitter actually has SMS support. I believe it works pretty good. You should check it out.

Conclusions

Earlier, I read an account of one user’s Ping.fm usage and he brought an important point to light. I think the majority of issues come from mobile users.

It’s easy as hell to “Ping” from your phone. Ping.fm provides an interface for mobile phones and a specialized interface for iPhones.

Why is this a problem? Well, the cards are stacked against us! Ping.fm can already post to just about any service you can think of, then they support new services almost as soon as they’re released.

These micro-blogging services haven’t even had a chance to provide mobile users with a way to access their updates. So, we have a bunch of people running around Ping.fm’ing the crap out of us with no way to monitor our replies without actually visiting 4 or 5 different websites from their phone.

Bottom line is, it’s still your responsibility to be aware of your actions. Just because you’re holding a hammer, doesn’t mean everything is a nail. You know you’re not very active on certain services, so stop broadcasting to them.

If you are hell bent on trying to talk to everyone at once, you need to be just as passionate about being able to listen to everyone at once.

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Cross-Posting Etiquette: The Evils of Ping.fm and HelloTxt

Welcome, StumbleUpon users! Don’t forget to subscribe.

A little while ago, I did a post on using Ping.fm without spamming FriendFeed. This was followed up with a post by Andy DeSoto, where he talks about whether this Ping.fm cross-posting is saving time at the expense of others. Now, I know there are a lot of people in the social media community who are against etiquette and I totally understand where they are coming from. The problem is there are some things that you can do that make you look like a very bad and inconsiderate person.

There are people that I am really interested in following. I want to be aware of things going on with them. That’s why I follow them. I hate to see these people tarnish their image by abusing community technology tools. Social media is about being social. You have to listen as well as talk. Services like Ping.fm and HelloTxt are very powerful and can cause a lot of damage to this interaction in the wrong hands.

Using an ‘@’ symbol in Ping.fm

Are you serious? As Andy pointed out in his post, the ‘@’ is pretty specific to Twitter replies and doesn’t really translate to other services. Even in the rare case where you might be talking to a person who actually exists on two or more different services, why would you ‘@’ them on all of them? I don’t need to see your Twitter ‘@’ replies on Identi.ca. The person you’re talking to don’t live here and nobody can piece together what you’re talking about.

Your follower count is 0, Zero, Zilch

Are you broadcasting to a service where you are following 0? Nobody? Nadie? Why would you do this? I know I’m new here and all, but having a large number of followers and a low (nonexistant?) number of people you’re following is the mark of a spammer. I understand that you may not be active on every service, but come on. You didn’t even try. People may be interested in what you broadcast and then totally reversed once they see you are not listening.

You Never Check Your Updates

Have you ever received a call from an automated message? Annoying, isn’t it? If you are not available to speak to me live, why the hell did you call? I figure that most of us use Social Media to connect with others, but how are you doing this effectively if you don’t even respond when people try to engage with you? When you broadcast to a service, people expect that you are actually there. You are available for discourse. When you don’t respond, that leaves people with a bad impression.

Step Your Game Up

We can’t all be on every service all the time. It’s just not possible unless you’re a robot or you have some slick software yet to be released (I can haz beta key, please?). You have to set realistic goals for interacting with the community. It’s fine if you want to jump on every new service that comes out. Go ahead, play around with it. That’s what we do, right? Here are some basic guidelines to help you out:

  • Do not plug every service you have an account with into Ping.fm or HelloTxt just because
  • Do not make Ping.fm your primary method for using Twitter or any other specific service
  • Do not ever use Ping.fm to send an @reply. Period.
  • If you are not going to check a specific site at least once or twice a day, don’t broadcast there

Think about a person you would just love to have a discussion with. You have followed there blog or maybe heard them speak on a podcast. You would really like to get into this person’s head and here they are right in front of you! The problem is, no matter what you do to get their attention, they ignore you. They have a megaphone in hand and they are shouting at someone you can’t even see. Other people nearby are looking at this person like they’re crazy. Now, turn things around. Are you the nut job with the megaphone?

Stay Tuned

This post is not aimed at anyone in particular. I just felt compelled to share because I really hate running into situations where very interesting and intelligent people are misusing these services and probably don’t even know it. I took Plurk out of Ping.fm because I never go there. I dislike it immensely, so it would be wrong to continuously post there. Be considerate of others. This is a community, after all.

Far be it from me to call someone ashy without being able to provide a little lotion. There are many ways that you can make your life easier in keeping track of all these different micro-blogging services. I plan to share them with you at a later date, but this post has become entirely too long and I got updates to check.

Get the next installment here: Being Everywhere At Once

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My Brother Can’t Stick With an MMORPG

Me and my little brother play Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG’s). I try to be a good big bro whenever possible, so this is one of the ways we bond. We may be physically in two different places at times, even within the same house, but at least we can threaten to murder eachother almost face-to-face in the game.

Today I noticed a trend. We have gone through about 4 of these games within the past year and a half. My character in the game always ends up more powerful and well-rounded than his, even if he has had a head-start.

If you are into these types of games, you know that it takes a lot of time and effort in front of that computer to develop your character (unless you are willing to dump money into it). I’m not just “better” at the games than he is. I don’t even read the strategy guides and FAQ’s. I don’t spend any more time on the game than him.

So what makes the difference? Why do I come out ahead?

Are You Too Caught Up in the Doing?

I realized that he will develop a character just so far before deciding he doesn’t like how it’s going to turn out. He should have been a Knight instead of a Sorcerer or he chose the wrong class once he leveled up, or he doesn’t like the haircut he picked. Whatever the case, he starts all over from scratch, or switches games entirely!

Now, keep in mind, we are talking about an online game, here. He’s obviously not hurting anything by flitting from game to game and constantly trying to play them from all different angles. But, how many of us do this in everyday life?

The issue here is, he is starting the game with no particular goals in mind. He is focusing on the things you do in the game. You kill stuff, you sell stuff, you buy stuff, you level up and get powerful. He isn’t thinking about what it’s all for. He is admiring the flora and fauna, not really thinking about the forest as a whole.

This is an awesome mindset to have if you are just playing a game for fun or if you actually happen to be meandering through a beautiful forest, but not when you are supposed to be accomplishing things in your life.

If You Never Set Goals, You Will Never Achieve Them

That looks ridiculous actually written down, doesn’t it? But this is how people go through life. They have vague ideas of what you’re supposed to do to be a “success,” but no clue as to what success really is for them.

It’s usually not a good idea to jump in the car and start driving before you’ve decided where you want to go, especially given the price of gas these days, but we do it with our lives all the time. Just like my brother does in his games: we grind and grind and take baby steps toward becoming slightly better than before, but to what end? You may be able to make enough money to cover wasted gas, but there is no replacing wasted time.

Do You Look At Your Feet When You Walk?

Well? Do You? Do you look at your feet to make sure they are going one in front of the other or do you look in front of you to see where you are going? If you watch your feet, you may want to check with your doctor to make sure you don’t have an inner-ear thing. For the rest of us, it will be to your benefit to pick a destination. Find out what your goals really are. Write them down.

Once you have figured out where you really want to go, you may find yourself drawn there almost automatically. Things begin to work themselves out with a lot less effort on your part. Kind of like when you decide to walk across a room or…through a forest.

How do you stay focused on your destination?

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Make FriendFeed Slightly More Productive: Script Updates

Everyone knows how awesome Duncan’s FriendFeed tabs are. After reading Smaller Tabs, More Choices , I created a couple more tabs to help increase my productivity while using FriendFeed. I agree with Duncan, though: “Ideally these will one day become one script and user definable.” So I decided to go ahead and make that happen.

This new script will allow you to enable/disable tabs right from the configuration GUI. You can also create new tabs by specifying a name and a website. The script will try to automatically figure out where the favicon is if you don’t specify it. You can also toggle Cleaner FriendFeed from the config GUI. If you are running any of the tab scripts or Cleaner FriendFeed, you should disable them as I don’t think they will play nice with this script.

I created a quick screencast to demonstrating some of the features.

You can download the script from here.

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Ping.fm: Updating Your Social Networks Without Spamming FriendFeed

Ping.fm is a service that allows you to send out updates of various types (status updates, blogs, micro-blogs) to multiple social networks. I have been using it for some time and my results have been mostly positive. This is not a tutorial on how to use it. After seeing the topic on numerous occasions (here, there, everywhere) and reading DeSoto’s “Must blogging be a balancing act?“, I decided to share my Ping.fm strategy to see what others think.

Why?

This is all about increasing my social networking influence. I want to interact with a diverse selection of people because I have diverse interests. Ping.fm allows me to keep all these different groups updated with whatever is going on with me. I can share new music I create, content I’ve written, whatever I choose and I can share it across multiple social networks. I want to learn from others and get their feedback on what I’m doing.

Updating all of your social networks from one place is definitely a time-saver, but it could also have the community thinking you are a spamming moron if done incorrectly. For instance, Most of the services supported by PIng.fm are also supported by FriendFeed, so you could potentially send one update and have it show up several times. This is usually not desirable. I say “usually” because some FF users actually advocate turning everything up to full blast and allowing the user to filter accordingly.

That solution is less than ideal for me. I really don’t want anyone to Hide any of my FriendFeed services because I haven’t really figured out how I’m going to organize them yet. I may duplicate content now, but that may very well change in the near future. So, I decided to devise an updating scheme that allows me room for more flexibility.

What?

Before we get into those details, it’s important to understand how each Ping.fm update type shows up on each social networking service you subscribe to, so here is a table describing a few:

Ping.fm Update Type Bebo Facebook Hi5 Identi.ca
Statuses Changes Status Scraps Dent
Blogs Blog n/a Blog n/a
Micro-Blogs n/a Status n/a Dent
Ping.fm Update Type LiveJournal MySpace Tumblr Twitter Xanga
Statuses Blog Status Blog Tweet Pulse
Blogs Blog Blog Blog n/a Blog
Micro-Blogs Blog n/a Blog Tweet Pulse

Yeah, I have Bebo, MySpace, and Hi5. Big Whoop. Wanna fight about it?

Using Ping.fm, I can actually stay active on networks that I don’t really visit any more than once a week. Here is how I decided to break everything down:

  • I will post full, original content here at SheenOnline. I will also post more personal or off-topic content on LiveJournal and/or Xanga. I haven’t really figured out how this will work yet.
  • The social networking sites that provide a blog service will get excerpts and links back to whichever blog has my full article. I also would like to send excerpts to LJ and Xanga which link to my posts at SheenOnline.
  • Obviously, Identi.ca and Twitter both get my statuses, but I’m mainly only watching for responses on Identi.ca at this point.
  • I have no idea what I’m going to do with Tumblr. I’m thinking I want to pipe everything I write online to Tumblr, but I haven’t researched how much of a pain that would be.

Now that we have a basic (hah!) Ping.fm strategy, how will this fit into FriendFeed? If I were to pipe all this directly in, I would post a total of around 4 items anytime I made a blog post and I don’t think my followers would appreciate that very much. Also, I don’t want any of my services to get hidden.

Services that post to FriendFeed:

  • Identi.ca – Center of my micro-blogging world 🙂
  • LiveJournal – “Personal” blog
  • SheenOnline – Primary blog

Services that didn’t make the cut:

  • Twitter – This would just end up being a duplicate, I rarely post here directly
  • Xanga – Not sure what will go here yet. Possibly nothing 🙂
  • Tumblr – This may end up aggregating just about everything, so definitely not needed for FF

Caveats and Notes

One of the main points of all this is to be able to link everything back to my primary blog here at SheenOnline. Here are the details I found out as far as linking and HTML go:

  • Bebo will make a link clickable automatically
  • Facebook does appear to convert a link properly for statuses
  • Hi5 handles HTML weird. I haven’t figured out reliably how it handles links
  • Identi.ca and Twitter handle links just fine (duh?)
  • LiveJournal converts your links
  • Myspace will convert your links and handles HTML
  • Xanga will handle HTML links

In order to explicitly create a blog post, you can either go to the Ping.fm website, or you can send the content via email (Settings->Edit Profile to find your posting address). By default, Ping.fm sends out a status message, so your email should be of the form:

  • @b <title>^<body>

Conclusion

Please keep in mind, this is not a step-by-step guide that you should follow. I am simply posting this to describe my thought processes surrounding how I leverage Ping.fm to maintain my online presence. Maybe you don’t subscribe to some of the stuff I do and you’re not trying to balance eleventeen blogs.

In a future post, I will talk about drinking from the firehose or “playing in the stream” as J. Phil puts it. If your efforts at connecting with others actually pan out, you will have a lot of incoming data to deal with.

How do you use Ping.fm? Do you use a different service for this? Tell me about it.

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Give Your Pidgin More Bite With Snarl

I recently noticed a shared item from Google Reader in my FriendFeed that I hoped would solve a major issue I’ve had with keeping up with things. I have Remember The Milk for storing my To Do items and Google Calendar for keeping track of dated events. I even have a slick method for capturing events and items via my desktop launcher. I should be on top of things. But there is a piece missing.

Google Calendar allows alerts via Email, Pop-ups, and SMS. This should work out great, except that I don’t have SMS right now, I don’t keep GCal open, and I don’t have a method to notify me of new mail on my desktop. I have Remember The Milk set up to notify me via Google Talk of upcoming items, but there is still a chance I may ignore the new chat window (sometimes I get a little caught up in FriendFeed).

Snarl, in combination with Pidgin, actually provides me the best solution. I always have Pidgin running to handle various communications needs (Yahoo/AIM/GTalk/IRC/Jabber), so it makes perfect sense for my notifications system to center around it.

All I had to do was:

  • Install Snarl
  • Install the Snarl Extension for Pidgin, PidginSnarl
  • Make sure my GTalk Account in Pidgin was set for Email Notifications
  • And enjoy the Snarly goodness!

Here is a screenshot of the types of notifications I get from Pidgin now:

As you can see, I now receive notifications about new email messages, including reminders of how many new emails I have. As an added benefit, I can monitor Identi.ca and other messaging services without actually switching to the Pidgin window.

This means I spend more time on task and doing what I should be doing, and less time playin on Identi.ca. I no longer miss those important podcasts I keep adding to my calendar because I’ll get a desktop notification. I will also recieve new IM’s from Remember The Milk directly to my desktop.

Don’t forget to check out the other extensions available at the Snarl homepage (FireSnarl, for instance).

Did I explain this poorly? Do you have any experience with Snarl or Pidgin that you would like to share? How do you handle notifications to make sure you don’t miss things?

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…But by the Content of Their Character

Success is not based on who is following you on Twitter. Success is not based on how much traffic you get to your blog each day or how many people are subscribed to your RSS feed. Success is not the measure of how many people appear to be watching your content online. If this paragraph makes you frown in confusion, you most certainly need to read on because you are in need of some help.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Aug. 28, 1963

(Thanks to @boycaught for reminding me of the full quote)

This quote by Dr. King not only applies to race, but to any other insignificant or material characteristic of a person. You can’t judge yourself or anyone else based on the statistics surrounding your online presence. Darren even breaks it down into an equation for you and shows how detrimental it can be to your success.

In my post, A Leader Doesn’t Care What You Think, I give a few examples of some characteristics that most leaders share. The overall idea is that someone who is successful, a leader, is one who is always looking ahead. These are people that are always trying to learn from those smarter than themselves.

Is Scoble a success because he has the entire Social Media Militia following him, or are they following him because he often leads to something new and interesting?

Scoble has said on a few different occasions that he seeks to talk to someone interesting and/or learn something new everyday. He doesn’t base his life on what others think about him. This is the attitude you should have if you want to have anything close to the status and respect he has.

Just recently, Twitter users lost huge numbers of their followers and the community was (still is, actually) in an uproar. Their ability to broadcast to hundreds and thousands of listeners was taken away. Cyndy is actually depressed that some Social Medialites are more focused on broadcasting than actually having a conversation, while Corvida writes that this is a golden opportunity to reach out and expand your horizons.

These ideas extend well beyond the realm of the Social Media community, past “The Internets”, and right into your own home:

  • You are not the center of the universe
  • You must become a comet, a moving target
  • No one can follow you if you’re standing still
  • No one will even notice you

Make sure you are not so full of yourself that you can’t take  in anything new. Allow yourself to grow. People will start to listen to you. Your prestige will rise. The followers, the traffic, and all the numbers that some obsess over will eventually follow suit.

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Make FriendFeed Slightly More Productive

FriendFeed is becoming more and more central to my online activity. I feel I have only scratched the surface of what can be accomplished with it. Even at this early stage, I know that I have accelerated the development of relationships, and the growth of my personal knowledge just by being a regular FriendFeeder.

A recent discussion started by jeff(isageek), got me thinking. I really should have tabs for web apps I want to keep tabs on right there in FriendFeed. I mean…I’m always in it anyway, might as well try to get things done while I’m there. You may remember Duncan Riley creating a slew of scripts for adding various tabs to FriendFeed, but there were a few missing that I still needed.

You can’t be productive without access to your Calendar and your Task List, so I created a couple of quick and dirty Greasemonkey scripts based on Duncan’s.

And, just for good measure, let’s go ahead and add a tab for Identi.ca:

Another script that I find I am using a lot is the FriendFeed Read Later script. I don’t see how anyone survives without it. It will allow you to mark an item as “Later” and creates a “Read Later” tab where you can view all of the items you marked. I primarily use it to follow discussions I find interesting without having to hope they resurface or searching for them. I also use this feature to mark items I may want to blog about later.

How do you keep up with your FriendFeed? How do you make sure you stay productive while using it? Enquiring minds want to know. Leave me a comment.

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What Happened to My Priorities?

I remember when I first started trying to get organized years ago. I started off with a Handspring Visor and then moved up to a Palm III. I also remember struggling with prioritizing my tasks. Should I clean the bathroom first, or shave the dog? Which was more important? I think I spent more time fiddling with the priority numbers than actually completing the tasks.

Getting Things Done Doesn’t Prioritize Tasks

Apparently, Getting Things Done (GTD) does not bother with task priorities and Donald over at Life Optimizer gives a great explanation as to why (read the full story here). I never actually thought about this until I saw his post, but it raises another question:

What should you do with the priority settings in your task-management software?

The obvious solution to me was to use the priorities to organize my Projects. Let’s take a look at a simple project to upgrade wordpress (just an ex., get the official steps here):

  1. Make Backups
  2. Deactivate Plugins
  3. Upload New Files
  4. Upgrade Database

In this example, we see the Priority for each task will just correspond to the order in which it should be completed. Each task directly depends on the one before it.

It also just so happens that Remember The Milk has exactly 4 priorities to chose from. The simplest way to set a priority for a task is to click the task to highlight it and press a number (1 thru 4). This will set the tasks priority and add an indicator. Priority if 4 is the default, so you see no indicator.

What if your Project has more than 4 steps?

Since each task in the project depends on the one before it, you would simply re-prioritize (or re-number) the project each time you complete a task or each time you finish all tasks you have already prioritized.

What if I can do groups of tasks simultaneously?

This is great! Just give these tasks the same priority. Once you hit a task that depends on one or all of them, move up to the next priority.

  1. Thing A
  1. Thing B
  2. Thing AB
  3. Thing C

Conclusion

There is no need to agonize over priorities on your task list. The only time priority really matters is within a Project and, since we define a project as a sequence of tasks, setting prorities should be a no-brainer. If you would like to implement priorities into your Remember The Milk usage, keep in mind that you can search for tasks with a specific priority (ie. search for “priority:1” to find first priority tasks). You could even use this knowledge to get rid of the “-next” tag. Just give your Next Actions a priority of 1 and search on that.

How do you prioritize your tasks? Can you think of another way to use priorities to help get things done? Leave a comment.

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The A-List Doesn’t Care About Your FriendFeed

“You can have relationships and discussions with people on FriendFeed without them actually being a part of your network”

I finally decided to check out this friendvenn app and was actually surprised at some of the names I saw that don’t follow me. There is no reason I should have made the assumption they cared about my content, but I did. What I realized is that you can have relationships and discussions with people on FriendFeed without them actually being a part of your network. I hadn’t really thought about this before. Not directly, anyway.
As for those people that don’t follow me, there was some discussion on

FriendFeed here and there where some FriendFeeders say it’s just not possible to keep up with that many subscriptions.

Not being part of the popular clique myself, I wouldn’t know anything about dealing with a huge number of followers. What I do know is this:

  • Stuff that is probably boring, not interesting, or blatant crap won’t stick on the first few pages of FF
  • The Hide feature is quite useful in trimming the fat
  • FriendFeed users (FriendFeeders?) may very well need better ways to figure out who to subscribe to. I mean, how do you deal with hundreds of Follows? View each person’s feed? *shudder*

“I would like a personal message from all A-Listers explaining why they don’t follow me”

I am a bit curious as to why some people haven’t followed me back:

  • Did I say something wrong?
  • Is it because I’m black?
  • Is it the missing LinkedIn Profile?
  • Does my breath stink?

In the end, it really is just curiosity. If I was to ever post something interesting, it would probably get Liked by someone they do follow. What I wonder is, have people made a conscious decision to ignore me? If so, I would probably be a better person for knowing why.

So, I would like a personal message from everyone on my list explaining why they don’t follow me. Oh…wait…they won’t see this anyway. Nevermind.

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To Do Lists Are Not Just About Task-Management

You To Do list may be a lot more powerful than you think. Here are a few ideas that may get your imagination working as to how you can harness the full power of one of the most basic organizational tools. Feel free to share any ideas you have in the comments section.

Borrowing/Lending

Tracking things you have lent or borrowed is quite useful. You can apply the same ideas from my Super Charging Remember The Milk series. For example, if Bill borrowed your iPhone, then you could create a task named “My iPhone” and give it tags like “-waiting, @lent, bill, iphone.”

In this case, I have set the context of this item to “lent” by preceding it with the “@” symbol. This allows me to create a Smart List later, to organize all the things I have “lent.” You will also notice that I have tagged the item Bill’s name so that I know who to harass when I start missing my iPhone. You can do the same thing for items you have borrowed.

Content Ideas

I have set up my desktop so that I can add items to Remember The Milk in the blink of an eye. Not only does this make sure that I don’t miss anything I need to do, but it also allows me to quickly collect any random ideas I get for content. I might be reading a blog post over on SheGeeks and get an idea for a new song. Or I could just be poking around on FriendFeed and get an idea for an awesome blog post.

Either way it goes, I can stick these things into Remember The Milk and flesh them out later. For instance, I might tag a new song idea with “-next, @studio, metal.”

Reading List

One of the best things you can do to increase your value as a person is to read. This will help your success in life immensely. People will be more willing to see you as a leader if you have a little more knowledge than they do. I sometimes add books others recommend to my reading list in Remember The Milk so that I can remember to borrow or buy them at some point.

Conclusion

You To Do list can be of much more use to you than simply checking off tasks. There are things that are not really actionable tasks, but are not really projects either. Also, some things you may want to stick on the Someday/Maybe side of things, might do better to have their own category. Experiment and see what works for you.

Do you store things on your To Do list that some might say shouldn’t be there? Do you have ideas about extending your To Do list that I haven’t covered? Did you like this article? Leave a comment. I would love to hear about it.

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Remember The Milk: Posting Directly from Your Desktop

In a recent post, we talked about 6 Ways to Add A Task to Remember The Milk. While the methods discussed were varied and useful, I was not satisfied with any of them. This post will show you another quick method to handle this.

I have very simple criteria for being able to add tasks to my ToDo list:

  • It must be quick
  • It must not disturb my current work flow
  • It must be reliable

I had almost satisfied all of these using the solution involving Launchy, Curl, and Twitter. Launchy is probably the fastest desktop launcher available for Windows. So the procedure went like this:

  • Launchy pops up instantly when I hit ALT+Space
  • I type in “rtm<TAB>Task Description<ENTER>” (rtm is just a batch file in my path)
  • The task is added to my Remember The Milk Inbox list via Twitter

If we review the last item on my list of criteria, we see that our posting method needs to be reliable. Well, Twitter shouldn’t even be in the same sentence. I have actually been burned before using this setup, as you can read about in my post How Twitter Keeps Me from Getting Things Done.

So, how do we make it better? I had to find a way to get Twitter out of the picture. If you recall, You can add tasks to Remember The Milk via email. All I needed was a way to shoot off an email to RTM from within Launchy. Problem solved, right? Well…not really. GMail apparently makes this slightly more complicated.

This is about to get pretty technical, but I will try to break it down as simple as I can. If I don’t do a good job, please leave a comment and I will be happy to help 🙂

Download, Install, and Configure “Stunnel”

We need Stunnel so that we can communicate with the Gmail server securely. From the website:

Stunnel is a program that allows you to encrypt arbitrary TCP connections inside SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) available on both Unix and Windows.

So, here is what we need to do:

  • Download Stunnel from the Binaries Page. The version I used is 4.25 (direct download link)
  • Run the installer and hit “Close” once complete
  • Now, edit C:\Program Files\stunnel\stunnel.conf
  • Replace the “Service Options” section with the following:

[SMTP Gmail]
accept = 127.0.0.1:1099
connect = smtp.gmail.com:465

[POP3 Gmail]
accept = 127.0.0.1:1109
connect = pop.gmail.com:995

  • From the same directory, run the command “stunnel -install”
  • Then run the command “net start stunnel”

Download, Install, and Configure “Blat”

We need Blat so that we can send email right from the command line.

Blat is a Win32 command line utility that sends eMail using SMTP or post to usenet using NNTP.

  • Get Blat from here: http://www.blat.net/
  • Open the archive and stick “blat.exe” into C:\Windows\System32\ or somewhere else in your path
  • Run the command: blat -install smtp.gmail.com yourusername@gmail.com

Configure Launchy

You already have Launchy, right? If not, you are probably not working very efficiently, you are on a MAC, or both. Go ahead and fire it up now.

  • Open Launchy’s Options dialog (click the gear), go to Plugins and click Runner.
  • Hit the “+” button to add a new command
  • Enter something nifty for the Name (“rtm”, maybe?)
  • In the Program field, Enter the path to the Blat executable: C:\Windows\System32\blat.exe
  • In the Arguments field, Enter the following:

– -body ” ” -subject “$$” -to [Your unique RTM Email Address] -u [Gmail Username] -pw [Gmail Password] -f [Your Gmail Address] -server 127.0.0.1:1099

  • Hit “Ok,” we’re done here

Make sure you include the preceding “-” and the space between the quotes for the body argument. To find your unique Remember The Milk email address, login to RTM and go to Settings->Info. You want the Inbox Email Address.

Conclusion

Now, you can hit ALT+Space (or whatever key you have it set to), type “rtm<TAB>task<ENTER>” and you have just added a task to Remember The Milk without even breaking stride.

Being able to quickly dump tasks/ideas out of your head and into your organization system of choice is pretty important. Without doing this, you will never get anything done because you won’t ever know what to do.

More often than not, you are going to be in the middle of something when an idea strikes you for something else that you need to capture. As we all know, if you get interrupted, it takes about 10 minutes or so to find your place and get back into the groove.

This is why I have been so anal about this specific facet of my system. I don’t believe there is a faster way, short of direct brain-to-computer communication, to capture your thoughts to your to-do list.

How do you make sure you can capture things at all times? Do you have a better method than me? I’d like to hear about it. Leave me a comment.

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A Leader Doesn’t Care What You Think

Leaders of the packDo you find yourself worrying about how others perceive you? Are you often embarrassed or anxious about others judging you? If so, you definitely have some work to do. Your success in life is contingent on your ability to ignore others and focus on “doing you.”

In her post, What People Think of Me is None of My Business, Samsara offers details on why some people tend to worry so much about the opinions of others. She also offers various methods you can apply to avoid this type of thinking.

What does this really have to do with being successful? If you are focused on what others think about you, that small voice of intuition that nudges you toward your goals may be ignored. You will take actions based on what others expect of you rather than what you feel is right. You have just become a follower. Congratulations! I’ll be taking your leadership badge now. Get back in line, please.

A leader leads. They move on, unerringly, toward their goal. They don’t look back to see if anyone is coming with them or to conduct a poll on what to do next. A leader is too busy achieving things and covering new ground to worry about what people think of them.

Do you care what others think?