Chris Pirillo » gtd http://chris.pirillo.com News and Reviews! Geek, Internet Entrepreneur, Hardware Addict, Software Junkie, Book Author, Once TV Show Host, Technology Enthusiast, Shameless Self-Promoter, Tech Conference Coordinator, Early Adopter, Idea Evangelist, Tech Support Blogger, Bootstrapper, Media Personality, Technology Consultant, Thicker Quicker Picker Upper. Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:49:24 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 LiquidPlanner http://chris.pirillo.com/liquidplanner/ http://chris.pirillo.com/liquidplanner/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:22:00 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/?p=13367
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I recently attended the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum & Technology Showcase. The conference featured two dozen of the of the hottest technology companies in Washington presenting their business in a competition for “Best In Show”. LiquidPlanner is the only project management tool that lets you easily adapt your project plan based on real-life change and uncertainty. The result is realistic schedules that make planning, collaborating, and hitting deadlines a breeze.

Don’t just multi-task, manage your time effectively. LiquidPlanner makes prioritizing, organizing, and scheduling simple, no matter how many projects and clients you have to juggle, so you can focus on what’s really important: getting things done.

Who doesn’t need help scheduling themselves, in order to do everything you have to do? I know I do! There are just so many hours in each day, and that is not nearly enough! I have a hard time some days trying to cram in everything I have to do… forgetting things here, putting something off there, shuffling others to a back burner – or hand them over to my assistant and beg her help!

LiquidPlanner sure would make my life easier. I’m not only going to tell you to check them out – I’m checking them out for myself!

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]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/liquidplanner/feed/ 1 You Need Things to do Things http://chris.pirillo.com/you-need-things-to-do-things/ http://chris.pirillo.com/you-need-things-to-do-things/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:19:59 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/?p=12606
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No matter what it is you need to do, you need to keep track of what you’re doing. Everyone has a different system. My Inbox is usually my task list. I know what I have to do, because it’s right there in my Inbox. It may not be a perfect system, but it works for me. I go through my Inbox several times a day, whittling down my list until I end up with only a small number of items left. I may go to bed at night with ten or so things left in there, but I’m usually waiting to give them a proper answer to a question.

Tracking your tasks can be as time consuming as completing them is. What do you use to keep track of yourself? I’ve tried many different programs, but I think I may have finally found the perfect answer – outside of my Inbox. Things is available right now for OS X. I haven’t found a Windows equivalent yet, so if you have – let me know about it!

A magical tag bar automatically appears when needed and adapts to the currently displayed list. It lets you drill down through even the longest list of to-dos. Whether it’s multiple tags, dates, or notes, to-do items display their information on an as needed basis. No more space wasted by empty or irrelevant column cells.

This is being heralded as “THE” task-management system. You can use iCal, but it’s just not as efficient. If you’re looking for desktop task-tracking on your Mac, you definitely have to use Things. It’s just the ultimate program. If there’s enough interest, I may be able to get them to give us a coupon! Be sure to leave a comment on this post letting me know of your interest.

There’s no end to the things you can do with Things: Things helps you organize life and work according to your responsibilities. You can track progress of your coworkers and teammates. Avoid project overload by setting less pressing ones to inactive. Every list can easily be filtered and sorted by due date. Include notes and links to files, web sites or email messages.

You can see how much this can help you get things done. It helps you stay more organized without having to think about where to put things!

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]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/you-need-things-to-do-things/feed/ 7 I’ll Think of a Title for this Video Later: I’m Procrastinating http://chris.pirillo.com/ill-think-of-a-title-for-this-video-later-im-procrastinating/ http://chris.pirillo.com/ill-think-of-a-title-for-this-video-later-im-procrastinating/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 04:35:47 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/03/24/ill-think-of-a-title-for-this-video-later-im-procrastinating/

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So yeah, last night Wicket wanted to go for a walk, and then the phone rang and then I wanted to play Tetris for awhile. I never did get around to doing any videos. I mean… why do today what I can put off until tomorrow with?

  • How Much? Look at what you have to do. If you have a few days to do it, like for a project, do a little each day. The quality will end up better, and you won’t be rushed to finish it. If it is a short assignment and it is due tomorrow, then do it when you get home from school. Don’t save projects until the night before, but don’t do it all on the first night!
  • Consequences/Rewards What happens if you don’t do the work? Will you fail and get yelled at? What happens when you do it and get a good grade? Look at what you get from doing the work on time and not being rushed. If you don’t do it, you will most likely get yelled at and possibly grounded. Is that worth the time it would have taken to do the homework? You may think it is pointless right now and you just want to “chill,” but look at the bigger picture. Most of the time it is obvious that the time it would take to do the work is a lot less than the time the time spent getting yelled at or being grounded.
  • Timing Don’t rush yourself. By putting the work off until the last minute, not only are you going to have a reduced-quality piece of work, but you will get stressed. If you have more than 1 day to do it, use those days! If there is only one day to do it, do it early (like when you come home from school) and then look at it again later, or have a parent look at it. Look for mistakes, and make it a bit neater.
  • What Else Is There? If you want to go out with friends, try and get some work done first. If you can’t, do it when you get home. Getting it done while you are awake is important. But, don’t let it consume all your time. If all you do is spend time on work and projects, you are going to get stressed out and in the end, you will probably give up easier on work down the road. Have fun and get your work done. Find the balance that is right for you, but, remember, the work still has to be done.
  • Think About It! This is one that really helps me – thinking about what needs to be done. If there is a lot of stuff to do, think about it. It can make you more aware of how important it is to do it. When you think about it, remember what the rewards and consequences are and where they come into play. Look at the whole picture. What do you have to do? What happens when you don’t do it? What happens when you do it? What other things do I want to do today? This is largely what gets me motivated to do work, as 99% of the time, there is an incentive for me.

FirstRSS ERROR: "http://shop.tagjag.com/products/work" NOT FOUND!

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]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/ill-think-of-a-title-for-this-video-later-im-procrastinating/feed/ 23 Getting Things Done in Windows: Enso! http://chris.pirillo.com/getting-things-done-in-windows-enso/ http://chris.pirillo.com/getting-things-done-in-windows-enso/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:15:34 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/02/17/getting-things-done-in-windows-enso/ AntLogiK (from the chat room at live.pirillo.com) found something that appears to be a bit like Quicksilver – only this one is for Windows. It’s not quite a GTD app, but it’ll help you get things done:

I’ve found a wonderful program for the Windows user that will make every single thing you do in Windows so much easier and way, way faster. So i thought i wanted to share it with you, so that you could give it a try and make a lot other Windows users have a better experience. It works for XP, Vista and 2k. It’s a little program called Enso. It’s developed by Humanized. It’s been around for a while, but it just recently became freeware.

There are two released programs under Enso. “Launcher” and “Words”. Basicly it’s an overlay program that you can access from anywhere within Windows. You just press and hold the CAPS-lock and start typing commands. All enso programs have some common commands. Some are google search, calculator, converting selected text to upper- or lowercase.

The Enso Launcher lets you open any program, file or URL you want, fast and easy. It also gives you window controls like minimize, maximize, restore and close. Furthermore you can make your own commands. So if you have a program, file or URL that you use a lot and it’s not that easy to get to it, maybe it has a long title. Then you can make a command that with a few characters open it. I happen to use the command prompt quite often, but i get tedious having to go down into Start menu | Run, write cmd and press Enter. With Enso i can make a command that launches command prompt when i hold capslock and type: open cmd, then releasing capslock. It’s that easy and fast.

Enso Words obviously has to do with text processing. It gives you a function for spell checking, it gives you word and character count – this is on any text that you have selected, anywhere. There’s also a command for getting a definition of any word you have selected.

They have other additions to Enso under development that are looking great too. But install them, play around, i’m sure you’ll like it very much. I absolutely love it, and i’ve only been using it for half a day. There are so many things I usually do using the mouse, but now i can do em with my keyboard thanks to Enso. So this is also a great tool for improving ergonomics by eliminating some mouse tasks. From now on i dont think i will be using the Start menu anymore.

If you have any proplems, there’s always the help command in enso, and also the commandlist command. But it’s quite easy to get the hang of reading the instructions on their website and using the command list.

So i hope you take a look at it, and show it to everyone, because it’s really a great program that everyone should use. Or atleast everyone a bit “geeky” should use it ;) And i hope it wasn’t too much reading this novel.

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/getting-things-done-in-windows-enso/feed/ 5 News Aggregators http://chris.pirillo.com/news-aggregators/ http://chris.pirillo.com/news-aggregators/#comments Wed, 02 May 2007 05:22:00 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/05/01/news-aggregators/ As recorded by The AgencyCast, the Gnomedex audience came up with several ideas for the next generation of news aggregators:

  • Open access of full demographics: (age, location) for readers so people can build upon them ex. add a map to the readership to get what’s hot by location
  • Existence cleaner: erase or mass modify all or part of your online profile
  • Add context and relevance to blog posts (through blogosphere analysis of like content) [Winner]
  • Feed bundler for user & publisher to spit out only one feed from many input feeds. Subscribe to a person not a person’s X, Y, Z
  • Add more social components to the feed readers: add social components to engage the readers (versus them remaining solely on the site – where does the community reside, issues of monetization)
  • Digg elements
  • Content based clustering

…and more:


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]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/news-aggregators/feed/ 0 Pirillo’s Picks for 04/18/2007 http://chris.pirillo.com/pirillos-picks-for-04182007/ http://chris.pirillo.com/pirillos-picks-for-04182007/#comments Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:56:16 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/04/18/pirillos-picks-for-04182007/ I send my picks to 140,000 subscribers every day – join them by sending an email to picks@lockergnome.com. If you blog and encourage others to subscribe to the list, your site will be placed in the queue to be featured in an upcoming Pirillo’s Picks!

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/pirillos-picks-for-04182007/feed/ 1 Pirillo’s Picks for 02/28/2007 http://chris.pirillo.com/pirillos-picks-for-02282007/ http://chris.pirillo.com/pirillos-picks-for-02282007/#comments Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:52:08 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/02/28/pirillos-picks-for-02282007/ I send my picks to 140,000 subscribers every day – join them by sending an email to picks@lockergnome.com. If you blog and encourage others to subscribe to the list, your site will be placed in the queue to be featured in an upcoming Pirillo’s Picks!

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/pirillos-picks-for-02282007/feed/ 4 Is Microsoft’s Outlook Team on Crack? http://chris.pirillo.com/is-microsofts-outlook-team-on-crack/ http://chris.pirillo.com/is-microsofts-outlook-team-on-crack/#comments Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:09:22 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/01/15/is-microsofts-outlook-team-on-crack/ I’ve been playing with Outlook 2007 for a few weeks now, trying to get over the fact that it falls short of “impressive” in nearly every way. I wasn’t sure why HTML email messages were looking as though they had fallen out of the ugly tree – until I read this Campaign Monitor post that claims Microsoft takes email design back 5 years:

Previously you could send a HTML email in the comfort that the majority of your recipients would have very good CSS support. Other email clients were also catching up. Thunderbird uses the Firefox rendering engine, the new Yahoo! Mail beta has great CSS support. Things were looking good for us CSS based email designers. Unfortunately, that all goes down the toilet now.

What goes in the toilet – HTML email newsletters in general, or Microsoft Outlook? Not sure why people are so surprised about this turn of events; I’ve been telling you that every release of Outlook (beyond the 2000 client) has been craptacular. Then again, maybe Microsoft completely agrees with my “email is dead” argument? The jury is still out on this one.

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/is-microsofts-outlook-team-on-crack/feed/ 26 Busy Bees and Barrs http://chris.pirillo.com/busy-bees-and-barrs/ http://chris.pirillo.com/busy-bees-and-barrs/#comments Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:10:16 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/12/22/busy-bees-and-barrs/ My life is completely consumed with everything outside of the technology memeosphere. The inbox is certainly sitting happily below 50 messages, but I feel irreversibly out of the loop. I never thought I’d ever say this: it’s time for a vacation.

Christmas shopping has been a bust, items are still scattered about the forewinds of our new home, and the honeymoon will be starting in a few days. I need a mental reset, to regain clarity and re-energize my body, mind, and spirit.

I’ve been flying around the house, taking care of smaller tasks that whittle away at the ebbing and flowing collections of clutter. Most boxes have been emptied at this point, but we’re still “missing” a handful of key posessions. Last night, Jake came over to help me reconnect the media center – only to discover that our speaker cables had gone walkabout. I believe he’s headed back tonight, if only to sample Ponzi’s Mexican-themed dinner.

Her office furniture arrived (unassembled) yesterday; it was almost the straw that broke my back. I don’t mind putting things together, but I was simply not looking forward to setting up her new desks and bookshelves. Jeff Barr emailed me and asked if he could be of any assistance – simultaneously volunteering his sons (Stephen, Andy) for labor. His timing was impeccable. Males of the Barr family came to the new gnomestead with tools in hand, and by mid-afternoon had pieced together Ponzi’s home office. I’m so very thankful for their assistance.

In a bit, I believe that Brandon is scooting by to help me upgrade the Quad FX system (with a new set of heatinks). We’ll see how that goes. And tomorrow is another day.

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/busy-bees-and-barrs/feed/ 0 Will it ever end? http://chris.pirillo.com/will-it-ever-end/ http://chris.pirillo.com/will-it-ever-end/#comments Wed, 20 Dec 2006 08:40:30 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/12/20/will-it-ever-end/ It started with the almost move, then it was the almost-almost move, then it was finding a house, preparing to do the new move, setting up the honeymoon, closing on the house, moving across town, getting married later that week (and entertaining family), setting up new / old services, beginning the unpacking process, getting hit with a power outtage, and Christmas is in less than a week and I haven’t received (or even had a chance to dent) Ponzi’s list yet.

When… will… this… madness… end?!

I don’t know what my mental or physical limits are, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been pushed beyond them in recent weeks. Worse yet, I just discovered I missed out on a 40% off sale at Office Depot (where I ordered office furniture today). I’m sure my biorhythm has been spiking and dipping every other hour over the past couple of months.

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/will-it-ever-end/feed/ 11 The Outlook on Outlook 2007 http://chris.pirillo.com/the-outlook-on-outlook-2007/ http://chris.pirillo.com/the-outlook-on-outlook-2007/#comments Tue, 05 Sep 2006 22:31:31 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/09/05/the-outlook-on-outlook-2007/ The UI still has a ways to go before I’ll be completely satisifed, but Outlook 2007 is shaping up to be a smart upgrade from Outlook 2000 as an Internet PIM. I was proven 100% correct on the suckitude of Oulook 2002 and 2003, as the 2007 team has de-merged Exchange and Internet environments (as it was in Outook 2000). From there, I’m able to move forward and consider Outlook 2007 as a viable upgrade.

I was cautiously optimistic when I watched Hank Leukart’s Outlook 2007 Calendar sneak preview. Separately, Jessica Arnold give Scoble a more general Outlook 2007 overview before Beta 2 was released. Both videos are worth watching if you work with Outlook on any level, if only to discover what’s changed. Most concerning to me, however, is how each Microsoft interviewee dismissed two issues which both interviewers raised independent of one another!

  1. You can’t (yet) publish your calendar to your own server from within Outlook. Instead, you’re “forced” to push it to Office Online. It’s not like Microsoft can’t let you put your data elsewhere – it’s just that Office doesn’t make a lot of money, so it has to make up for lost revenue elsewhere. Whatever.
  2. You can’t easily copy an item from a remote calendar to your own. Instead, you have to manually drag and drop from one time slot to another – introducing potential PEBKAC mousing errors. Moreover, if you try to set a reminder on a remote calendar – you’re told that you can’t do it, and asked: “Is that okay?” No solution is actually provided by the error dialog.

I’m happy to be able to share calendars easily from within Outlook 2007, but I’ll miss the being able to edit external calendars like I can do with Net Folders in Outlook 2000. It’s certainly looking like I’ll migrate to the new version once it’s gone gold. My biggest beefs with Outlook 2007 so far?

  1. Fonts. Tahoma needs to be eliminated from Office, wholesale. Segoe UI is the new standard – even though the Windows Vista team didn’t get that memo.
  2. Corners. Around some elements, like Calendar entries, I see rounded corners. Surrounding other elements, like informational “bubbles” inside email messages, I see sharp corners. One or the other, folks – not both.
  3. Flashing. Too often, I’ll watch a window pane redraw itself. This is painfully obvious when you switch views in Outlook, or when you try to resize a pane. My video card has much more than 4MB of RAM, ya know? I’m trying to use Outlook, not a bowl of Jell-o.
  4. Headers. Why can’t I customize the message header? I don’t want a gigantic font for the message subject and sender in the preview pane. I want it to look like it does when I open a message in a separate window. Moreover, the headers in the preview pane for the calendar are rendered differently, too. Make up your mind!
  5. Toolbars. Are you using the ribbon, or what? I realize that the Outlook client is fundamentally different than Word, PowerPoint, and Excel – but you just can’t keep those old toolbars in place. And please, for God’s sake, don’t employ the craptacular Windows Vista styled toolbars?!

What disturbs me most is how Outlook 2007 – a single program – looks and acts differently throughout. Much like the whole of Windows Vista, Outlook 2007 feels somewhat schizophrenic. Spacing is haphazard, controls are varied, and elements (again) are inexcusabily dissimilar. That said, Outlook 2007 seems to be faster than 2002 and 2003. We’ll see what they do with the UI in these remaining months.

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/the-outlook-on-outlook-2007/feed/ 18 How to Get 75,000 Page Impressions in a Day http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-get-75000-page-impressions-in-a-day/ http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-get-75000-page-impressions-in-a-day/#comments Tue, 08 Aug 2006 06:25:49 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/07/how-to-get-75000-page-impressions-in-a-day/ Doing It is really doing it, apparently – generating over 75,000 unique page impressions for a single post today. Our post on How to open a beer bottle with a piece of paper got Fark’ed, and now that link is leaking out into other social news services. We went from zero to sixty in a matter of hours, and it looks as though that momentum will carry us through to future farkable finds. Yes, we’re expanding our search for the wackiest ways to do things – be that in video, audio, or plain text format. Since anybody can contribute to the site, you’re welcome to join us in our quest for the holy grail…

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-get-75000-page-impressions-in-a-day/feed/ 5 Doing It Differently http://chris.pirillo.com/doing-it-differently/ http://chris.pirillo.com/doing-it-differently/#comments Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:28:37 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/07/31/doing-it-differently/ Okay, I love what Gina and pt do – who doesn’t? Jake and I have been kicking an idea around for a while, and I think we’re ready to unleash it. Nothing revolutionary, mind you – just an idea that might (or might not) work.

We’re Doing It – a DIY/GTD group blog that anybody can join at any time. Sign up, post a draft immediately, and never post again for all we care (or continue to post, if you get enough cross-promotional or search engine traffic from the coverage).

So, let’s just see if this “wisdom of crowds” thingy works – and not just for geeks!

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/doing-it-differently/feed/ 5 How to Handle Email Overload http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-handle-email-overload/ http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-handle-email-overload/#comments Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:37:37 +0000 Chris Pirillo http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/06/05/how-to-handle-email-overload/ I sent a quick message to Matt Cutts from Google a few minutes ago, asking him when Google might be updating their index to reflect my new site strucutre (since moving from BlogWare to WordPress a few weeks ago). I almost shot milk out of my nose when I received his autoresponse a minute later:

I’m on vacation until June 30th, and I *will delete all email* when I return. In case of an emergency, Carol Smith has my cell phone number. You may wish to send your request to Brian White or Amit Singhal, or you may want to resend your email after I return.

I suppose that’s one way to handle email overload? Okay, Matt – you’re going to delete my original message, but I’m sure this post will show up in your ego feed. Or, at least, it should show up.

]]> http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-handle-email-overload/feed/ 12