On dormant blogs and completing projects

I am currently ramping up to reinvigorate my blog / online presence / personal brand / social media strategy, etc. etc.

What you are seeing on my blog today is a temporary placeholder until I can officially “relaunch.”

I’ve recently moved to the East Coast (Somerville, MA) and have been doing some Big Thinking about where I’m going with my work, life, etc. Part of this is a renewed emphasis on ego-building online. It’s easier now than ever, and I’m really exhausted by seeing uninteresting people have all the fun.

However, as an antidote to my bad habits of taking on too many low-value projects and passive aggressively making the last 20% of ongoing projects drag on and on, I have been trying to implement Cal Newport’s idea of a completion-centric productivity.

Meeting edict and energy vacuums

As a freelancer, I often get a feeling of isolation when working on projects; sometimes this leads to a lack of accountability (i.e. peer pressure). I miss more, however, the riffing and brainstorming that happens when people willingly get together, share ideas, and are genuinely interested in each others’ (or the collective) success. (and it has to be face-to-face… virtual meetings can’t replicate the energy building of a good brainstorming session).

Spam and Email System

I think I have finally nailed down a reasonable email handling / spam fighting strategy after about a year of tweaking.
I’m going to slowly describe my system over a series of posts. It’s pretty good, if I do say so myself.
Here are a couple of ranty things I’d like to just put out [...]

Applescript to transform mail.app message to GTDAlt inbox item

I’m currently using GTDAlt in TextMate as my GTD processing system. It’s a text based system, so it’s upgradable, portable, etc.
Through the TextMate bundle framework, you get some nice collating of contexts, etc.
GTDAlt does rely on some proprietary syntax, but it’s pretty basic and easily parsable.
There is rudimentary support for iterating through items in [...]

If you want it done right…

I have spent way too many hours of my life searching for the _ideal_ GTD system. I’ve been through ‘em all: diy planner, kinkless, frictionless, tracks, index cards, printable ceo, and even plain text files. Usually, I’ll spend an entire afternoon just transferring data back and forth… precious, irretrievable minutes lost on pointless [...]

Plans are easy. Starting is hard.

Starting is always the hardest part, dont you think? I definitely have a deep infection of plan-it-out syndrome.
studentl.inc: Think About Planning Ahead [5x5s]:

5. Start now. Do something.Some people are addicted to planning (or the idea of planning). They get excited about all the tools you can use to plan, all the latest, [...]

The 20 minute rule - Taking action that leads to the Build

Earlier today I sent out what amounted to a [call to arms](http://davidnunez.com/articles/2006/08/08/dorkbot-in-august-cancelled) to friends and mailing lists. I was urging people to drive towards the objective all creative people should have: [to build things](http://davidnunez.com/articles/2006/05/18/building-is-the-objective).
I urged people to spend 20 minutes today working on whatever creative endeavor they have brewing in the back burner. Move [...]