built a desktop instead

So, I sold the old desktop and did NOT get a mac mini. Why? The mac mini is too underpowered for me at the moment. Although I do like OSX, I like power just a little bit more and windows xp is still good to me. Anyways, so I just sold my old desktop and built a better desktop. This new desktop is built from scratch so now, since it’s not a dell and doesn’t use proprietory crap, I can upgrade it over and over in the future. It took me a night to put all the pieces together because I purchased all of my parts at the same time and from the same store (microcenter). Er, I still gottah fill out my rebate forms though, … I’ll do that tonight.

My case is a p180 from antec:

The motherboard is a nforce 680i sli board -unlike the one in the picture below, my board has THREE pci-e slotz:

The processor is an intel e6750 core 2 duo at 2.66ghz - no quad core for now because games don’t care about quad; at the moment only imaging (i.e. adobe suite) tools use that stuff:

And for the video card, right now I have an 80 dollah 7600gt to hold me over, but in the near future I’ll be purchasing the 8800gts!!! The 320mb version of the gts should be down to 200 bux pretty soon, and the 640mb version should follow eventually. I’d like to get the 640mb version so that I wont have gaming problems when I upgrade my monitor(s).

edit: couldn’t wait, so I purchased the 8800gts on Friday. Now, my games play like buttuh. Oh yes.

how to memorize a book (part 2 - Vocabulary: don’t forget that definition!)

So you’re reading your book and you come across a word whose meaning doesn’t immediately come to mind. Dangit, I know it has something to do with oscopy. You look up the word real quick and then you’re back at the book, reading away and enjoying yourself. All of a sudden, that word appears again, and you’ve forgotten the definition already! What the crap, I just looked this up, arggg …something to do with. You look the word up again, and decide to learn that word for good.

Why didn’t you memorize it the first time you looked it up!?! It’s because that word didn’t really mean anything to you, or at least not to your brain. You see, your brain handles pictures a lot better than it handles unfamiliar words that it can’t connect to. Yes, your brain needs to connect! Brain needs to relate one thing to another in order to remember it and retain more stuff. Brain acts like connect the dots: each dot is an item to remember, and each line is a relation from one item to another. Without any relationship between one item and another, BRAIN CAN’T CONNECT THE DOTS!!!

Back to the point - so how do you remember that word on the first go? Well, just make a ridiculous association between the meaning of the word and the phrase/word(s)/thought that sounds similar to the word.

Example:

Word: Emancipate

Meaning: to free from restraint, influence, or the like.

Sounds like: Man, Plate

 

*apply method*

 

Picture show for brain: Just picture a man freeing a plate from its restraints/influence.

You see how we connected the dots there? The part “eman-” in emancipate is unfamiliar, but man is familiar! And “-cipate” is unfamiliar but plate kind of sounds like it and is familiar. So when brain sees emancipate it can be reminded that eman sounds like man and cipate sounds like plate. And then… well you’ve got your relationship between man and plate (i.e. man freeing the plate) and brain remembers the story of man and plate because … well it can see the image of a man freeing a plate and it’s a pretty ridiculous image and also hard to forget. Look at those dots connect; relate the unfamiliar with the familiar to remember the unfamiliar. Brain can hold all this information, but it needs to be reminded of where it put the info sometimes.

So the trick is to create a picture show that links the meaning of the word to the words that are familiar and sound similar to the original word. Basically the familiar words (man, plate) are stars in your little mind picture show and they just act out the definition.

Sound good? Try it on a word from a language that you don’t already know. The method works there too.

Procrastination - not laziness, but misdirection! Lets beat it *cue MJ’s hit*

In order to beat procrastination swiftly, it helps to understand the nature of the beast. But first, let me say a bit about tools. Firstly, tools are meant to assist people in being efficient! Tools are for the very best of the GTD crew. Tools are like when you upgrade your linux os to unstable just to be on the bleeding edge and for that small chance of improvement. Tools are NOT meant for people who don’t already know how to get things done - unless they’re using it to create an initial motivation I suppose, or maybe a start-up quick kit or something, I dunno. Before you upgrade to tools and tricks and crap like that, I’d like to first and foremost suggest that you learn how to GET THINGS DONE instead of developing a crutch before you can even walk. Walk, then run, then fly. Anyways - onward!

1. Tools - this section isn’t very important
As others have suggested, there are lots of tips/tools/tricks to help you stop procrastinating. Here are some additional TOOLS that might make you happy at first and create that initial spark of desire. But you need more direction than that. Still I’ll share:

-Do it for just five minutes <- tip to get started
-(10+2)*5 <- efficiency tip
- david allans gtd workflow <- book
-next action
-Tracks <- pretty fun
-Shit load of GTD software tools for PC & Mac
-blogs and other resources about getting shit done
-another long list of tools and resources for getting things done

I’ll stop there because this list could really go on forever, and some of the lists I listed go on forever already, but that alone will only give you that initial spark of interest. The interest may last awhile since there’s a whole cult/society behind getting things done. It might help you at first, but you might also get stuck in a never ending spiral of trying to find the best “tool” to use. This is a time waisting endeavor. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But, tools are kind of fun to talk about so let me talk about mine before I get to your procrastination issue there.

Some tools (the ones with the biggest impact) I’ve used are as follows, AND THEY ALSO CHANGE from time to time:

My Life Organized - I use the free version of this to track my goals for my LIFE. Yah know, the whole thing. I have my shit sorted out as follows: Family and Home; Spiritual and Ethical; Social and Cultural; Financial and Career; Physical and Health; Mental and Educational; and Incoming Brain Bombs to be processed when I get the chance. It’s an easy setup.

Wallet - I keep a little fold out notepad in my wallet. When the notepad is opened it has a paper on the left and right sides. On the left sides is my “incoming” space and on the right side is my “to-do list”. Pretty simple.

Picasaweb Albums - I use this to visualize my goals. I have pictures in there with affirmations below it. In the mornings, I play the slideshow and read the affirmations, then look at the picture, then visualize it.

Ring Notebook - This is basically everything from incoming, to to-do lists, to goals, to everything all in one. I mix and jumble everything up and organize it whenever I feel like it, if it needs it. It’s pretty fun to embrace that kind of freedom and discover new ideas in your … lists.

I could go on with this, but I just wanted to humor the post. This stuff won’t actually help you get anything done, unless you know what you’re doing, among other things. These are tools of efficiency to help the people who know how to stop procrastination to get their shit done in a different, and possibly more efficient fashion that suits their needs.

2. Understand the nature of the beast - very important!
Here’s a formula for procrastination (see below). Look at it and think about it for a second; if you know some simple algebra, you could deduct some insight from this:

quote:

Desirability of the Task = E x V / G x D

Where E is the person’s self confidence in the task, V is the value of completing the task, G is the tasks immediacy/availability and D is the person’s sensitivity to delay.

link

Ok that equation should give you an idea of why you’re not doing shit. In addition to understanding the nature of the beast, What you need is some supreme SElf DISCIPLINE-PLINE-Plin-pli-pl-p. Military school and boot camp can give you that, but lifting weights and working out isn’t going to do anything for you here. I was suggesting military school or boot camp not because they help you physically, but because they help you mentally. They teach the morons and jerk offs and lazy asses to be good respectable citizens who can stand on their own two feet. They teach discipline most of all -and other stuff.

That’s an easy way out, but it’s rather drastic. It’s always easy when you have a teacher telling you how to do it and it’s even easier when you have some meat head barking down your neck and threatening your physical health. You, probably wont go that route, so you’ve gottah figure out how to do this without that.

This is the advice normally given to people who don’t know jack shit about what they want out of life and what they want to do -maybe this is your case, maybe not:

1. Know where you want to go
2. Create a theoretical plan to get there -this plan will change, but having the plan there gives you some comfort and assists you in believing that you can get to wherever it is you want to go
3. Decide on what the next action is that can help you get there - make sure this is something that isn’t very overwhelming. If it is too overwhelming, you’ll have to break it down into a smaller bit-sized portion that you can manage.
4. Do it.

Your problem is at the bottom. You might know all the steps and tricks and everything you could want to know about getting where you’d like to go, but you fail at “Do it”.

Why do you fail at “Do it”? The equation tells you why you fail. Basically, you don’t do it because you (the bad you) has looked at all the evidence and deducted that it’s not worth it to you. But it is worth it. No it’s not. That internet sitting right there is much more entertaining right now. That [insert something you procrastinate with] looks like it’ll be of much more value to me right now. This is all true.

Because most humans only like to look at the shit that’s pressing right into their faces, they don’t see the loooooongterm value when they’re stuck in the moment. They’re distracted by all of the things that give the short term value -kind of like cigarettes.

You need something to stand right in front of your nose and show you that it is of more value to you than anything else right now. But how do you achieve that? You could use a drill sergeant, torcher, a challenge, a dare, money incentive, reward system, etc. Of course, if you really don’t want to do that [whatever], maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you’re pointing your nose in the wrong direction. Maybe that isn’t something that you’re passionate about in the first place. Could it be an issue with passion? YES! But, lets not get too complex here. Lets assume that you do, in fact, desire to get this [whatever task] done.

You could listen to music and jam out or you could write your paper. Remember that formula? It applies here. The paper doesn’t yield any short term benefit, and it’s not like you have a chance at finishing the whole thing right now anyway. It’s too hard you might not even be able to start. God you’re going to fail, it’s not worth it. The music however, that’s easy, it’s fun, you wont fail, and it’s worth it right now. Look at that fucking formula come into action, damn.

Now, how to tweak this formula to your advantage.

quote:

Desirability of the Task = E x V / G x D

Where E is the person’s self confidence in the task, V is the value of completing the task, G is the tasks immediacy/availability and D is the person’s sensitivity to delay.

Here’s another scene: You have a one word paper -a paper that’s only 1 word long- due in 30 seconds and it counts for 90% of your final gpa for your four year college career. You could do that, or you could listen to music. You think to yourself hmmm, the paper isn’t that long, I’ll burn through that and it’ll be easy AND I’ll raise my GPA. Definitely worth it. Damn. Problem solved.

But wait, that’s never going to happen! You’re right. Like I said -i think I said it- you’ve gottah find an alternative way to raise your desire. Here’s a method: You can find something that you’re passionate about and piggy back the tasks (shit you procrastinate on) to that. That’s what competitions are. In general people really do like to compete, and it’s easy to piggy back a task on that in the name of competition. They’ll get it done because, more than anything, they wanted to beat someone else. Also, the accountability system works like that as well. You have two people who are holding each other accountable. If one should fail, they’re going to catch shit from the other person and they’ll theoretically lose. This is how I quit binge drinking! That’s just a couple of methods to piggy back your tasks too.

Another very popular method is Goals! Uh-oh, did I hit a nerve? Sorry. Some people only do their homework, swim 30 laps a day, do 500 pushups in an hour, read all of a series of books, and other stuff because that’s the only way that they’ll reach their Goal! If your desire to reach a goal is strong enough to carry your other tasks, then you can use that as a piggy back. But lets say you have a 5 year goal. That goal, while good and all that, is FIVE YEARS AWAY. IT’s not standing in front of your face, it’s a long ass time away. But that’s a start. Now, set a short goal, then a shorter one, then a shorter one -all the little goals should lead up to the big one. This, is how you bring the goal closer and closer to your FACE.

Now that you’ve got a goal in your face, what? You probably wrote the goal down somewhere in a text file, and while it’s good to have it, that’s not in your face at all. When I say in your face, I mean you have to see the shit and know it’s there. If it’s in the back of your computer you’ll forget about it for sure. Steve Pavlina gave an example for this. He said that he used to practice some martial art, and at the door of the dojo or whatever there was a sign that said “YOUR GOAL IS TO BECOME A [NINJA]” or something. In your face, bitch. IN YOUR FACE. ALso, you know, challenges are goals, competitions are goals, tasks are goals, etc. Which brings us alll the way back to step 1.

3. How do I get this goal/task done? Here’s your answer: “aint nuthin to it but to do it”

1. Remove the distractions -set up environment to assist you, not to distract you

2. Create the desire -piggy back something you already have desire for or put yourself in a situation where a strong desire is created -maybe a desire to not get your ass beat by your drill sergeant? hurr and if you’re a real badass, you can create some desire out of no desire by just getting the ball rolling (do just a tiny bit and force yourself to stop - feel free to look up other tactics to achieve this)

3. Never forget your desire -IN YOUR FACE

4. Get that shit done, mother fucker! - You can find tips/tools to help you do 1-3 but once you’ve done 1-3, THEN you can start using “tips” and “tools” and all that kind of shit for 4.

And… that’s all there is to it.

note: I first posted this on the awful forums. Figured I’d bring it over to my blog to share with ‘er one else.

Hardcore Nazi-Focus

So I was thinking, thanks to Steve Pavlina’s “do it now” post. Imagine going through the day with nazi-like focus sessions. Everything you do is focused - that is, you’re focusing on whatever it is you’re doing. Lets say you have five big projects to complete. You wake up, you start the first one, and you don’t stop, except for food and sleep, until you finish. Working your way down your list of projects, you notice that you’re performing more efficiently than ever. Things are getting done, and fast! Occasionally you take a break to reinforce your motivation with a gtd article that you printed out, after which you continue to burn a hole in whatever it is you’re focused on.

You haven’t forgotten about your other priorities like your friends, your family, your faith, your animals, and your side projects. Those will find their way into your life regardless. And you will give them the time that you want, whenever you’re done with your list. Never neglecting the other stuff, you prefer not to focus on them every second of every day, but instead you engage in their various events when you’re ready and when you’re able to. Whoever is calling your cell phone can wait; that email that you probably got can be read later; that party that you were invited to isn’t even in line with your goals so that can definitely be put on the very end of the back burner, in fact, you probably wont go anyway; you’ll see your friends tomorrow, they can wait; you did your religion thing this morning, and you’ll do it tonight before you fall asleep, nothing to worry about there.

A project will only get postponed if something is in immediate need of your attention, and it’s at that point that you’ll give your immediate attention to whatever it is that’s in need, and it better be damn important or heads are going to roll. That is the essence of hardcore nazi focus, and I dig the idea. I’m modifying my previous method of getting things done to include this. Previously, I used the hipster pda, which worked out pretty interestingly. I’m dropping it –or part of it- though because it has so many features. Now I’m leaning towards a simpler way of doing things, something that doesn’t have lots of options, in order to focus my focus more accurately and for longer periods of time.

That means, I’ll have to minimize all of the GTD things that I already do. My fat hipster pda is going on a diet; I’ll just use two note cards instead: The first note card has a list of projects to do on it, and the second one has my goals listed on it. The mozilla sunbird calendar is really great for organizing my dates but it’s also out because my laptop computer is very old and is becoming a hassle to turn on/off and operate. Unless someone buys me a new laptop, this has to happen. Operating that dinosaur is a HUGE waste of time. Basically, most of the things in this post are getting put on hold because of my old ibm craptop. That’s fine though, I don’t require a laptop, and it’s just a convenience.

Now, I’ll be using an offline calendar that I have to write in with a pen/pencil, a minimalist hipster pda (2 note cards) – this can also be done with a sheet of paper like in this post. [Oh, that last link talks about using a 3 notecard system. I do like that system but now I don’t have to use it anymore. I’ve learned to fix the anxiety thing in my head instead of doing it on paper, and the ‘distractions section’ is not needed either because now I have a better handle on when something is distracting me and how to denounce it without writing anything down. Yup, that’s progress in the right direction.]

Since I don’t have much to work with now (2 note cards and a little calendar) I think I can make some good progress in making the hardcore nazi-focus thing a habit. Maybe it’s a good thing that my laptop has lost it’s youth, but I still miss everything about having a fresh, new, fast, portable operating system in my hands. *sigh*

GTD In School

After reading Steve Pavlina’s essay entitled “Do It Now”, I’ve formulated an outline for myself. It’s based off of the essay, but I’ve added some extra’s and modified this and that. If you want to test out this outline, you’ll probably have to read his article first before you can really completely benefit from this. In fact, go ahead and print it out, stick it in your pocket, and read it when you’re not doing something light that doesn’t require all of your focus.

Attatched to this post is the .doc file of the outline that I wrote up. Click the link below to download it.

GTD in school .

Fix The Anxiety and Put Those Untimely Desires Aside

There is productivity, and there is UNproductivity. Lets talk about unproductivity. What is it? Where does it come from? How do we burn it? How do you know that it’s pwning you? These are all questions we’ll cover in this post. Hopefully, at the end of these words, there will be something that resembles a step-by-step, real-time, actual solution.

Before we begin, you should know that I’ve done a technorati search for “unproductivity” and came across more than a few blogs that I felt would be useful in my analysis. Take a look at the quotes and visualize yourself in their positions, so that you can get that “Gah, I can’t control myself from being unproductive” feeling. You’ll need that feeling in order to adequately recognize the four factors that I’m about to mention.

QUOTES FROM OTHER HUMANS

I returned to Kent that evening and my streak of academic unproductivity continued its spiral. Evan and I played ping pong against some Asian guy who held his paddle upside-down.

I hate blogs: I need to get it in gear

I watched like 2 hours of TV and saw Harry Potter in theaters. While I recommend the movie, I wish I had not watched it; at least not before getting more work done on my paper(s) or presentation.

Unoriginality at its finest: hmmm

Otherwise, there is the predilection to utilize the waking moments to surfing the net to death, reading your friends’s blogs, updating your profiles in Friendster, downloading free mp3s, chatting in YM, MSN and Skype, updating Amazon wish lists, loooking up Google News every hour, testing Google Earth, playing word games, uploading pictures and sharing them, and so many more things. (I think my former PSE co-workers are laughing right now as they know I have been doing these things in our office with the firewalls and all…smacks of unproductivity!)

Haec olim meminisse iuvabit : Redefining junk

Though my sausage fell on the floor, definitely didn’t eat it after that), watched some meaningless television, napped, and then went out to eat with the boyfriend. Hurray for unproductivity! And that was the day.

raura de la muerte

Now, you’ll notice in each of the quotes there are a few common factors at the very least. Some of the common factors that I’ve noticed are: 1) There is a desire posing as a Distracter, 2) there is a Desire which is being distracted from, 3) there is some sort of dark magic that’s empowering the distracter and shadowing the desired action. I call this the Smoke Screen. 4) And the last thing that I can see very clearly is a Forgotten Sense of Time, which exists thanks to the smoke screen and the distracter.

This is the order in which you see each of the things I’ve just mentioned:

1. Desire
2. Smoke Screen - and - Forgotten Sense of Time
3. Distracter

First you’ll see the desire, what you want, very clearly in your mind. You might see a path you want to take, and a way of moving forward along that path. It’s at that crucial point in time where you’ll see the smoke screen, and the smoke screen will almost always be there, so expect this to happen, and be prepared. The smoke screen is basically a poison. Your body is immune to the poison, but your mind may or may not be immune, depending on if you’ve been trained or not - if you haven’t been trained, this will serve as a training exercise.

The same way that someone can believe they’ve been given a cure-all to their problem when they’ve actually been given a sugar pill, is the same way that the smoke screen works, but instead of telling you that it’s a cure-all, it telling you that all those clear well planned out ideas that you just had are all lies and it can’t possibly be that easy or safe or simple to start. The smoke screens job is to get you to believe it exists and it is making you sick, when in fact, it only exists if you make it exist, and it will only get you sick if you don’t call it out on its lie.

Lets say, for instance, that you fall into the trap of thinking the smoke screen into existence. What happens at this point? Well two things happen for sure. The first thing that happens is, as mentioned before, your desire gets all skewed and crap, as if you’re looking at it through a smoke screen! Go figure. If you’ve ever tried to see on the other side of a smoke cloud, you know exactly how difficult it is - it’s pretty close to impossible without special equipment. Your goal is now pretty unreachable and would take a lot of work, so your mind is led to think. The smoke screen has pwned you. The second thing that happens is your other desires seem a lot more inviting, and they start crowding around you like a group of nasty pigeons crowding around a piece of cake. No, your other desires aren’t evil, but when you fall for the smoke screen, they TURN evil because? you’ve believed the smoke, and the smoke has therefore poisoned you, just like in the video games, so that you’re not thinking clearly.

This is when the forgotten sense of time comes into play. You’ve got a smoke screen in front of you and the only alternative seems to be for you to pursue those other desires (at this point they’re really pigeons). You don’t realize that you can, and should, put off those pigeons/desires/distracters until a later date - but, now you do realize what’s happening. What I’m saying is, you shouldn’t just reject them, because they are YOUR desires, but you should instead, schedule them for a more appropriate time. You have to accept the FACT that you have all the time in the world to do those other desires, even if it seems like you don’t. Realize that when you put those distracters off until a designated time, that means you still get to do them! You’re not throwing away something that’s important to you, you’re just scheduling it into your day. I’ll digress on that thought; lets continue.

If you’re a typical person with typical procrastination tendencies, you WILL see the smoke screen, and the other desires WILL turn into evil pigeons on you. There’s no fix-it so that it doesn’t come into existence at this point. Over time, [how many days make a habit?], your mind will automatically form the habit of cutting out the smokescreen, because you’re so efficient. But until that time comes, you’ll need a hack to get around this annoying roadblock.

Here’s the hack, which you install FIRST THING WHEN YOU WAKE UP. Why? Because this way, you will start the day off correctly instead of letting the day start you off incorrectly - I call this phenomenon, control! After about a month of doing this, you’ll be able to throw the notecards away and do all of this IN YOUR HEAD! It’ll look like you were born with the ability to get things done. Everyone will envy your efficiency, and you’ll grow into something you had only seen in movies. It’s a great feeling. Anyways, lets get on with the hack; and by the way, you can modify this in any which way that suits you.

SUPPLIES NEEDED:

• 3 notecards or maybe a sheet of paper with 3 line divisions or something equivalent
• 1 pen or an equivalent utensil

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Label your notecards

• Label the first notecard as “desires” or “I want to do these things”
• Label the second notecard as “desires to be scheduled in at a later date” or “I want to do these things at a later date”
• Label the third notecard as “there is no smoke screen” or “anxieties and solutions”

2. Only fill out the “desires” notecard. You can fill it out with whatever you feel you want to do that day, it’s your life.

3. START DOING THE THINGS ON YOUR LIST - there are many tricks and hacks for this part, but I wont get into them all. The easiest thing I can suggest is if the desire has smoke in front of it, just do it for 10 minutes, and then stop, unless you feel like going on. You are free to stop after 10 minutes. Then, some other time in the day, try another 10 minutes. Don’t push yourself too hard though; just make sure you try.

Now, it’s at this point when some smoke screens might start popping up. And this is to be expected, but luckily we have a plan of attack. You see, a smoke screen is a bunch of dark floating anxieties. They only exist if you let them, but if you’re like a lot of people, you probably haven’t learned enough self-control to be able to ignore these imaginary smokes screens - such a trivial temptation. So, we’ll deal with it.

4. When a you feel a smoke screen is covering that desire or that thing you want to do, WRITE down that anxiety in the “there is no smoke screen” section. And IMMEDIATELY right down, just beneath it, the solution to that anxiety.

Troubleshooting

• “But it’s hard to find a solution!”
• No it’s not hard to find a solution. Writing the anxiety down on paper is the hard part, after that, the anxiety sort of disappears or becomes easy to solve.

• “What if I can’t think of an anxiety?
• Then there’s nothing in your way, you’ve just got the butterflies (an anxiety), so get started!

5. The distracters have the ability to pop up at ANY TIME throughout the process of a day. So keep your card handy and write down the distracter, then write down a future date for you to go ahead and pursue that desire. It’s your DESIRE; don’t let them go, just schedule them in … for a later date.

And that’s all there is to the hack. Enjoy your new hack and the increased amount of control you feel you have over your life. Remember, after a month of the training wheels (notecards), you’ll probably be able to ride the bike without ‘em.

Now, as practice, you might want to go back up and look at the quotes. But instead of feeling like someone who’s out of control, imagine using the hack on all of those situations.

Before long, you’ll be saying things like this:

God must’ve given my feeble brain and my inaccurate fingers a boost today……I managed over 5800 words!!! WOO HOO. Once again, I feel like this crazy 50k word goal might actually be attainable.

Angel With A Twist…Blogging: i got caught up today!!!

Alas, long lost productivity!!

technorati tags: gtd, getting things done, motivation, procrastination, lifehacks, efficiency, hipster pda, notecards, life tips