I was a big fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, which I discovered about four years ago in high school. There’s more “productivity porn” on the Web these days than anyone knows what to do with, so if you’re looking to jump in to Allen’s system it’s worth having a knowledgeable guide. That link should help you out!

But there are a fair amount of problems with GTD, not the least of which being how narrow its focus is. It requires a LOT of thought and attention every day in order to function the way it’s designed to, and it won’t give you a whole lot of feedback on how much real progress you’re making (everything becomes splintered into bilions and billions of tiny tasks). It’s always much easier (and tempting) to let things slide, and that’s never a good idea.

The best way to combat this is to rethink and re-tweak the system, and Leo Babuata of Zen Habits has done exactly that in his Zen-To-Done” system. I find his ideas extremely complementary to my way of working. The idea of “Big Rocks“, or the concrete work for the week that you absolutely need to pay attention to, gives otherwise freeform and chaotic lists of tasks some necessary context. The same basic process of GTD (where you capture every idea you have whenever you have them, process them when you get home, then select and complete each action individually) remains the same. I highly recommend ZTD; it’s well-thought and incredibly useful.

Enter Software

To handle my lists and quickly enter new tasks, I use Things.app, a fantastic piece of (Mac OS X) software from Cultured Code. I’ve never (well, almost never) been as thrilled with a piece of code in my life. I love Things almost as much as I love actually getting things done. There’s an iPhone version too, which I’m dying to play with when I get one later this year.

For virtually everything else (my life-in-a-database), I use Evernote. Not only can I write notes to myself (including PDFs) and tag and organize them however I like, but those notes are automatically synchronized to a website where I can log in and read them anywhere in the world. I can even take pictures of a sign with a digital camera, upload them to the site, and the text will be recognized so I can search for it in the future. Wow. After trying a ton of related software, including Yojimbo, DevonTHINK and Notational Velocity, I think Evernote strikes the best balance of simplicity and usefulness. And of course, there’s an iPhone app already. Did I mention that it’s free?

A typical day on my Mac involves Things, iCal and NetNewsWire for reading news; Evernote for taking notes, Photoshop and Lightroom for my photography, Scrivener for longer, multi-part documents, Transmit for working with my web server, and MarsEdit for writing Evolation.

So that’s it for software.

A Nifty Trick to Organize a Room

I’ve been stuck on the concept of rational space for a few weeks now. I want my room to be rational, and I spent a few days at the end of last year coming up with ways to do it. One of the most useful habits I’ve started is to label EVERYTHING with the information that’s relevant to it. A stack of CD cases gets a label saying “these are just cases”, so that I don’t need to open them up and look at them when I see them in a drawer. My subwoofer has L and R taped onto the back so that I don’t have to squint at the 6-point-gold-text-on-black wiring diagram. The computer I need to fix has its serial number taped to the top. This all seems obvious, but when you have inattentive ADD it’s hard to remember all the minutae or be able to find what you’re looking for. The fewer chances to make a mistake, the better. What I’ve found is that in keeping things consistently labelled, the amount of decisions I need to make at any given time (where do I put this? what’s in it? why do I have it?) are reduced dramatically. The room practically organizes itself, since everything becomes self-contained. I still need to get better about putting things away, which is part of the 2009 challenge!

Next time, we’ll look at so-called Internet Addiction and the ways in which I’ll be leaving technology behind this year in favor of living real life. Don’t miss anything– subscribe to my RSS feed and make sure you get the biggest kickstart to 2009 you can!

This year seems particularly conducive to optimism: with the election of Obama, the global economic avalanche, and (on a more personal note) my graduation from college, the future is anything but certain. With all that ambiguity comes a special kind of potential: anything can happen now. I’ve also had a special feeling about the year 2009 for as long as I can remember, so I hope that intuition holds true.

I discovered a fantastic annual review exercise on Chris Guillebeau’s site, The Art of Nonconformity and have been hard at work elaborating exactly what I want to get out of 2009. I encourage you to do the same! Here are a few areas where I will be working particularly hard, as well as an area I’ve chosen to take a break on this year.

Areas to Focus On

Health

Vision - my computer-induced nearsightedness has bothered me to no end, and since my new puppy chewed up a very expensive pair of glasses, I’m electing to forego buying a new pair and instead use natural vision improvement exercises (which have worked wonders in the past for me, but I have not had the discipline to follow through on). I will practice these techniques every day for a minimum of 45 days to evaluate if they will help my eyesight.

Mind - after spending nearly a year conducting research for my upcoming senior project, The Anatomy of Awareness (more on that later!), I have learned a great deal about neuroscience and brain chemistry. With that knowledge comes the awareness of just how many things in my own brain are not working correctly: my focus, concentration, energy levels and motivation are seriously fucked. This year, I will conduct exhaustive trials of supplements and prescriptions to find what works best for me in these areas. I’m currently waiting on a shipment of piracetam, a “cognitive enhancer” proven beneficial in Alzheimer’s patients and in connecting the left and right brain hemispheres. I’ll post some information on that in the near future.

Diet and Exercise - I have occasionally been in great shape, so I know it’s not only possible, but relatively simple given the right motivation. This year I am going to try eating much fewer carbs. I am interested in learning more about Ayurvedic (Indian) dietary practices, especially since an Ayurvedic herb (Tulsi) just rescued me from a very serious cold.

Work and Finances

Career - I have had a rocky road of internships and part-time work during my college’s Fieldwork Term, but my experiences have been largely positive. I’ll soon begin working at my former high school and hope to turn this into a full-time position or find other work that is similarly rewarding and fulfilling to my purpose as a human being. Since I am leaving college this year as well, I have plenty of ideas of where I want to go and will need some time to whittle my options down!

I’ve also just completed 90% of the paperwork for launching Evolation as a small business (from now on known as Evolation Media, LLC) and I am excited about the prospects. I am still examining ways I can use the medium and content of this site to help others. I will be adding some slight redesigns to the site in order to better prepare it for the direction I have planned for it.

Organization

I am making an intense transition towards being more organized and aware of the myriad details of my life. I have practiced David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” method before, and found it fantastic, but have not had the time or incentive to put it into full-time use. 2009 is that time. I will be documenting how I use his and other organizational systems, as well as offering tips on what’s helped me stay on top of all this!

Areas to Leave Alone

Spirituality - I have spent altogether too much time in this realm recently, and though I feel intensely connected, grateful, and conscious in my daily life, I have lost a fair amount of personal power because I have never really worked at being effective in the real world. Since I know I will be a spiritual person regardless of what I do, and that this is an innate and inseperable part of who I am, I will try to leave it on the back burner and focus more on interpersonal, entrepreneurial and physical work in the real world. In Steve Pavlina’s terminology, I am moving away from a fixation on Oneness (the combination of Truth and Love) and towards a focus on Courage (the combination of Love and Power).

I’ll be documenting all these trials over the coming months, so there will be much more info to follow soon. Have a happy 2009!

Biologist Ken Lohmann speculates that young fish are imprinted with the geomagnetic coordinates of their place of origin, which they use to find their way back home in order to mate. This adaptation works so well that in the 19th century, salmon migrations choked rivers and nourished entire ecosystems. Naturally, salmon are now on the endangered species list. This is part of the reason why biologists are working so hard to understand the salmon’s internal compass.

Lohmann’s concept for a salmon-friendly magnetic generator assumes, of course, that salmon do use magnetism to find their way. But the evidence seems to be there.

A man who volunteered to stay in the house, known as Bioscleave, described the experience as a continual effort. “Constantly you’re getting this contrasting information. […] You either collapse, or you have to figure it out a different way.”

The team of Gins and her assistant, the artist Arakawa, have spent four decades studying ways “architecture might best be used to sustain life,” according to their website. That’s all well and good, but does constant confusion really help boost the immune system as they claim?

Are Gins and Arakawa just nuts, or are they on to something? Let me know what you think in the comments.

(via Wired)

I am often asked what my term “post digital” signifies. It is a term that I created as a way to acknowledge a distinction between those that are passed [sic] their fascination with computers, and are now driven by the ideas instead of the technology. It is not an expression of Luddite-ism nor is it a loaded term like that icky “post modernism” business. If we are to consider the book by Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, as an affirmation that the computer has arrived, then the “post digital” generation refers to the growing few that have already been digital, and are now more interested in Being Human. Buying a good computer is easy. Being a good person is something that cannot be merely bought… even on the great god of eBay.

This idea is really interesting for a few reasons: for one, it’s important to realize that technological “breakthroughs” don’t necessarily signify real progress. The only progress we can measure is what happens in our own heads, the awareness we have of ourselves and our world, the new thinking that comes with these new technologies. If we don’t acquire a fundamentally new (or fundamentally more complete) reality as a result of our technologies, we are actively losing ground.

Technology’s Not Evil

When I say “losing ground”, I don’t mean that technology is evil, or that we should work to decrease our reliance on it (at least, not necessarily). What undeniably seems to happen, though, is that each new breakthrough affects our belief in previous paradigms. When given appropriate evidence, we instinctually believe our previous ideas to be in error (or shaky, at the very least). Until we’re fully aware of what a new technology can do, we tend to assign it more capabilities, greater capacities, rather than less. But until we actually know what’s possible, this “leap of logic” distracts us from the mastery we’d otherwise have.

The implications, the possibilities, are not what matters. What matters are the ways that things really work, devoid of all theory or philosophy. Discovering agriculture actively changed the way that things could be done, or even thought about. Designing messaging systems that are instantaneous (email) and available anywhere (txts) drastically affects the flow of information, making everyone “available” at all times. (This regardless of whether anyone actually wanted to be available.) When rockets and space travel became possible, we knew that certain aspects of our consciousness would not (or could not) stay still for much longer. We had no more excuses, no more reasons not to move beyond our prior bounds.

In many respects our current technologies are little more than refinements. The necessary cognitive “reorganization” required to operate them was put in place (in most cases) some time earlier. In the case of computers, we were already able to understand the notion of a machine that exists for our personal use (something granted by basic agriculture), the idea of an adding device (the calculator/abacus), and a communicative device (the telephone). What really requires a leap of logic is the instant-on, always-accessible world granted by mobile Web access. But is our being surrounded by knowledge (or, perhaps, lack of knowledge) a step forward in our day-to-day lives? As Nicholas Carr wrote in The New Atlantic, is Google just making us stupid?

In a word, yes. Not only is Google making us stupid, but having access to Google means that our mode of thinking, by defWhaault, includes Google as a viable solution. Google becomes an answer in itself.

What we really need are new questions. We’ve moved far beyond “the medium is the message”; now, we need new messages. We need worthwhile messages. In a truly post-digital world, the only survivors are beauty, truth, and awareness.

One finds beauty by removing complexity, by confronting ambiguity, by stopping to observe without judgment or desire.

One builds truth by confronting your sources, by examining your beliefs, and by reframing your questions.

One builds awareness by looking in the right places, by uncovering a wider range of potentials, and by thinking holistically.

No technology can do this for us. It may bring us towards the right places; it may give us more sources to question, or things to observe, but it cannot and will not take these steps for us.

These are thoughts I certainly hope more of the developed world embraces in the future, as they have the potential to reverse a lot of fundamental wrongs– such as the ways in which our culture has systematically eradicated much of the world through insistence on “more”. Take the process of creating and distributing our (genetically modified) food, for example. Remove the complexity and one finds that a beautiful life is one in which food is grown closer to home. Confront the ambiguity, and one finds that beauty is when food is comprehensible and direct. Stop to observe, and you’ll find that beautiful food is food that your body runs well on.

Now do the same for truth: where does this food come from? Do I want that? Is there a way I can find similar advantages by doing this differently?

And awareness: what if better, more nutritious food is available elsewhere? What foods have I not tried, but might be best for me? What does my action (or inaction) perpetuate? If one billion people behaved exactly like me, what does the world begin to look like?

Living in a post-digital world, in a Human (capital H!) world, means living in harmony with beauty, truth and awareness. Whatever means you use to get there, whatever technologies you employ, know that in asking the questions you are in fact Being Human, using the digital world as a tool and not as an occupation. You are using technology for its beauty, for its potential to reveal truth, and for its ability to further your awareness.

Ask these three questions as often as you can, and you’ll find your life almost miraculously shedding bullshit. People who bother you will seem different. Things you wish you had or think you need might be forgotten entirely. Ideas you spent your life working on may just “not feel right” anymore. And most importantly of all, you’ll learn to think for yourself.

Er, I mean, you’ll stop Googling something every 30 seconds.

Hey! I’m working on it.

Image: Ages Astray by Michael Cook.

Peemoeller says that the design has one “numerous international awards” but has not mentioned which. The amount of work that went into this is clearly worthy of such awards! I’m still not entirely sure how a project like this gets put together.

I would especially love to see this in motion–watching the perfectly-clear letters begin to distort and flicker into meaninglessness would be amazing. Any Australians want to put up some video?

One of the more beautiful of these, linked from the Long Now blog, is the 728-ton mass damper in use in Taiwan’s “Taipei 101″ building. During the recent earthquakes, someone was able to film this massive pendulum in action. Pretty amazing.

It’s not a piece of architecture somebody designed today and that’s it. It remains forever. It’s designed by life, shaped by time.

The building boasts a number of innovations, including being entirely prefabricated (which will construct in six days what typically takes nearly six weeks), as well as generating enough wind power to sustain similar-sized buildings (well, maybe not…).

There is some (predictable) skepticism, since the architect has never built a skyscraper before, but he claims that a solid team is in place to help work out all the kinks. Either way it’s truly stunning, both conceptually and visually.

I am becoming increasingly certain that an arriving movement in art will involve “radical dynamism”, or the alteration of work as it is being displayed, in a way that is not at all performance art. This has certainly been seen before (on some levels) in the form of mobiles and moving sculptures (both of which are, in many ways, still performance art) but I’ve become very interested in the concept of work that has both inalterable (permanent) change as well as unique (non-cylical) motion, perhaps derived in some way from the technological deluge of the Web and our daily lives (ie. in response to memes). This building certainly hits on the latter, but short of the wear and tear of everyday use it does not (yet) accomplish the former. Still, it may help usher in the “dynamic era”… and I would love to see any examples of this kind of work, if they exist.

Dubai ’shape-shifting skyscraper’ unveiled - CNN.com

If we covered the windiest 10 per cent [of the UK] with windmills, we might be able to generate half of the energy used by driving a car 50 km [31 miles] per day each. Britain’s onshore wind energy resource may be “huge,” but it’s not as huge as our huge consumption. I should emphasize how audacious an assumption I’m making. […] The windmills required […] are fifty times the entire wind hardware of Denmark; seven times all the windfarms of Germany; and double the entire fleet of all wind turbines in the world.

Kay moves on to dismantle (or is it dismember?) various alternative energy models, including solar power (which requires obscene amounts of space, especially in a place as sunless as England) and biofuel, which is scarcely better.

The most efficient plants … deliver an average power of 0.5W/m2. Let’s cover 75 per cent of the country with quality green stuff. That’s 3000m2 per person devoted to bio-energy. This is the same as the British land area currently devoted to agriculture. So the maximum energy available, ignoring all the additional costs of growing, harvesting, and processing the greenery, is … 36 kWh/d per person.

Wow. That’s not very much, considering the outrageously generous assumptions we just made [in order] to get a big number.

One interesting suggestion involves using land in North Africa for solar power and routing the current over the sea, counteracting the limited space available for solar panels in Europe. This still doesn’t deliver a whole lot of energy, but it’s feasible.

Part of my respect for Dr. Kay comes from his sheer level of thinking. All of his calculations are based on the assumption that everything is used to its fullest potential– making the results even more scary. In considering hydroelectric power, Kay envisions “millions” of water pumps moving water uphill, poised to create waterfalls-on-demand should the hydro systems fail. Kay’s contribution to the clean-energy discussion is bound to generate some exceptional new ideas–and, perhaps, some much-needed perspective.

Kay’s book, Without the Hot Air, is freely downloadable (still in progress, he claims) here. Well worth a read.

Not doom in the sense of the world ending (sure, we have those issues with planes blowing up the neighborhood); I mean doom in the context of going somewhere with one’s life. Doom in the very real sense that every second we have is valuable (and, potentially, profitable).

New York breeds some of the most determined and hardest-working people on earth. From the street cleaners to CEOs, everyone is trying to get ahead, and the only way to do that (given that we all live a roughly equal number of days) is to work harder, or faster, or better. Being surrounded by this energy, especially living somewhere like Wall Street, gave me the constant signal that everything should be very very important. Work when you’re on break. Work when you’re on the train. Every second you aren’t working is a second someone else is.

The thing is, far from being neurotic (though my friends might beg to differ), I think this energy helps me prioritize. It’s true, I always claim to be busy. It’s also true that I always claim to be having fun. This is no accident.

In truth, people become more lazy and more unmotivated the more “breaks” they take. Why go back to work at all, after a certain point? If your work requires you to stop so often, it’s probably not something you want to be doing. If it was really tailored to your energy levels and tapped into your real drive, hours would go by before you even considered stopping. The fact is that 99% of what we do is irrelevant to our core motives, detached from our real passions. But this is something you can change. You can choose to move forward towards your goals, or you can choose to have the same day over and over again until you die. Which do you choose?

Next time you’re faced with a decision about what to do next, which “next action” to cover, ask yourself this:

Which choice will put me in a position of greater knowing? Which choice will I look back on and say, ‘that was important’?

You’d be surprised at how much that clears up.

Most of our lives, we’re caught up in an endless loop of consistently choosing the least-useful path, simply because it requires less effort. We’re not just creatures of habit, we’re creatures of laziness. What did you do today that was dramatically different from yesterday? Can you name five things? Three? Even one?

It takes courage to do something unique, something difficult, every single day. But damn, is it worthwhile.

Every morning when I wake up, I ask myself if I’m truly moving forward. If I’m not, I want to know it as soon as my day starts, and address it right then and there–not after 14 hours are wasted on projects I don’t care about, or whose outcomes don’t affect me.

New York may be a hell of a bizarre place to live, but at least it’s been a good teacher.

Are you better prepared today than you were yesterday? Are you closer to the things you want? Are you working, or just surviving?

No matter how overworked you might be, or how tired you feel, or how much you hate the idea of challenging yourself with new directions, there’s still time to learn something new today. This is the internet. Read something worthwhile. Just one new piece of information a day will mean you’ve learned 30 new things in a month. And at least one of those things might completely change your ideas about yourself and your career.

It’s worth the effort.

Image: “Dimensional Shift” by Michael Cook.