An E-Tool Bill of Rights

With the surfeit of inbound communication unleashed by our always-on culture, life balance pundit Joe Robinson thinks it's time to get constitutional about our rights as overwhelmed e-citizens. I can definitely get behind a couple of the "articles" he's laid out:

In the spirit of Madison and Jefferson, it's time to reclaim liberty, not to mention productivity, with some boundary setting and rules. It's time to redraw the line between work and home, and between legitimate office communications and junk, with an E-Tool Bill of Rights...

Article 3: The people shall have the right to switch off email notification and other noisemakers and instead check messages at designated times to prevent attention deficit...

Article 4: There shall be no requirement of immediate response to messaging, unless urgency is determined.

Your mileage, like my own, will vary on some of these, but I'm always happy to see this thread of conversation picked up; I regret that we still have a ways to go before some of these would be ratified by the extant electronic body politic.

[ Thanks, barrett55 ]

MWSF Drinking Game 2007
Originally uploaded by World Leader Pretend1.

We'll all be so drunk by 11am tomorrow.

[via Digg]

18 Ways to Stay Focused at Work

In this post from last August, Dave Cheong pointed out some of the hazards of working in a cube farm, and he proposes some handy tips for wresting back your attention from a room full of interruptions and distractions. I think a few of these tips are big winners.

Allocate time slots colleagues can interrupt you...Instead of having people stop by your desk every 10 mins and asking you questions, let them know of a time in the day, say between 2-4pm you can be interrupted. At all other times, you can really get some work done...

Apply time boxing...Instead of working at something till it is done, try working on it for a limited period, say 30 mins. By that time, the task is either completed or you allocate another time slot, perhaps in another day, to pick it up again...

Find the best time to do repetitive and boring tasks...For example, I’m more alert at the start of the day, so it’s better to work on things which require brain power early. Working on boring tasks that can be done via auto-pilot are better left towards the end of the day when I’m usually tired.

I realize that many of these ideas assume a lot of autonomy and control over your work day as well as how you conduct it -- obviously not every career is conducive to the enforcement of what amounts to "office hours" -- but I think that's kind of the point as well as the irony and the big, bottom-line challenge.

MacBreak 38: Path Finder

As promised, here's the latest video podcast episode of MacBreak, in which Leo and I have a look at Path Finder, an application by Cocoatech that (in my opinion) handsomely compensates for many of the deficits in the current OS X Finder. It also has a ton of cool features, preferences, and geegaws that most any Mac nerd will love.

New to me in this episode: according to Leo, Woz (cough) likes Path Finder, too. Cool!

Finally, here's some earlier coverage of Path Finder on 43f.

Direct downloads of Episode 38:

• Standard video (450p)
• HD version (1080p)

Subscribe to MacBreak for free

• iPod version (Subscribe in iTunes)
• 1080p (HD) version

The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus get-together during Macworld week

Upcoming.org: OmniFocus Meetup at Apple Store (Monday, January 8, 2007)

As most Kinkless nerds already know, OmniGroup is developing a full-on Cocoa implementation of Ethan's script that they've dubbed OmniFocus. Since the OmniGroup folks will be in town for MacWorld, they've kindly offered to host a meetup at the Apple Store on Monday afternoon. For better or worse, your Author will be the emcee.