Tag: howiwork

I wrote about my experiences covering the GOP candidates in Nevada for PetaPixel. Overwhelmed and Undergeared: Two Days on the Campaign Trail in Nevada Trump, Carson, and Rubio (l. to r.). Give it a read, it’s a pretty good look at the utter insanity of what goes on behind-the-scenes during a campaign event.

So this thing happened, and now I’m off to cover the GOP candidates in Nevada. Go figure. About a month ago, a news wire service called Demotix was shuttered in a nobody saw that coming deal where Corbis Images was sold to a Chinese company. So what little work I had posted there is gone. It might pop back up at some point but other than the “we’re closed, see ya!

Regardless of the system, I’m a big fan of getting things done. That’s in the lower case context of completing things. I’m still waiting on my library to get me David Allen’s book, but I’ve read enough to be familiar with the system. I’m more interested the parts of the book that don’t get covered much in blog posts. Especially how he approaches the daily/weekly review process. But as for the actual GTD todo list—with next actions, etc.

The thing that makes email worthwhile is also the reason it’s a royal pain to deal with: it’s universal. If you’re on the Internet, you have some sort of email. It may be the account that comes with your home internet subscription. Or one of a hundred other sources, work, phone, online free mail, or a provider attached to an owned domain name. My point is that everyone has at least one email account.

The secret to getting things done is to have them happen when you’re not thinking about them. Automation is the key to keeping bills paid, files backed up, and tweeting new blog posts. It’s also easy to automate your reading list and have the books ready for you, all for free. Your Local Library Amazon is on a never ending quest to be the one-stop shop for all things reading. Now it’s trying to replace the library with Kindle Unlimited.

I’ve been tracking my writing time since the beginning of the year. It’s interesting to see the data and the averages over time that go with it. As of today, I’ve written just over 70,000 words and spent 165 hours doing it. My time tracking spreadsheet says that I’ve spent an average of 1h 54m per day writing. Looking at the data, one thing stands out. I’ve only been measuring my “first draft” writing time.

Getting paid online is a delicate balance of convenience vs. cost. Some of the services are used simply because they’ve been around the longest. Like PayPal. But new ones seem to pop up every other day. For the most part, they’re worth signing up for to see how things work. The newest is Cash.me from Square. They have a nice link-shortening gimmick called “cashtags.” The idea is to create a username starting with a dollar sign ($) which then becomes your unique URL.

Managing receipts is a necessary evil for anyone that needs to track tax deductions. I wanted a way to keep my receipts in one place on my computer, and have an easy way to mark the ones that are deductible. Keeping track of emailed and downloaded receipts is usually much easier than having to file paper copies. Usually. The one advantage of paper is that it can be glanced at. A folder full of PDFs isn’t something that be looked through with a quick riffle of the thumb.

Over the last week or so, I’ve been plagued with sleep problems. This was more than not being sleepy around bedtime. This was not being sleepy plus not actually sleeping when in bed. I think it started with a few late nights. From there, I spiraled into becoming semi-nocturnal. I would be okay with the good kind of nocturnal. The kind where I could sleep peacefully and wake up as evening fell.

This has been one of those weeks where I’ve done lots of stuff. I’ve also failed to accomplish anything worthwhile. The highlight of the week was on Wednesday when the city decided to turn off the water to install new meters in the building. We got warning letters stuffed in the doorframe on Monday. So it wasn’t a surprise. I thought about toughing it out. But then I decided that having a working toilet for those six hours would be a good thing.