Graham English

Posts Tagged ‘productivity’

How To Rescue Your Time And Get Your Life Back

Rescue time is an application that has become very important to my weekly GTD review. It’s helping me put some metrics to my writing goals. Read on…

Average Words Per Song And The 80/20 Rule

In preparation for my 2008 song-a-week project, I wanted some numbers to give me an idea of how much writing I would need to do. Using the 80/20 rule, here is what I came up with.

The Best Of Graham English 2007

2007 was the year of social networking. Twitter occupied most of time which led to much less blogging. But 2007 was not without its controversies and celebrations. Read on…

How To Use TextMate As NetNewsWire’s External Blog Editor

I used to be an Ecto user but I have since seen the light and call TextMate my be-all-end-all blogging tool. The only thing I missed was being able to use Ecto as my external blog editor while reading feeds in NetNewsWire. Not anymore!

Update Twitter, Facebook, iChat, Adium, And Skype With Quicksilver

I’m a Facebook fanatic. I joined immediately after they opened to the public. In the beginning, there wasn’t much to talk about. None of my friends had joined and there really wasn’t that much I could do there. But since then, the buzz has caught my friends’ attention and Facebook’s extendibility has grown consistently, giving [...]

Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies For Your iPhone

In an attempt to hack their creativity and artistic output, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created a deck of cards they called the Oblique Strategies. Whenever they came up against a creative dilemma–and especially while under a moment of pressure or deadline–they would pull a card and follow the directions.
I’ve used this technique constantly in [...]

How To Expand Your Google Adwords Keywords With TextMate

There are lots of tools out there to expand your Google AdWords keywords by adding brackets (exact match) and quotes (phrase match) to your keyword list. Some of them are free, some are not, and even fewer options are available for Mac. But if you use TextMate a lot, like me, then you’ll enjoy this [...]

My New Method Of Automated Journaling

I’ve been hacking this auto-journal script for a while and I’ve recently settled on using a local install of WordPress combined with AppleScript and Quicksilver. It’s really pretty easy.
Follow MacZealots’ tutorial on Installing WordPress on Tiger. If you have any trouble along the way, you might need to check out Mac OS X Server 10.4.4: [...]

SEO Automation: How To Track Multiple Search Engine Keyword Rankings Instantly

With a little help from Dave Taylor, author of a number of cool tech books, including the book that inspired this time-saving tip, Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, I was able to save myself a tremendous amount of time and energy. Time that I used to spend doing mind-numbing repetitive data entry can now be used [...]

Append To Inbox Quicksilver Action

For some people, Quicksilver doesn’t work as advertised. For example, I can’t get the ‘append to…’ action to work as a trigger. And since there’s one file that I’m continually appending, I wanted to customize my workflow. That’s why I created my own Quicksilver append action.
I’ve recently started using TextMate’s GTDAlt bundle for a number [...]

Top 5 AppleScript Productivity Hacks for WordPress Bloggers and Podcasters

As bloggers, we tend to do the same repetitive tasks over and over again. We open the same URLs. We launch the same apps. We ftp, we search Technorati, we comment, we do this day in and day out. The 80/20 rule would tell us that creating content in the form of blog posts, [...]

Automating The Quality Of Your Attention

I’ve been thinking more and more about focus. So much competes for my attention second by second (that’s you, Twitter and BlackBerry) that it’s never been more important to practice sustaining focus. The quality of my consciousness and the quality of my attention determine the quality of my life.
What needs to remain a touchstone in [...]

Automation As Part Of An Integral Life Practice

Most repetitive tasks are energy sucks. Opening the same web pages every day, clicking our way around the cybersphere, answering the same questions to our customers, all of these tasks are relatively low-value and cumulatively add up to a large chunk of our lives. The 80/20 rule tells us that 20% of the things we [...]

IM Status: Update Your Skype, iChat, Or Adium Status With Quicksilver

I got really tired of updating my online status on Skype and iChat every time I had to step away from my computer. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if I could update all my instant message apps at once with a few keystrokes using Quicksilver?

GTD: What Are You Doing Right Now Redux

My previous attempt at a time-tracking script worked well for a while. But I wanted something that was self-contained so I could share it with my friends and coworkers. I also wanted to cut down on key strokes.

GTD: Automator Wants To Know What You Are Doing Right Now

I’m into systems. I love figuring out how to get from point A to point B and then optimizing the process as efficiently as possible. Better yet, I love being able to turn a system on and not have to think about it again.
This is one of those systems. I’m an entrepreneur. I don’t have [...]

iQuickTwitter – My Quicksilver + Twitter + iChat + Growl Hack

When I read that you could use Quicksilver with Twitter, I felt as excited as Jack Bauer in an interrogation room full of terror suspects. It all started with Twitter Fan Wiki. And then I lost myself in hours of troubleshooting as I tried to force hack after hack to work the way I wanted them to. As these things are, it wasn’t nearly as hard in the end as all the work that led up to the final result.

The Path To Musical Excellence: Setting Clear Outcomes

Now that you have your musical strengths and weaknesses written down in a place that you will see everyday, it’s time to plan what to do with these lists.
Two Frames
For the best results in doing any kind of goal setting or personal change work, remember the following:
Problem Frame questions are less effective. This is when [...]

TextMate Is My New Wordpress Editor

With the help of a quick Google search and the expertise of Remy, Robin, and Brett, I was able to Hack TextMate and Wordpress to work together. I even ended up making Ecto more functional than it ever has been.
Looks like I’ve got a new blog editor.

Blogging The Snow From Within TextMate

Since 2007 is going to be about increased productivity, efficiency and leverage, I decided to pick up a copy of TextMate to get the ball rolling. Wow, is this program powerful! I’m a big shortcut fan. My philosophy is if you’re using your mouse, then you must not value your time. But TextMate takes shortcuts [...]