Silver Clipboard

Clear Your iPod Clutter with Smart Playlists

Merlin Mann has made a list of smart playlists that help you cut through the clutter of music on your iPod. The ‘Big and Useless’ playlist is particularly great for getting rid of big songs you never listen to that just waste space.

[Click here for ‘Smart playlists for pack rats’ on 43 Folders]

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Header photograph by powerbooktrance

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Use White Noise to Help You Work

Noise comes in colors: pink grey and brown are just a few examples. Each of these colors signifies a precise, scientific definition known only to acoustic specialists but one color, white, has entered the general lexicon. White noise has come to mean constant background sounds that the listener eventually becomes unaware of. The sound of rain or the hum of an air conditioner is white noise.

There are many benefits to working with white noise in the background:

1. White noise blocks out distracting peripheral noises. For the ADD among us, white noise helps minimize sharp, distracting noises by smoothing them out. For example, if you are in a cafe playing music that you don’t like, listening to white noise on your headphones helps blend the noise into the background much more than trying to drown it out with loud music would. There is even a field of design, called architectural acoustics, which works to reduce distracting noises by intentionally adding white noise to the environment.
2. White noise encourages thought and creativity. Where is it easier to work: in a silent library where every page-turn and pencil drop is sudden and distracting, or in a room filled with computer keys clicking away? Think of the test halls you sat in as a child, where teachers enforced silence — it’s hard to focus in situations like that. White noise encourages creativity, which is the topic of a book called ‘Noise’.
3. White noise stops you from futzing with your background music. Instead of getting distracted by hearing a song your sick of, then hitting ‘next’ for two minutes until you find the perfect song, white noise is uniform. It will never pull you out of your thoughts.

Now that you’re sold on the benefits of white noise, how can you get it? These are a few sources of white noise:

• White noise machines. White noise machines are sold primarily to help people sleep. They usually generate uniform sounds such as static or waterfalls.
• White noise CDs. There are many recordings of white noise generally available. Some of the ones that seem strange but work well are recordings of a fan, an air conditioner or a washing machine.
• Podcasts. Framework is a podcast dedicated to a weekly hour of background noise. (Credit to Boing Boing for alerting me to them)
• Nature sounds CDs. While not exactly white noise, I often listen to these. They block out background noise without tiring my brain, as pure white noise can do. Also, they can set the mood for the type of work I want to do: a scary thunderstorm for working at night or beach sounds for early morning. However, good nature CDs are hard to find — most want to play dirty hippy, new age music in the background. Awful.
• Real Life Machines. In my previous office, I had a very large window fan that I used to turn on and place in the middle of the room as a source of white noise.

Next time you’re working, give white noise a try and see if it helps you focus.

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Header photograph by greg westfall

The Mess Box

On your desk live a bunch of miscellaneous objects: scissors, coins, a stapler, hole punch, etc. These are not objects you use every day, but you do use them frequently enough that putting them in storage is inconvenient. Slowly they spread across your desk, cluttering the space and annoying you in worst way possible: just below the threshold of doing something about it.

The solution to this desk detritus? The mess box. To reign in my desk clutter I took the lid from an old shoe box, turned it upside-down and decided that all miscellaneous desk stuff would live in there from now on.

The mess box makes a surprisingly profound difference. First, it gives a clear border to the mess — it will never be more than a square foot of space. Instead of slowing creeping across my desk when I’m not looking, the hole punch and its friends are confined to that box. Secondly, the mess box discourages me from carelessly leaving random things on my working space. With undefined stuff on a surface, adding one more item makes little difference. By having a mess box to hold cluttery items, the desk is always clear for whatever needs working on.

Instead of just letting the mess happen without thinking about it, consciously put boundaries around it. This lets you stop repeating the thought: ‘my desk is a mess’. You can let go of that constant, nagging thought because you’ve made a decision about it. I suggest looking over the mess box during your weekly review and decided what objects you want to keep in there.

Go flip over a box top and get your desk mess under control.

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Header photograph by Syntopia

How to Make Your Laptop Battery Last Longer

On Apple’s website there is a page where they go into detail on how their batteries work and how to keep them lasting as long as possible. There are a few useful tips, and they’ll even schedule into your iCal the regular maintenance you should perform.

[Click here to go to Apple’s Battery page]

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Header photograph by Demion

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If you live in London and would like personal help, please check out my workflow and organizational coaching services.

The Packing Problem

This past summer I helped my parents retire from New York to a Confederate elephant graveyard of suburban development in search of a lower cost of living.

To pack for the move, my parents individually wrapped each of their belongings, placed them in boxes, then wrote on the outside a list of the contents. They didn’t write ‘kitchen supplies’ or ‘books’ as normal people would, instead they listed all the kitchen supplies and the titles of the books. My parents are obsessively neat people.

Near the end of the packing, my mother looked around the house — 80% empty at this point and said: “I’m glad most of this stuff is packed. It shouldn’t take long to finish.”

But it did. Many more hours of work lay ahead — more than had passed already.

In our packing, we forgot an important truth: the 80/20 rule applies to all things, even moving. In this case, the last 20% of stuff takes 80% of the time to pack.

Why is this so? Because people start packing with the easy items: books, dishes, clothes. These things live in clearly defined places and fit snugly into boxes. The last 20% of stuff is widely dispersed throughout the house and is awkwardly shaped. These knickknacks, souvenirs, gifts and other unintentionally accumulated stuff, straddle the line between between ‘throw out’ and ‘keep’. They drag on the mind and require the most decisions.

To help quicken the packing of the last twenty percent of stuff here are two suggestions:

1. Decide your default position. Make a decision, in advance, about what you are going to do with unclear items — things you aren’t immediately sure if you want to keep or ditch. The two options are: ‘when it doubt, throw it out’ or ‘when in doubt, keep it’. It doesn’t matter which option you choose, just decided before you start to save yourself hours of dithering and trips down memory lane. (Alternatively you can also photograph your items, then throw them out.)
2. Get thyself to a Container Store. Buy a big box filled with many smaller boxes. For that last 20% of stuff you keep, don’t try and sort it — that will take forever. Just start packing a small box with the miscellanea and when it’s full, add it to the bigger box. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Header photograph by Jared