Andrew Ferrier

As part of my cunning plan to move my data online, I decided to move away from using my Palm for managing my diary – and towards Google Calendar instead. I’ve already stopped using the Palm to-do list; all I really need to do now is find a decent online addressbook; Plaxo being one possibility that Chris suggested.

It took me a while to figure out how to get my data out of the Palm. Palm don’t provide a decent export to anything other than Palm formats for the datebook, so a third-party exporter was called for. The web is seemingly full of dodgy Windows shareware to do the job, but jpilot (which I already, but rarely, use on my Linux machine) turned up trumps. It exports directly to the modern iCalendar standard, fully supported by Google Calendar. Hurrah! Since this solution doesn’t seem to be well-documented, I thought I’d write it down.

I’m still having problems with my PlusNet broadband. Not only are they not interested in talking to me (phone line queues over an hour, website queries often take days), but when they do, we go round in circles discussing basic settings on my router rather than addressing the problem (my protestations that I haven’t changed a sausage are seemingly ignored). So please, if you’re looking for an ADSL provider, and value customer service, don’t go with PlusNet.

But some good news this morning: I spoke to a nice lady from the Consumer Direct service. She gave me some great advice on how to proceed; what wording to use in my letters them, etc. Based on that experience, I’d recommend them if you’re having a similar problem. Never let it be said that I don’t occasionally have a good word for government.

Why oh why can’t someone make a wallet that:

• Can hold at least ten plastic cards, some cash, and some receipts so they are easily accessible?
• Isn’t so huge that it looks like I’m carrying a copy of War and Peace in my pocket?
• Looks fairly smart, preferably made from leather, but not like I just bought it from Armani or some other o-so-faishonable label?
• Lasts more than 2 weeks?
• And most importantly, has a zip all the way round so your stuff doesn’t fall out?

Is this so hard? (grumble, grumble).

Wallet manufacturers: I will pay you £200 for a wallet that fulfills the above criteria. I realise this won’t cover your R&D costs if it’s just for me, but I’m sure you could sell more of them. Please feel free to design the wallet before manufacturing it if that helps.

I am a bit weak when it comes to putting off tasks. If I don’t feel like doing something right now, I will often find a way to delay it. As such, one of my current self-improvement tasks is to work at overcoming my problems with procrastination (I considered not writing this blog entry for at least 3 minutes, after it popped into my head, until I considered how ironic it would be not to write it). I am having a healthy amount of success so far.

Firstly, I agree with this article: ‘Procrastination is not a problem of time management’. On days when I’ve been feeling motivated and productive, I’ve realised that I typically waste so much time with procrastinating that I wouldn’t have much less time to spend if I just did the things I’m procrastinating over. So fancy diaries, to-do lists, and other schemes may solve problems with time management, but not procrastination. To me, not procrastinating is a habit that I’m having to learn, by seeing the benefits that follow from it when I do get on with things.

In my research on this issue, I’ve come up with a few tricks, with some advice and adaptation from other sources, which are definitely helping push things in the right direction:

• When faced with a task, establish if it can be completed now. If it can’t, do whatever can be done, then move it to later on your to-do list. Then forget about it.
• If you come up against a task that can be done quickly (e.g. an email that only needs a quick reply), do it now. This typically applies to tasks less than 5 minutes long. This makes your life less cluttered and makes the bigger picture easier to manage. If you know from experience that the task is nonessential, you’re probably not going to do it at all, and you’ll eventually discard it, discard it now. Don’t keep it hanging around, weighing you down.
• Force yourself to complete something by making commitments to third parties. If, like me, you feel bad when you let others down, let them know that you will complete the thing you are procrastinating about to a deadline – book meetings to discuss the results, promise to send them a copy by a certain time, etc. If they are relying on it, all the better, but even if not, this will encourage you to complete it on time. Don’t be over-optimistic with your challenge, but don’t be too easy on yourself either – otherwise you are just giving yourself an excuse for more procrastination.

I’d be interested in hearing your comments.