Sean’s Blog

GTD Article on O’Reilly Radar

The Limits of Efficiency

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but I have been crazy busy with the house hunt going on and work. Several weeks ago there was an article on O’Reilly Radar called the Limits of Efficiency by Jimmy Guterman. The gist of the article was that no matter how good of a system you use, you can overextend yourself if you keep taking on more work. There are only 24 hours in a day.

While I agree with the main point of the article, the author went also used a good amount of space to detail what he didn’t like about the GTD system, and basically it was “the cultishness”(as he terms it). Now we all know that anything people really like is going to engender a decent amount of fanboyism. Look at the iPhone, or Macs, or even my favorite Linux. When something works well (as GTD does) it’s pretty easy, especially on the interwebs, to get carried away and see it as the cure for all ills. I’ll admit to doing it several time myself. But just because there is “a cultishness” about a method or product doesn’t detract from it’s value. Mac people can be annoying, but that doesn’t make Macs’ any less of a great machine.

The other thing that the article made me think about was why I like the GTD system. I really like the fact that it is really a method. David Allen sells some GTD products and seminars, but there are a million ways to implement GTD. From the HipsterPDA to MonkeyGTD, it is really platform independent. It allows me to really experiment and find out what works for me without tying me to a product or platform.

So call me a fanboy if you will, but don’t discard an idea because some of it’s proponents are a little over the top about it.

Buying a House - Getting a Preapproval

Before I even get started, let me apply all the standard disclaimers. I am not a lawyer, real estate agent, financial wizard of any type, or even a personal finance blogger. I am providing this information in the hopes that anyone going through the house hunt can benefit in some way, or someone reading this can offer a good piece of advice.

Yesterday kicked off our first official day of on the house hunt. We have been looking for a house for a little while and decided that now was a good time to pull the trigger. The first thing we did was to get an idea what we could afford, what our price range was and scoped out some of the neighborhoods we liked in order to get a feel for them.

Once we had the range we would spend, I though to get the financing out of the way. I’ve had friends that have done this completely the opposite way (find the house, then get the financing) but this just seemed to make the most sense to me. Since I work for a bank, I just wandered up to the floor where some of the mortgage group sat with a name of a lady someone on my floor knew. While the group in our building handled the non-prime loans, and my credit was good enough to qualify for a prime loan, she just started me off by gathering some info and passed it over to another person that handles my type of loan. Being a good consumer, I thought I would get a couple other quotes while while they worked on mine.

Being a child of the internet, I hit up Lending Tree. Lending Tree farmed out the offers and I got a couple of offers the next day which made me happy as now I have something to compare.

Things that I’ve learned so far:

• It’s all credit score.  Make sure you know yours before you start the process.
• While you will get pre-qualified, nobody is gonna give you a definite number until you have a house picked out. This was really surprising to me, as I figured that i could get all the financial stuff out of the way before I even looked at a house, but this seems to not be the case.
• Mortgage Brokers call you at weird times. Maybe it was just when they assumed that it was when I’d be home, but almost all my correspondence (phone and email) has been between 5pm and 8pm). Just though it was a little weird.
• Be very clear about what you want. Most of my mortgage people made some assumptions and ran with it. Even though I said I had a down payment, they all wanted to show me the 0% down loans. It was no problem to stop them and clearly state that this is what you want to do.
• Ask for a breakdown of fees and closing costs at the beginning. These will be estimates, but there are some wide disparities and it is nice to know that upfront.

Stay tuned for more as we take the next step, finding a Realtor.

Getting Things Blogged w/ MonkeyGTD

A little while ago, I wrote about using MonkeyGTD at Tiddlyspot for Getting Things Done. I’d like to share a little more about how I use it for blogging as well.

If you can’t tell, I’m terrible when it comes to being regular with updates on this site. It’s not that I don’t have ideas, it’s that I think of something and write it down on a scrap of paper or in a notebook and promptly forget about it. Alot of my blog posts actually happen when an idea hits me and I am currently able to access my site.

What I have started to try to do is to use MonkeyGTD to Get Things Blogged. I created a context called @Blog and as an idea hits me, be it one word or a full article, I add it to the Someday/Maybe list. When I have all the content finished, I just pasted it into Wordpress, link it, tag it and I’m done.

So far, this has worked out pretty well for me, and hopefully it can help some of you who have the same problem.

How to travel for business

Since I’ve come back from India, several people have asked me how I got to travel for business. I thought I’d share some tips that I’ve picked up.

I’ve done some traveling for every job I’ve had.  Most of the places have not been paradises, but I’ve managed to see a good bit of the country and now even places outside the country.  Here, IMHO, is how to position your self to travel:

• Be good at what you do - Nobody is going to send the person who does the bare minimum to represent the company.  Learn your core functions well.  If you can become an expert at something you do (even if it just a subset of your responsibilities), even better.
• Make it known that you LIKE to travel - I’m pretty sure this was a big factor in my getting picked for this trip.
• Not every trip is to Club Med - Most businesses aren’t in great vacation spots.  Plano, TX and Wilmington, DE come to mind. Even these spots have their charm though.  Try to find at least one interesting thing about each place you go.
• When you get there, work your a$$ off - You were sent there for a job, so do it and do it well.  You are almost guaranteed other travel opportunities if you knock the current assignment out of the park.  On the flip side, forget about traveling if you blow the assignment through laziness.
• Take some time for yourself - during your time off, see some of the local attractions.  One of my favorite things to do is to take a walk through Millennium Park in Chicago after work when I used to go there for business.  Just because the company is paying for a hotel room does not mean you have to spend every off duty minute in it.
• Work well with the locals - If you can get along with people there, they are much more likely to ask for you to come back.  Insult them or belittle them (”I’m from corporate headquarters, do as I say”) and don’t be shocked if they don’t want you back (let alone show you the cool hidden little places of there town).

Most of this is common sense, but hopefully it can help a little.

Partying like Rockstars - Bangalore, India

Friday was our last day in Bangalore. To show our appreciation to everyone for the great time we had, we took them all out to Ivy and tore the roof off the place. Don’t ever let anyone tell you Indians don’t know how to party:

Pictures here

Bangalore City Photos

10 years ago, Bangalore was a city of less then 3 million people (according to a co-worker).  There are now over 7 million.  Several people have asked me what the city looks like so I’ve posted some photos of the city in the Bangalore album.  They also are the latest uploads.

And yes, I am terrified of that elephant.

Some pictures from Bangalore, India

It has been really busy here so I haven’t had time to really write up some details on the trip.  Let me just say this - the people are increadibly hospitible, the food is great, and the driving is crazier then you could ever imagine.  When I get some time I’ll post more in detail about it. 

For now though, here is the photo gallery of some of the pics: Bangalore Photos