plus nine. neo now.

Still looking for a decent, simple, workable hack to keep track of to do lists, a handful of links, some notes, ideas and all that. a lot of people have had ideas about what to do, quite a few really good ones too - the alpha geeks being Merlin "43 folders" Mann with some good stuff about smarter to do lists, as well as plenty of posts on life hacker, which are almost always worth reading. (One reader posted a comment on 43 folders about a personal instant intranet - "just add water", which sounds promising, but still just isn't it.)

In a conversation recently a friend pointed something out that seems so simple, it nearly hurts, which makes me believe it might actually work: to simply put up a wiki on your pc.

first, the cons:

• you need to install some kind of server software. allegedly, there are some very simple-to-install packages available. (just tried it for 5 mins, and it didn't quite work, but a good night's sleep will probably fix it/me.)
• it's offline, i.e. on your computer. not available from anywhere else, which might be a gamebreaker. alternatively, you could simply put it on your webserver, instead. But personally, I'm not skilled enough in terms of security, and since the personal wiki (should we call it iWikim just for the lower-case i's sake?) would contain plenty of sensitive data, this might be a bad idea.

So, at the pros we look:

• nice & simple
• very flexible & scalable
• you can produce to do lists, link them to notes, link those to websites. it's versatile, yet powerful.
• it's possible to include other data than text, like images where necessary.
• the search function allows you to find stuff outside your todo.txt file.

Partly, all this works with todo.txts plus google desktop as well, but this is always a bit messy. what i like about the idea is that you can produce everything offline, and once the security issues are settled, you can just upload the whole thing and you have it all online. which in turn would allow you to update all the stuff from any wireless cafe with your PDA or laptop, anytime.

Any ideas or experience? What do you do to keep track of what's to do, status, links etc?

Not sure where the picture is from. The caption reads it was shot in Pakistan, and Boing Boing guesses it's from the Washington Post, which might well be true: At least they do have excellent photographers there... It's very impressive, anyway.

When Mark crunched the data, a picture of 21st-century office work emerged that was, she says, "far worse than I could ever have imagined." Each employee spent only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else. What's more, each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a spreadsheet. And each time a worker was distracted from a task, it would take, on average, 25 minutes to return to that task.
NYT: Meet the Life Hackers

A great tutorial on how to get most out of your gmail: life hacker. Hack Attack: Become a Gmail master

[via gmail fu master Gell]

Don't live to geek; geek to live.
Lifehacker this week by Mr whole lotta nothing Matthew Haughey. Yeah!

Ever wondered how to fold a fitted sheet, like, one of those with a rubber string all around? Target Australia offers help.

Step 1 Hold the sheet inside out, by its two adjacent corners on one of the shorter ends. Position your hands inside each of these two corners.

Step 2 Fold the corner in your right hand over to the corner in your left, enveloping it. With your right hand, pick up the corner that is hanging down in front and fold it over the two corners in your left hand.

Step 3 Pick up the last corner and fold it over the other three corners. The sheet should now be right side out.

Step 4 Place your folded sheet on a table and straighten it, tucking in the elastic edges as you go.

Cheers for that!

[awhile ago via Boing Boing]

...what researchers found worked the best was a Caffeine Nap. The Caffeine Nap is simple. You drink a cup of coffee and immediately take a 15 minute nap. Researchers found coffee helps clear your system of adenosine, a chemical which makes you sleepy. So in testing, the combination of a cup of coffee with an immediate nap chaser provided the most alertness for the longest period of time. The recommendation was to nap only 15 minutes, no more or less and you must sleep immediately after the coffee.
Achieve-IT! about the most effective way of keeping those eyes open.

[via lifehacker.com]

Nice lifehack: PocketMod, the disposable personal organizer. Just drag&drop your customized 8 pages into the template, print & fold.