My apologies, however being a day behind, I’m attempting to catch up with two short posts about big topics I’ll muse more over on this week’s ‘Behind the Scenes’ post.  Anyway, what would you need to go Paperless?  I’m looking into how I will in fact do this, but I’d love to hear from you!  Today I just have that I plan to…

Go Paperless!

It’s that simple!  Who’s with me!  We can save the earth while simplifying down to a paperless living situation.  I’ll keep you all updated on how this goes.  A lot happened this week, and residual effects have been occuring from the past few weeks of all of this.  Check back soon!

Okay, I sadly do not really have the time to update ten social network profiles.  This blog is all about simplification, so why so many profiles?  Well, today I argue against using these to their fullest…  Yes, it’s always good to maximize at any times possible, but seriously - how much poking does it take to make a difference.

So for today, I propose ceasing major updates to Facebook, Myspace, Last.FM, Spock, and any other stray profiles I happen to have lying around.  On top of this, stripping these profiles of any unneeded information, simplifying them as much as possible.

Any thoughts?

I personally have many books with me at the moment.  You could say this is a holdover from recently graduating from college, but I say its hording.  Seriously though I have about fifteen books in a stack of ‘to read’ and about thirty in the ‘read’ pile.  This doesn’t include the boxes of books I have stored in other places.  So, I need to cut down.

Why not sell, give away, or ‘lose’ any book you’ve already read?

This is a simple post for today, but I plan to sell any book I have read recently (on ebay).  Each one that doesn’t sell will be given away BookCrossing style.  If you don’t know what Book Crossing is, check this out.  Really, I’d rather ‘release’ books this way, but I need to fund the bookcrossing effort (buy nice tags) so I’ll be selling the books at first till I make around seventy dollars, then the rest will be freed!  What do you do with your read books?  I’m interested to know what people do with books they may want for reference in the future, like Plato’s Republic, or computer manuals.

This is of course till I get a Kindle… Any kind souls out there?

Any self-respecting twenty two year old blogger will probably tell you, my morning routine consists of Twitter, Google Reader, and Thunderbird instead of Shower, Shave, and Brush Teeth.  While the first three are very important (to me), the second three should really take precedence.  So once again I go to RememberTheMilk.com.

From now on I’ll have a morning ToDo list that’ll consist of everything I need to accomplish before settling down to work.

How do you make a list like that?

This is a very good question… I don’t exactly know.  I suggest creating a simple list that consists of general tasks (and of course writing in your calendar a block of two hours devoted to ‘morning routines’).  My list will be the following:

• Bathroom Things [i.e. Shower, Teeth, etc]
• Meditate
• Work Out

Pretty easy.  After these tasks, then I’ll just move on into my daily tasks.  This type of thing isn’t for everyone, but I’m beginning to believe grounding yourself in the physical world needs to take place before delving into online-social work… The more you can do outside the better!

Bills; Every month I pay rent, utilities, electricity, internet, credit cards & loans, and myself.  I’ve never gone about and optimized how I pay these things.  Half of them deliver through the mail, others through e-mail, and the last don’t deliver any bills whatsoever.  Having just graduated from college, I moving around sporadically…  I’ve missed payments out of sheer confusion!  So, I’m proposing a three step process:

First: Switching all bills to electronic systems, ‘e-bills’, e-mail billing, electronic billing, et cetra.

Second: Pay every bill on the first of the month.

Third: Setup a digital reminder system to remind me to pay ALL the bills.

Paperless…

As someone attempting to erase my carbon footprint, every aspect of ‘paperless’ness (is that a word?) is a step in the right direction.  Most (if not all) financial institutions offer the ability for paperless bills, so why not?  Not only does this help the environment, it raises awareness of upcoming bills.  Most people I know check their physical ’snail’ mail once every few days, while their Gmail-Thunderbird-Outlook-Crackberry reminds them instantaneously with every little piece of digital paraphanalia arriving at their digital doorstep.  It just works out better this way.

Counterintuitive Payments

My first thought towards paying my bills relays the minute interest gained paying the last day of a given grace period.  In effect I pay one on the first, one on the sixth, one on the fifteenth, and so on.  This gets seriously confusing, and I’ve missed more than I wish to admit.  In this case, I plan to instead pay everything on the first of the month.  It’s easier, and although that pays some early, the sheer simplicity of paying out everything at the first of the month helps ease my over-tasked schedule.

Since that’s not easy enough:

I also include step three, this is very important.  Looking back, I’ve already instilled ten different simplification techniques, as the number grows higher, it becomes more difficult to track.  Why track this myself?  By setting digital reminders, the internet can remind me when bills need to be paid.

For this I set up an account at Remember The Milk, created a ‘bills’ list, and inserted a reminder for every bill, the amount that’s due, and the URL to where I can pay it. (I’ve included step by step pictures on how to do this after the break)

On top of this, most institutions make it possible to auto-pay! For every auto-payment, my reminder consists only of updating Buddi (my super-cool-multi-platform-open-source-finance-software)

Of course I’m always open for opinions from everyone out there.  Any tips on bills?

Read the rest of this entry »

Yo, once again here’s a look behind what I do here, and have been doing this week.  Its been a slow week for this blog, but jampacked everywhere else - lets do the usual!

What I’ve been reading

•  Check eBay Auctions for Sneaky Stuff with Auction Inquisitor (Lifehacker)
• 36 Great Tips for Keeping Travel as Simple as Possible (and Two Poems) (Zen Habits)
• Download Music from Your Friends’ iTunes Libraries Over the Internet with Moj0 (Lifehacker)
• Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software? (Slashdot)
• Turn Insomnia into a Productivity Boost (Lifehacker)
• Aggregate Your Online Social Life with FriendFeed (Lifehacker)
• Beyond Test Taking: Learning to Handle Information (lifehack.org)
• How Surveillance Hurts Free Speech (EFF)
• How To Green Your Wardrobe (Treehugger)
• Vendor-neutral Linux certs becoming popular (Thru Linux Today)
• EXCLUSIVE: ‘Mongol’ Poster Premiere! (Cinematical)

Recap 0wn1t Week 2

Day 06: MOOOcards… yes, I said it.

 Created business cards through Moo.com

Day 07: Outlets

 Discussed carrying around a moleskin notebook.

Day 08: Expressive Financial Distress!!

Discussed working on my finances to break down my debt and increase savings in the simplest way possible.

Day 09: Meditation

An hour of meditation daily!!

Day 10: Twitter, Tweet, Tweet!

Twitter!!!  Discussed social networks, and my plan to only update one from now on.

Day 11: Zeroplanning

Planning blocks of time as opposed to tasks!

Free Talk

As many of you know (as seen by my last post), my server had gone down.  My provider had scheduled this downtime, however I was unaware of the scheduling.  (OPPS!)  Next time, I should be more careful. (and subscribe to DHstatus on twitter)

Anyway, this gave way to much needed reflection.  Honestly (although I’m now officially two days behind in posting - I will get those up I’m so sorry!!!) I need to work on content.  I’m sooo worried about people finding the site and reading it, that I’ve been slacking on actually going through and explaining what I’m doing.  I think you all would really enjoy these things if I was clearer too.  SO, I will definitely get to content control, savvy?

 If you’re wondering, this’ll include photos, video, and other explanations of what I’m doing personally.  This blog is partially professional (hints and such - I’ll be putting these together for a small e-book manuscript) and partially personal (following me!) and I’ve been too scared to jump into either realm… So I’ve split it into being professional suggestions, and personal responses to those suggestions…. eventually this may split into two daily posts with seperate RSS feeds.

Thanks for reading as always, and again… I need more twitter friends!!!! 

My webspace provider did some really unhappy stuff yesterday, I’ll be recouped by tomorrow, you’ll see these posts then, I promise!!

Today’s post will be very short due to my overly packed day.  For all of those reading, I still have something to do simplification wise!  I call it Zeroplanning, although I can’t take credit for it.  Recently I told one of my friends I was making this blog and asked her for ideas.  Her first was by far the best idea I’ve heard (or come up with really).  Its what I call Zeroplanning.

Instead of blocking my day into sections of tasks, blocking it into sections of categories, surrounding any multitude of tasks.

Zeroplanning is basically turning a ‘I-need-to-get-this-and-this-done’ day into a ‘I-need-time-for-work-and-play’ day.  It may sound little, but this totally changed how I plan everything out.  Instead of devoting two hours to writing for this site, and two hours to broadcasting it - I spend four hours doing site related things.  You know?

Okay, I use a thousand social networks all the time for no real particular reason.  But Twitter is one I use regularly even though my friend base happens to be quite small at the moment… I’m okay with that.  Anyway, to put it simply Twitter as my main network creates a streamlined work process.  I only have one thing to update regularly.  You could argue that getting rid of all of them would be best, however I know my presence on the web will always exist, why not 0wn 1t?

Anyway…

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, the video HERE is by far the best explanation I can find.

Okay, once again, how is this simplifying?

Well, simplifying can also be seen as gaining control of yourself.  If you’re all over the place, how can you focus on the single task at hand?  Well, Twitter is very… VERY simple and updates everyone I care about!  Why not?

Okay, it’s not that drastic, many of the posts this week have been a little on the easy side.  But stay tuned, up ahead comes the real nasty tasks!

And if you want to follow me on Twitter, Feel Free!

I had read an article a while ago referring to new research in the causes of ADD and ADHD  For the uninitiated, these disorders express an attention deficiency in the person diagnosed with it.  The research pro-ports the origins of ADD and ADHD can be seen as a backlash from our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors.  The theory discusses possible hyper-focus heavily regarded in championing hunting techniques of ancient cultures.  While this may be completely science fiction in actual connection, the vast difference of extremes suggests wonderful allegory.  I would personally put out there the possibility of sociological tendencies towards attention deficit.  I mean, I’m all over the place when it comes to blogging, reading, writing, and the like.  The information overload can get to be too much very quickly.

I propose setting aside an hour every day to meditative techniques.

Isn’t that a long time?

It feels as though I’ve been adding more to my life than taking away with this simplification blog, so how exactly could it help to add more to my schedule?  Well, I don’t believe this is really adding.  At least in my life, there are many times where i blank out from over-work.  I’ll spend half an hour to two hours just mindlessly watching youtube videos, movies, sitting doing nothing.  If I were to spend that time instead actively attempting to hone my focus.

So… How?

The span of knowledge on ‘HOWTO meditate’ is ludicrously large for me to attempt to paraphrase here.  If you’d like a full explanation, after google searches, I found this.  It seems quite useful.  I plan to make a cycle of meditations, focusing on one style each week until I complete the style.

This week

The first week of meditations will be like the following:  Sit in silence in a comfortable position for thirty minutes in the morning, and in the evening.  Inside, I know my brain will protest.  In attempt to subside this, I’ll be focusing on awareness of myself and every part of me - its connection to the rest of existence.  I’ll obviously report back with my findings!