I’m trying out Omea Pro and so far, I’m really frustrated. This application has so much potential, but using it is not as smooth as I had hoped it would be.

First off, the concept behind Omea is awesome. It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time. A long time. Basically, it’s an application that allows you to sort your files, email, news groups, feeds, bookmarks, contacts, and tasks as if they were the same thing. That’s right, you can tag a file, a bookmark, an email, and a feed and see them all in the same place, allowing you to see all the information associated with a project in one place. There is no artificial separation of these items. If you have a file associated with a project, you can find it in the same place as the 200 emails you’ve received about the project.

To date, I’ve been using ContentSaver to store my resources. It was the best application I could find of its kind, allowing me to assign a file to multiple categories, so that I could put my hand on it when I needed it. But it fell short of being powerful because it imported files into a database and it didn’t catalog email very well. I used it because it was better than storing things on the antiquated hierarchical file system (for the record, I’m using Windows XP).

Now Omea Pro. I had to jump on this application as soon as I heard about it. But, it’s like pulling teeth to get it to work.

1. First off, the Firefox plugin doesn’t always work. When it fails, I have to restart both Omea and Firefox. That’s probbaly going to be a pretty big nuisance once I get up and running (assuming I stick with it that long) as a lot of the information I want to catalog comes from the Web.

2. I can’t create new categories at every dialog that I can associate an object with a category. The idea of assignment and creation are, seemingly, two separate tasks. There are plenty of times (especially in the beginning) when I need to create a new category for the particular piece of content that I’m saving, but can’t because I’m in assignment mode, not in create mode. This isn’t always the case, but it is often enough to be extremely frustrating.

3. I can’t assign feeds to a category. I can assign posts from a feed to a category, but what if I want an entire feed in a category? This would be partiuclarly useful when I’m creating new workspaces.

4. There is no way to edit HTML files. This wouldn’t be a negative thing, except that it doesn’t always display HTML clippings in the best manner. In fact, sometimes it’s downright bad.

5. I can’t associate multiple files to a category. For normal operation, this is probably not necessary. Except that I’m transferring a fairly large collection of files from ContentSaver to Omea and it would save a lot of time.

Even with all these quirks, I’m willing to give this application a shot. It does everything I want it to do—everything I wish the OS did. Maybe Windows Vista will get it right next year, and maybe not. With any luck, though, Omea Pro, even with all its annoyances, will actually make my life a little easier. I’ll definitely report back on my progress. And I’ll even try to be a bit more positive than negative next time.

More interesting words from Steve. His latest post answers the question: why become an extrovert? A lot of folks were asking this question, and he provides a moving answer—one that I am definitely going to keep in the forefront of my mind the next time I’m caught in an uncomfortable social situation.

But the reason he gives (creating powerful relationships with people) is not the reason I decided to work on improving my social interaction skills. Rather, I wanted to have a fighting chance to accomplish several of my life’s goals and I knew I could not do it alone. And I knew because I read Keith Ferrazzi’s book: Never Eat Alone. It’s an amazing book about why building relationships matter, about how to connect with people, and about creating meaningful relationships with every person you meet.

Anyway, read Steve’s post and pick up Keith’s book. You’ll be the better for it—even if you disagree with every word they wrote—though I doubt you will.

I just finished reading Steve Pavlina’s How to go from an introvert to an extrovert. It’s a great read, and like so many of Steve’s articles, I completely agree with everything he says.

In the last comment of Steve’s post, as of this writing, someone asked how to develop social skills. As someone who has been working to to improve his social skills over the past few months, I’ve found that successful social interaction starts with a few basic techniques:

• Smile. This is probably one of the greatest things you can do to meet new people. I’ve just started a new job and have had a lot of luck meeting new people just by smiling. Appear friendly and open and people are much more likely to talk to you than if you’re stoic.
• Be prepared. People are, at some point, going to ask about you—your thoughts, your opinions, your life. Think about your answers, but don’t have “pat” answers. It’s more like having interesting bullet points to talk about. Some common questions to be prepared to answer include:
  • What do you do?
  • Are you married?
  • How did you meet your spouse?
  • Do you have any kids?

• Be interested. Take responsibility for being interested in what the other person is saying. If you’re not interested in them, it’s your fault. Ask yourself: what can I do to make this conversation more interesting? And do it. How do you communicate interest? See the next bullet.
• Engage. This is probably the most important social interaction skill you will develop. When you’re talking to someone, fully engage them. At the core of engagement is listening, but engagement also includes asking questions and appropriate body language.
• Adapt. Social situations change at the drop of a hat. Add a fourth person to a 3-way conversation and you’ve exponentially increased the complexity of the relationships. This is something that I’m having particular trouble with.
• Get out of the way. Often, I find myself in conversations asking myself: “What do I say next?” Relax and go with the the flow of the conversation.

And, really, the best advice I can give for improving your social interaction skills: get out there. You can:

• observe people who have strong social interaction skills.
• have one-on-one conversations with people who you think are interesting.
• Read. If you want to be a good programmer, you read books about programming. If you want to have good social interaction skills, read about improving social interaction skills.Some good reads:
  • How to Go From Introvert to Extrovert
  • The Multiple Self - blog post on how to actually make changes in your self.
  • Are you listening to me? Learning to Listen? Learn what to listen FOR
  • Quickly connect with people
  • How to listen: Following skills
  • How to listen: Attending Skills
  • How to Listen: Reflecting Skills
  • People Skills: How to assert yourself, listen to others, and resolve conflict by Robert Bolton
  • Never Eat Alone by by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz

I used to be a piler that wanted to be a filer, which just means that I was a mess. I hated the piles, but I never filed the content because I wasn’t sure where to put things. It’s not something I worry about anymore as software makers are offering a mix of tags and saved searches, effectively removing the need for hierarchical data storage. (I just wish this option was available for physical files.)

I often encounter people who look at my email inbox (using Outlook 2003) piled with hundreds of email (right now I have over 2500 messages in my inbox) and I see them cringe. Especially the GTD folk. But it’s so much easier for me to locate what I need when I need it using saved searches and tags than if I were to actually place it in another folder. My system works like this:

• I check my email once every hour. Or, at least, I try to limit it to once every hour.
• If something comes in and I can respond to it in two minutes or less, I do it.
• If I need to respond sometime today, I flag it with a red flag
• If I need to respond sometime in the next few days, I flag it with a blue flag. I review these items once in the morning, early afternoon, and just before I head home.
• If I need to reference the email at some point in the future, I flag it with a green flag.

I also have search folders for different projects. Each search folder includes email addresses, keywords in the subject, and some keywords in the body. I try, though, to limit the keywords I search for in the body as it is often too broad.

Now, I’m really looking forward to Windows Vista when a lot of this stuff will be built into the file system. For now, though, I use a program called ContentSaver. The application allows me to tag files and save searches, which makes finding files that much easier.

I bet the next big leap in digital organization will be abandoning the concept of the file altogether, and instead we’ll focus on storing information and how to interconnect that information more effectively. Maybe they’ll make that leap in Windows 2010.

I was just recently reminded about something I heard several years ago: everyone should have a list of 100 things they want to do before they die.

Can someone from the GTD crowd say @someday, please?

I think I’m going to split the “Things I want to do for fun” from the “Things I may get around to doing, but don’t really want to do.” I’ll have a list that I actually enjoy looking at versus one that’s just depressing.

Also, speaking of the @someday list. When was the last time you checked yours? I try to get to mine in the weekly review, but don’t always manage it. If I’m honest, I rarely get to it. After sorting through all the work I need to do, looking at future projects just seems pointless.

I know, I know. I’m only ever going to get to the items on my someday/maybe list if I make them a priority. Maybe it’s time to start?

I made the announcement last week that I was back. It’s been a week and half since that announcement and this is my first post. I’ve been working on a post for the past week, but I have been unable to say what I really mean. The words aren’t coming. It’s not quite writer’s block as I’ve written plenty of words. I’m just at a loss for the words that actually say what I mean.

In part, the post was suppose to explain my absence as well as review some issues I’ve been pondering over the past few weeks. With some reluctance, I’m giving up on any detailed explanation and have boiled my thoughts down to three statements:

• Happiness is a choice
• My future is determined by the choices I make today
• I don’t need to know where I’m going—I just need a general direction

I wish that I could better elaborate on my journey and why these points have come to mean so much to me, but the words aren’t coming. So, I’m giving you the short and sweet version and hope that it might be of some use to someone.

I’ve been neglecting the blog these past few weeks—okay, okay, it’s been over a month. I got a ton of excuses (and maybe a couple of reasons wrapped up in there). I’m back, now, though. Expect a couple of posts later this week, including more thoughts on my “Motivation and Values” post as it generated some interesting discussion.

Anyway, it’s good to be back.

I’ve been thinking a little bit about motivation these past few days, which has also led me to do some noodling on values. This horrible train wreck of a thought process started because I’ve been re-reading Covey’s 7 Habits, and I’ve noticed one big difference between his and Allen’s approach: Covey wants us to start our self improvement with “the end in mind” whereas Allen just wants us to start.

On the surface of it, Covey’s approach feels right, but in reality, Allen’s approach is much more practical: how can you really know what your end you want unless you clear away all of the clutter in your life and better manage the many demands on your time? You can’t.

But why would you start any kind of self improvement program if you didn’t have a goal you wanted to achieve? My answer: motivation. It’s not as solid as a goal or as daunting as defining a goal. It’s squishy. Nebulous. Abstract. Motivations are the desires that spur us to better or worsen our situation. Some examples:

• I want to be happier
• I need to get better organized
• I need to spend more time with my family
• I want to be a better person

A motivation alone is a great deal of sound and fury that amounts to nothing, but it’s enough to get us started. People who start a diet or exercise program are motivated: They want to lose weight or be healthy. But what happens when that motivation is gone and they haven’t built any self-discipline on top of that motivation? They fall of their diet, stop going to the gym, and gain back the three pounds that they just lost.

Unless you build on your motivation, you will fail because motivation means nothing: You want to be healthy? Great, but it takes more than desire.

This is where I began 6 months ago: I wanted to better manage my time. I didn’t have any real goals in mind. I just wanted to be more productive at work so that I would have more time to spend with my family and do other things that I was passionate about.

But then, of course, I had to ask myself: what drove me to be motivated? (Tell me you saw that question coming.) That’s when I started thinking about values. (Told you it was a bit of a train wreck ;))

Values are the qualities or traits and beliefs that we prize in ourselves. They determine how we perceive reality. Some values we hold at the core of our being and changing them would be like making the sun rise in the west. Other values change on a daily basis. Some even on an hourly basis.

Our values determine our motivation. If we see ourselves as a victim, our values limit our motivation. Nothing we do will matter, so why bother. But, if we view the world as a “ours for the taking”, we will be motivated to improve our current situation. Our values may severly limit us, but they also set us free.

As you can see, Values and Motivations are closely tied together. If I believe that I can become rich, then I may be motivated to become rich—if becoming rich is something I would want based on my other values. However, if I think that I am not someone who could ever be rich, I will never be motivated to act on becoming rich.

I’m not sure how this fits in with my doodle from a couple weeks ago, but I am certainly noodling on it.

What would it take to squeeze the marrow out of every waking minute?

Lisa and Dan have really got me thinking about the finite lately.

We’ll start with Dan.

Dan Blohowiak interviewed Bill Jensen recently, and in the interview, Bill pointed out that there are 1440 minutes in a day and we should stop wasting them.

I don’t want to waste my life, but what does that mean—not waste “my life”? It’s such a long-term concept that it’s difficult to get my head around. I know I don’t want to wake up at 65 and think, “I wasted my life.” Beyond that? You got me. Hell, I have a hard time thinking out past the next hour. A lot can happen in an hour.

When Bill said that we only have 1440 minutes in a day, a flip switched—I finally understood what it would take to avoid wasting my life. Not wasting my life means not wasting another minute. I can get my head around a minute. A minute is immediate. Its presence can be felt immediately and its absence can be just as immediately missed. The number of minutes in a day has more meaning than the number of hours in a day.

And then I read Lisa’s “Tip of the Day - #27”: “Lead like there’s no tomorrow”. She writes:

A coworker of mine got some pretty wicked news that she has a very aggressive form of cancer at 36 years of age. Another coworker recently lost a parent in a tragic accident. An old coworker recently lost her job when her company went belly-up.

It is a shame that it often takes events like these to snap us back to appreciating each day and living fully for the moment.

What serendipity.

I’m not going to be someone who lets life happen to them. I want to take life by the minute—and make every second count. As Lisa says, “I don’t want to live in fear for what could happen, but I do want to get better at living well, healthy, fully and for today (with an eye to the future).”

As you can see, Bill and Lisa have me asking some heady questions: Am I where I want to be? Am I spending my 1440 minutes wisely? They’ve also got me asking about my future: what I want to do with the next 5-10 years? After all, how I spend each of today’s minutes will affect the possible uses of my future minutes. In a way, you could say that the future is happening today.

This past week, again, saw some modest improvements. I think my goals are set a bit too high. Time to face that reality and scale back a little.

First off, my failures.

• I did not exercise three times; I exercised twice.

• I was unable to get any lunches scheduled for next week. Got some possibilities for things in July, but nothing for this week.

I wasn’t a complete failure, though.

• I have consistently gotten out of bed every morning between 6 and 6:30. Pretty good for a guy who has considered himself a night owl for the past—well, since he was a teenager. We’ll leave it at that. I’m still getting tired before 11:00, and that is a problem. 8 hours just seems like a lot to sleep at night. I think my early exhaustion comes from my diet.

• I have not had a caffeinated soda in two weeks, and, most days, my energy level has remained high throughout the day.

I’m feeling pretty good about everything so far. I’d still give myself a “C”, but I’m out there. I’m doing it, and I will get better.

This week’s goals:

• Continue getting up at 6am. This has been the most successful thing I’ve got going, and I’m enjoying the early start.

• Stretch for 5 minutes in the morning and for 5 minutes in the evening. Ever day. This is my baby step toward creating an exercise regimine that I will stick with. Stretching is easy. Surely I can do it for five minutes twice a day. I’ll gradually build this up to 20 minutes twice daily over the next few months at which point, I’ll switch to a consistent exercise regimine.

• Change “…but…” to “…and…”. I’m reading Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott, which I will review later. The short of it: “…and…” statements are better.

• Create a list of 20 people with whom I would like to have lunch. So, my goal of scheduling lunches has been a flop. I’m going to take a step back and create a targeted list of folks I would like to meet as well as a description of why I would like to meet them.

• Plan out my meals for next week. We’ve already done the grocery shopping for this week. I need to sit down and plan some tasty and healthy meals and snacks for next week. Otherwise, I’m not going to get out of the rut I’m in—nor am I going to lose this gut.